By JONATHAN J. COOPER, Associated Press
PHOENIX (AP) — Arizona’s largest county on Friday will begin releasing the outcomes of ballots dropped off at polling places on Election Day, providing clues about whether Republicans can overtake Democrats in critical races for U.S. Senate and governor.
With half 1,000,000 ballots remaining to be counted statewide, Republican Senate candidate Blake Masters would wish to win greater than 60% of them to defeat Democratic incumbent Mark Kelly. Within the race for governor, Republican Kari Lake would wish to win just over half to overtake Democrat Katie Hobbs.
By late Friday afternoon, Kelly led Masters by 5.6 percentage points, while Hobbs was ahead of Lake by just 1.2 points.
Republicans including Lake, who’re convinced the remaining ballots strongly favor them, have been pressuring election officials in Maricopa County, which incorporates the vast majority of Arizona voters, to hurry up the count. County Board of Supervisors Chair Bill Gates, a Republican, said the team is working as fast as it may well, however it takes time to follow the detailed steps required under Arizona law.
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“We’re doing things the fitting way. We’re not doing anything flawed in any respect,” Gates told reporters on the county elections office Friday. “That somebody from here would suggest that we’re doing something flawed, that’s frustrating.”
County officials have said they were inundated with much more early ballots dropped off on Election Day than they’ve ever before needed to process. Voters delivered 292,000 early ballots on Election Day, a rise of 70% over the previous record from 2020.
Counting those ballots is time-consuming because officials should confirm that each got here from a legitimate voter, a process that couldn’t begin until Wednesday.
Gates said that Maricopa County will release results from 80,000 ballots Friday evening and that greater than half might be from the crucial group of early ballots received on Election Day. The report can even include fewer than 10,000 ballots received before Tuesday and “a great amount” of the roughly 17,000 ballots solid at vote centers on Tuesday, which couldn’t be counted immediately due to a printing issue.
The Tucson area’s Pima County also had a large chunk of votes left to count. Together, the state’s two urban counties account for 90% of the remaining ballots, in accordance with data from the secretary of state.
Either party could clinch control of the U.S. Senate by winning Arizona and either the outstanding Nevada Senate contest, which remained too early to call Friday, or next month’s runoff in Georgia.
Democrats think it’s possible that the remaining ballots in Arizona are much less favorable to the GOP and can allow some or all of their candidates to take care of their leads.
By Friday afternoon, Democrats led the secretary of state contest by 5 points and the attorney general race by slightly below 1 point. In two of the state’s uncalled House contests, the candidates were separated by 2 points or less. In a 3rd, Democratic incumbent Greg Stanton had a way more comfortable lead of 14 points.
Follow the AP’s coverage of the 2022 midterm elections at https://apnews.com/hub/2022-midterm-elections. And take a look at https://apnews.com/hub/explaining-the-elections to learn more in regards to the issues and aspects at play within the midterms.
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