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Arizona GOP officials slammed officials in Maricopa County after they announced 17,000 votes would need to be recounted when tabulators failed on election night.
Officials in Arizona‘s most populous county said about 7 percent of the ballots were affected by a printing mishap that prevented vote counters from reading them.
GOP gubernatorial hopeful Kari Lake, who has been closing the election night gap on Democratic rival Katie Hobbs, said the situation in Maricopa was outrageous after initial reports from the county yesterday had her beating Hobbs 70.6 percent to 29.4 percent.
Speaking to Fox’s Tucker Carlson on Wednesday night, Lake said one of her first actions as governor would be to revamp the state’s voting process to avoid the current failures.
‘We need to get rid of these machines that are not reliable, and we’ve seen the kinds of problems they can cause,’ Lake said. ‘We’re sick of being the embarrassment that Maricopa County has made us become and we won’t do another election like this.’
Joining the outrage was Arizona Secretary of State candidate Mark Finchem, who is behind five points against Democrat Adrian Fontes.
‘Maricopa’s election systems are a national disgrace,’ Finchem tweeted. ‘We waited 24 hours and got a measly 62k votes. Even third world countries count faster than that.’
Republican Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake slammed the state’s slow voting process after Maricopa County officials said they’d need to recount 17,000 votes
Arizona Secretary of State candidate Mark Finchem, who is behind five points against Democrat Adrian Fontes, joined in the outrage
So too did Abe Hamadeh, the GOP candidate for Attorney General who is in another race that is too close to call in the state
Abe Hamadeh, the GOP candidate for Attorney General behind by only 0.2 percent against Democrat Kris Mayer, joined in on the criticism leveled against Maricopa.
‘Arizona DESERVES results on Election Day,’ Hamadeh tweeted. ‘This is an embarrassment. Maricopa County needs accountability.’
County officials apologized for the delay and said all ballots will be counted, but gave no timeline for doing so.
They did not offer any new information about what caused the problem but promised a thorough review.
‘There is no perfect election. Yesterday was not a perfect election,’ said Bill Gates, the Republican chairman of the county board of supervisors. ‘We will learn from it and do better.’
Officials in Maricopa County estimated that there were about 400,000 votes left to count, with about 275,000 of those being ballots that came in on Election Day itself – votes known in some places as ‘late earlies,’ the counting of which has been known to hold up tabulation.
It could take several days before it’s clear who won some of the closer contests. County officials expected to receive daily updates on the count.
Lake is behind her Democratic rival Katie Hobbs (above) by only 0.6 percent – a big improvement from Election night when the GOP candidate was trailing by double digits
Lake, who is now only 0.6 percent behind Hobbs, has said she wants to significantly reduce early and mail voting, options chosen by at least eight in 10 Arizona voters, and to count all ballots by hand, which election administrators say would be extremely time consuming.
Ballots can have dozens of races on them. Maricopa County has more than 50 judges on the ballot, on top of state and local races and 10 ballot measures.
‘We’re going to go back to small precincts where it’s easier to detect problems and easier to fix them and it’ll be easier to hand count votes as well,’ Lake told Carlson Wednesday. ‘These are some of the things I’d like to see happen.’
Lake claimed in the months before Election Day that she would only accept the results of a ‘free and fair election,’ but has consistently refused to answer the question directly of if she would concede if Hobbs emerged the victor.
Outside of Maricopa County, about 200,000 ballots remained to be counted, the bulk of them in Pima County, which includes Tucson.
Along with the local races, Arizona’s contentious Senate race remains too close to call, with polls indicating that incumbent Mark Kelly is currently enjoying a 5 percent lead against Republican Black Masters.
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