More than 600,000 early and provisional ballots statewide have yet to be processed and counted, Arizona Secretary of State Ken Bennett said Wednesday.

Early voting in Arizona's Nov. 6 general election starts Thursday.

Starting this fall, Gilbert will begin its new election cycle on even-numbered years with the election of the town mayor and two council members.

Expatriate Mexicans in the United States can vote in July's Mexican presidential elections, but barely any are registering to do so.

Once again, we wait for election results. It’s a reason to be at least a bit baffled about socalled early voting — because it isn’t as early as it used to be. Today it’s more like, “late-finding-out voting.”

Voters grappled with partisan challenges to their registrations, broken equipment and other troubles Tuesday as legions of lawyers, election-rights activists and computer scientists watched for signs of voter disenfranchisement.

Early November brings two of the key dates on America’s civic calendar, Election Day and Veterans Day, and it’s fitting that they fall so closely to each other. Soon after we cast our ballots, we have the opportunity to recognize the people who help make free elections and so many other blessings of liberty possible.

Even if Sunday's Russian presidential election were fair, Vladimir Putin would win. He is incontestably popular, with approval ratings above 70 percent for the four years of his first term.

LONDON - Americans seeking a change in foreign policy and a new national image abroad flocked to churches in Rome, town halls in England and an Irish pub in Hong Kong on Tuesday to vote in a Democrats Abroad primary.

J.D. Hayworth, who ended up on the short end of the vote count on election night, refused to concede defeat in his re-election bid Wednesday. Hayworth declined Tribune interview requests, but in television and radio interviews said he planned to wait out the final count.

Rep. Eddie Farnsworth, R-Gilbert, squared off against a room full of property managers and homeowners association board members during a panel discussion Saturday, criticizing legislators who have empowered HOAs with the right to foreclosure.

January 16, 2005

Our elections of course should be fair, but it is also vital that they be seen to be fair. Voting irregularities have impinged on the last two presidential elections, and after the 2000 Florida debacle, many die-hard Bush opponents never did concede the legitimacy of his first term.

Foes of state Senate President Russell Pearce will get a second chance this week to try to bounce Olivia Cortes from the recall ballot.

January 27, 2005

Gary Ramirez's hands say it all. The rigidly clasped fingers of the 33-year-old appear incapable of letting go. Only when massage therapist Dan O’Clair releases shoulder tension do the fingers soften.

The media have teed up the issue of voter fraud nicely. On the one hand, we’ve been repeatedly told that, try as they might, no journalists can find any evidence of voter fraud. The local Cronkite Center chimed in with a well-publicized report claiming that voter impersonation, and by extension voter fraud, is pretty much nonexistent.

The Arizona Legislature is close to adopting a new set of homeowners association reforms that would make it easier to remove board members, replace proxy voting with absentee ballots and tell potential home buyers in plain English about certain rights they give up when joining an association.

April 11, 2005

CLEVELAND - In the state that may again determine the presidency, voters started casting ballots Tuesday as Barack Obama struggles to thwart a John McCain victory in Ohio four years after it tipped the election to President Bush.

CLEVELAND - In the state that may again determine the presidency, voters started casting ballots Tuesday as Barack Obama struggles to thwart a John McCain victory in Ohio four years after it tipped the election to President Bush.

WASHINGTON - Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin said Wednesday she would consider serving in the Senate if God gave her the opportunity and Alaskans wanted her to take the job. The state's senior senator, Republican Ted Stevens, fell narrowly behind as the count resumed in his re-election bid.

A Tucson attorney has started an initiative drive to set a minimum wage for workers in Arizona above the federal standard.