STILL COUNTING
Parties weigh options as tabulating continues in close McSally-Sinema race
For Kyrsten Sinema and Martha McSally, Tuesday night was supposed to mark the end of a hard-fought battle that tested vastly different visions for the nation.
But as Election Day came to an end, the race for Arizona’s open U.S. Senate seat ended exactly how it has played out over the past few weeks: too close to call.
An official victor may not be known for days — and maybe longer, if the final tally were to trigger a recount or legal challenge, experts say.
One side or the other could test claims of voter disenfranchisement in court if the race comes down to a narrow margin, said Eric Spencer, the state elections director.
County Republican parties have filed legal action over some voting practices.
And the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil
An official victor may not be known for days — and maybe longer, if the final tally were to trigger a recount or legal challenge, experts say.
Rights Under Law, the Arizona Advocacy Foundation and All Voting is LocalArizona lost a last-minute demand in court on Tuesday evening to try to force Maricopa County to extend voting hours, given the day’s glitches.
Maricopa County’s top election official, Recorder Adrian Fontes, a Democrat, oversaw his first general election following a bumpy primary cycle. During the Aug. 28 primary election, many people could not vote because voter check-in equipment was improperly installed at more than five dozen polling places.
Fontes’ last performance sets up the potential for wariness among Republican party officials in the state’s most populous county. Other counties have had histories of late returns or ballot issues of their own.
Either side could allege voting processes violate equal-protection violations of the U.S. Constitution.
“The political parties will chase after every vote that remains in limbo and someone is going to file a lawsuit claiming that whatever process is being used is disenfranchising their voter,” Spencer said.
He expects either party to request public information from county recorders under the Arizona Public Records Law to seek to determine reporting discrepancies between official vote tallies and voters who cast ballots provisionally and those who voted early.
“The parties will spend the next five to seven days trying to chase those people down, and alter the results in some small way ... The reality is that someone will go to federal court and argue that x group of ballots and y group of ballots should or should not be counted,” Spencer said.
Recounts in statewide happen very often.
An automatic recount is required when the results from the official canvass show that the difference in total votes cast for McSally and Sinema is less than or equal to the lesser amount of one-tenth of 1 percent, or 200 votes.
The secretary of state is scheduled to canvass the results Dec. 3.
If the race falls within the margins, Spencer said, “we will literally leave the canvass on the morning of Dec. 3 and literally go to the courthouse and file a lawsuit” to formalize the legal recount process.
A recount of the ballots would begin almost immediately, following a judicial order. races don’t
In 2010, a statewide ballot measure known as Proposition 112 that sought to shorten the filing deadline for initiative petitions triggered a mandatory recount. It wound up being rejected by 194 votes, a margin greater than the 128 votes that it appeared to lose by in the initial count.
And in the 1994 Democratic primary for U.S. Senate, then-U.S. Rep. Sam Coppersmith edged then-Arizona Secretary of State Dick Mahoney by 132 votes.
That recount confirmed a 59-vote victory for Coppersmith, who went on to lose the general election against thenU.S. Rep. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz.
Kyl would go on to serve three Senate terms before returning to the chamber again in September following an appointment by Gov. Doug Ducey after the death of U.S. Sen. John McCain.