Morning Digest: With new ballot drop, Democrat Kyrsten Sinema takes the lead in Arizona Senate race

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Morning Digest: With new ballot drop, Democrat Kyrsten Sinema takes the lead in Arizona Senate race

Daily Kos Elections
Daily Kos Staff
Friday November 09, 2018 · 8:30 AM ES

Arizona Democrat Kyrsten Sinema
LEADING OFF

● AZ-Sen: On Thursday, Democrat Kyrsten Sinema took a 9,610-vote lead over Republican Martha McSally; on Wednesday, McSally held a 17,000-vote lead. Another 130,000 votes were counted in Maricopa County, which is home to three-fifths of the state, while Pima County added 24,100 to its total, with smaller counties added much-smaller batches. ​​​​

​There are about 500,000 uncounted ballots statewide, and about 345,000 are in Maricopa County, where Sinema currently leads 50-48. The biggest question right now is whether the remaining Maricopa County ballots will continue to trend Sinema's way, or if this was just an unusually good batch for her. The Associated Press' Nick Riccardi said that this first drop was from ballots mailed in just before Election Day at a time when Democratic turnout was at its highest. However, the county recorder says that about half of the remaining ballots come from this group. The county has another update set for 7 PM ET (5 PM local time) on Friday, so we'll hopefully know more soon about the state of the race.

With so many ballots still left to be counted, Republicans have filed a lawsuit against every county recorder, the officials who administer elections in each county, over how they're verifying ballot signatures in a state where mail ballots could make up roughly four-fifths of votes. While the GOP has sued Democratic and Republican recorders alike, they're undoubtedly doing this with one big target in mind: Democratic Maricopa County Recorder Adrian Fontes.

The GOP is taking issue with how Fontes announced shortly before Election Day that his office would contact every voter whose signature on their mail ballot didn't appear to match the one they had on file to give them an opportunity to confirm their identity, even after Election Day, pointing out that others like Pima County have been doing this for years. While Republicans have claimed they merely want all 15 counties to have the same procedure, their lawsuit could disenfranchise roughly 5,600 voters in Maricopa County

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