Votes in Arizona and Nevada may not be fully counted until NEXT WEEK

Votes in Arizona and Nevada may not be fully counted until next week, election officials in the two states warned.

However, both states are expected to release updated tallies later Thursday night.  

By Thursday afternoon, election workers in Arizona’s largest county, Maricopa, had yet to start processing the approximately 290,000 mail-in ballots that were dropped off at polling locations on Election Day. 

Those ballots have to go through a signature verification process as they’re counted, which takes time. 

Maricopa County Board of Supervisors Bill Gates said Thursday evening that between 400,000 and 410,000 ballots in Maricopa still needed to be counting. 

Overall, around 660,000 votes around the state remain outstanding. 

Arizona is expected to release updated numbers Thursday night between 8 p.m. and 9 p.m. local time. 

Gates said the tally of 62,000 would be reported then. 

Those numbers will be from mail-in ballots received on Saturday, Sunday and most of Monday.

Another 17,000 so-called ‘box three’ ballots – election day ballots that wouldn’t go through the tabulators properly – are also currently being counted in Maricopa County. Those numbers aren’t expected to be released Thursday night. 

Arizona is the host of two races with nationwide repercussions. 

Democrats need to hold onto two of the three outstanding Senate races – Arizona, Nevada or Georgia in order to keep their majority. 

In Arizona, incumbent Sen. Mark Kelly is about five points ahead of challenger Blake Masters. 

‘We remain confident that we will win this race,’ a Kelly spokesperson told CNN. 

The Arizona gubernatorial race is much tighter, with Democrat Katie Hobbs around 16,000 votes ahead of Republican Kari Lake. 

Lake, a Trump acolyte, has already pushed that the election results could be fraudulent. 

In Nevada’s Senate contest, Republican Adam Laxalt narrowly leads incumbent Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto. 

But election officials in Clark County – the seat of Las Vegas and home to three-quarters of the state’s population – must wait for mail-in ballots postmarked as late as Tuesday, meaning a final count will not be announced until next week. 

Ballots are still pouring in. And an estimated 165,000 votes have yet to be tallied.  

Arizona’s Republican gubernatorial hopeful Kari Lake is trailing Democrat Katie Hobbs in her race by around 16,000 votes, as hundreds of thousands of votes still need to be tallied 

The Arizona and Nevada Senate races have yet to be called, while Georgia heads to a December runoff 

Arizona’s Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly is leading his Republican rival, while Nevada’s Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto is behind Republican Adam Laxalt in her race 

GOP challenger Adam Laxalt (left) is ahead in the Nevada Senate race, while Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly is ahead of Republican Blake Masters in Arizona 

Officials have until Nov. 17 to finish the counting and submit a report to the Nevada secretary of state’s office, according to state law. 

Like Arizona, Nevada is also expected to release new tallies Thursday night. 

Meanwhile, while the GOP is expected to win back the House of Representatives – it just hasn’t happened yet, as a predicted ‘red wave’ never materialized. 

On Thursday, Democrats picked up a seat in New Mexico where Republican Rep. Yvette Herrell was defeated by Democrat Gabe Vasquez.

Results are still being tabulated in Colorado, where Democrat Adam Frisch is looking to unseat Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert, and in California, where a couple of competitive seats are waiting on final tallies. 

Republicans have to win nine more races to gain a House majority 

One of those race is for Democratic Rep. Katie Porter, a rising star in the party’s liberal wing who spent more than $24 million to win a third term. 

With 58 percent of the vote tallied, she has a 1-point lead over Republican Scott Baugh, who hammered her on the high cost of food and gas. 

Porter, in returned, campaigned on protecting women’s reproductive rights.  

On the GOP side, Rep. Ken Calvert – the longest serving Republican in the California congressional delegation – is in a tough reelection bid. Calvert was first elected in 1992.  

His support from Trump posed a challenge in a new, reshaped district about equally split between Democrats and Republicans.

His district now includes many transplanted Angelenos and LGBTQ voters from liberal Palm Springs. 

With 37 percent of the vote in late Thursday afternoon, he was trailing Democratic challenger Will Rollings by 8 points. 

Nevada has two competitive House districts where mail-in ballots are still being counted. 

If the final margins in these races are close – in the Colorado race, for example, under 800 votes separate Frisch and Boebert, as of Thursday afternoon – there could be recounts. 

In his campaign, Frisch argued Boebert sacrificed working for her constituents for frequent ‘angertainment’ in accusing President Joe Biden and Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of seeking to destroy the soul of the nation. 

He vowed to join the bipartisan ‘Problem Solvers Caucus’ in Congress, a sharp turn from Boebert’s repudiation of across-the-aisle consensus-building.

Frisch said he wasn’t surprised at the close result.

‘I spent 10 months trying to convince donors and journalists and political strategists everywhere that there was a path forward,’ Frisch told the Associated Press. ‘I have this calm belief that that 40 percernt of the Republican Party wants their party back.’

In Nevada’s Senate contest, Republican Adam Laxalt (left) narrowly leads and in Arizona’s Senate contest, Democratic incumbent Mark Kelly (right) is in the lead as votes are being tallied

An election worker boxes tabulated ballots inside the Maricopa County Recorders Office in Phoenix, Arizona

In House races, Democrats are trying to pick off Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert in Colorado (left) while, in California, Republicans are trying to defeat Democratic Rep. Katie Porter (right)

There is a strong possibility that, for the second time in two years, the Senate majority could come down to the runoff in Georgia next month between Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock (left) and Republican Herschel Walker (right) 

President Joe Biden said he was prepared to work with Republican leaders. 

He spoke with GOP House Leader Kevin McCarthy Wednesday night.

‘Regardless of what the final tally of these elections show, and there’s still some counting going on, I’m prepared to work with my Republican colleagues,’ Biden said at his Wednesday press conference.

The president was in a jovial mood, having avoided the major losses in Congress that plagued Democrats Bill Clinton and Barack Obama and Republican Trump four years ago.

He joked with reporters about election predictions.

‘Look, the predictions were and again, I’m not being critical of anybody that played the predictions, this is supposed to be a red wave. You talked about us losing 30 to 50 seats. It’s not going to happen,’ he noted.