PHOENIX — President Trump narrowed his gap with Joe Biden in Arizona to fewer than 30,000 votes Friday, a pickup of about 17,000 since late Thursday.
Those numbers were announced Friday evening as county recorders chip away at the approximately 165,000 ballots still to be counted in the state. Updates were expected through the night.
It remained to be seen if there are enough Trump ballots to close the gap. He would need about 58% of what’s left to overtake Biden in Arizona. The tallies announced as of Friday evening were not coming in at that rate for the president.
GOP officials said they are weighing legal options if the final count does not put Trump over the top here.
At a press briefing Friday, they did not identify anything they contend is being done wrong, however. Nor would they spell out any legal theory they have to challenge the results if the final count does not go their way.
Instead, the Trump campaign is counting on everything working out the way the GOP expects without the need for litigation, said Matt Whitaker, a former acting U.S. attorney general who now is working with the campaign.
State GOP Chair Kelli Ward also said she is preaching calm even as Republicans gather nightly at Maricopa County offices where votes are being tallied, chanting, “count the votes.” Ward and other party officials also have attended.
“My message there, where I said a few words, is, ‘Stay focused, stay positive, and we are doing everything on the ground that we possibly can to make sure that our elections have integrity,’” Ward said.
Ward sidestepped questions about comments by some elected Republicans who have taken a decidedly more combative tone. Those include newly elected state Sen. Wendy Rogers, R-Flagstaff, who posted a Facebook message saying what is happening to Trump “is a dirty coup d’etat.”
“I honestly can’t believe we are living in such a banana republic where a few cities can steal an election in the dead of night with fraudulent ballots and fake voters,” she wrote.
Rogers did not return a call seeking comment or explanation.
“I haven’t seen any of the statements,” Ward responded. The same response came from U.S. Rep. Andy Biggs, who also was part of Friday’s press briefing by GOP officials, and from Whitaker.
“Obviously, anything we say about the administration of this election I think we’ll speak in court filings at the appropriate time,” Whitaker said.
As to the legal theories and issues being considered, Whitaker said, “Unfortunately, I can’t talk about the specifics of what we’re looking at.”
“We are getting reports from people both in Maricopa County and around the state,” he continued, providing no details of those complaints. The attorneys for the campaign are “doing our due diligence” on those reports, Whitaker said.
“And if we see any kind of systemic irregularity, those things we need to follow up on, we are pursuing those to see if ultimately we need to make sure that this is brought to light,” he said. “We have nothing to announce today.”
One possible area for challenge may have disappeared Friday after Michael Catlett, a deputy state solicitor general, concluded that the use of Sharpie felt-tipped pens at Maricopa County voting centers “did not result in disenfranchisement.”
Focus remains on Arizona because its 11 electoral votes could be the difference between a second Trump term and a Biden administration.
At last count by the Associated Press, Biden had 264 of the 270 votes he needs. But that presumes Arizona goes to Biden, based on the AP putting the state into his column early Wednesday when he had about a 100,000-vote edge. So far the wire service has stuck to its call despite the diminishing lead.
All of this could become moot if Biden remains in the lead in Pennsylvania or Georgia, states with 20 and 16 electoral votes, respectively.
Biden also is running ahead of Trump in Nevada, which has six electoral votes.
Ward said the way she figures it, a good chunk of the ballots yet to be tallied in Arizona will go to the president.
She said a lot of what’s left to be counted are the “late-earlys,” people who got a ballot in the mail but chose instead to drop it off at polling places on Election Day.
“These are people who, for the most part, are President Trump voters who wanted to hand-deliver their ballots,” Ward said.
She suggested that the late-early ballots tallied so far come from areas like downtown Phoenix, which skews Democratic. What that leaves, said Ward, are those from the suburbs, which she said is more likely to be Trump territory.
There was no response from the Arizona Democratic Party to the GOP event.
One interesting footnote is that the margin of difference in Arizona between Trump and Biden is less than the number of votes being pulled by Jo Jorgensen, the Libertarian Party candidate for president.
In general, Republicans in Arizona have said Libertarians siphon votes from them. That was underlined several years ago when the GOP-controlled Legislature made it more difficult for Libertarians to get their candidates on the general election ballot.
Whether those Jorgensen votes would have gone to Trump in a head-to-head with Biden, however, is less than clear.
In detailing her issues, Jorgensen said many of the problems facing the United States are “big government mandates and programs,” saying “we need to make government smaller.”
But she also said energy policies are being driven by special interests, decried skyrocketing health-care costs and “the highest imprisonment rate in the world (which is) even higher among racial minorities and the poor.”
