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Blake Masters did not release the numbers of votes he needed on Election Day ballots as they were counted and released by officials in Arizona’s largest county.
The Republican challenger was significantly ahead of Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly only by a small number of votes coming from Maricopa County. in almost all other cases, Kelly had a slight or substantial advantage. That led the AP to call the race for Kelly after Maricopa County released another batch of 80,000 ballots late Friday. Now elected to his first full term, Kelly has been one of the most successful statewide Democrats in Arizona. In 2020, he won the 2020 special election by more than 2 percentage points over Republican incumbent Martha McSally. There were some Republican activists in Arizona who argued that voters are deliberately waiting until Election Day itself to drop off their ballots. Part of that push was based on unsubstantiated theories that fraudsters could manipulate voting systems and falsify the results for Democrats after seeing how many GOP votes had been returned early. Experts had also warned that such last-minute ballot-crashing could end up creating delays that could eventually be used by a bad actor to undermine confidence in the election. There have been some holidays this year. About a quarter of the polling places in Maricopa County, Arizona’s most populous county, experienced a printing problem Tuesday in which the signs did not display correctly when voters showed up to print their ballots. Officials said the problem was fixed within hours and everyone was able to vote. In his first run for political office, Masters was endorsed by both former President Donald Trump and former Vice President Mike Pence. Arizona has a long political history of voting Republican, but changing demographics have made the state more Democratic-friendly. The AP has not made a call in the Arizona governor’s race between Republican Kari Lake and Democrat Katie Hobbs.
Meg Kinnard can be reached at http://twitter.com/MegKinnardAP
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