PHOENIX β Gov. Doug Ducey said Wednesday that he has seen no evidence of βwidespread fraud or irregularityβ in the conduct of the Arizona election.
But he said he has no interest in using his voice to shut down those claims that are being spread by supporters of President Trump who continue to argue that the election was stolen by the Democrats.
Ducey did condemn Trump supporters who have been making threats against Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, picketed her house and yelled at her.
βThatβs unacceptable, completely unacceptable,β Ducey said. βAnd I denounce any threats of violence against anyone in elective office, or any Arizonan or American.β
And the governor said the Department of Public Safety has offered additional security for Hobbs and her staffers.
βBut thatβs different than a court challenge,β he said, pointing out that there is still litigation over the vote tallies. βWe are going to allow whatever legal challenges that come to be swiftly adjudicated inside the state of Arizona,β he said. βAnd I will respect the election.β
But that lone remaining case goes solely to the question of whether the decision of the method to decide which batches of ballots to set aside for a hand count in Maricopa County complies with state law.
At a hearing Wednesday, attorneys for the county argued that the legal challenge by the Arizona Republican Party comes too late. But the judge postponed a request by attorneys for the party to bar the supervisors from formally certifying the vote, something set now for Friday.
None of that, however, has kept Trump supporters from making even more charges and raising other questions.
That continued Wednesday as Kelli Ward, chair of the state Republican Party, demanded that even more ballots be pulled out for a hand count than required by law. And she resurrected charges from a now-dismissed lawsuit that thousands of people who cast their ballots at polling places were disenfranchised by being told to push βthe green buttonβ that would override mistakes they made in voting for more candidates for an office than allowed.
Ducey, for his part, said he will not use his voice, either as governor or the highest elected Republican in the state, to quell that talk even if it could undermine public confidence in the electoral process. Instead, he defended how voting occurs here.
βIβve said and Iβve bragged on Arizonaβs election process that weβre good at elections,β Ducey said.
The governor pointed out that Arizona was one of the earliest states to allow all residents to vote by mail, a process that Trump repeatedly criticized as leading to widespread fraud.
In fact, more than 88% of the votes in the presidential race were in early ballots.
But Ducey balked at making any comment about how this most recent election was conducted.
βYou want me to make a declaration before the legal process plays out,β Ducey said.
And the governor said itβs not for him to decide that the process was fair when his name was not on the ballot. That, he said, is up to the candidates.
βIn the Senate race, the sitting senator was satisfied with the vote count, saw no legal irregularity that needed to go to the court, and conceded,β Ducey said, referring to Martha McSally whom the governor appointed to the seat formerly held by John McCain. βI followed up with a congratulatory call to Senator-elect Mark Kelly.β
Photos: Election protests in Phoenix
Election protests in Phoenix
UpdatedElection protests in Phoenix
UpdatedElection protests in Phoenix
UpdatedElection protests in Phoenix
UpdatedElection protests in Phoenix
UpdatedElection protests in Phoenix
UpdatedElection protests in Phoenix
UpdatedElection protests in Phoenix
UpdatedElection protests in Phoenix
UpdatedElection protests in Phoenix
UpdatedElection protests in Phoenix
UpdatedElection protests in Phoenix
UpdatedTrump campaign files suit in Arizona as vote gap narrows
UpdatedPHOENIX β Arizona Republicans are still hoping to pull out a βwinβ for President Trump, even if it doesnβt end up mattering on the national level β and even if it takes going to court.
The Trump reelection committee and the state and national Republican parties filed suit Saturday contending that procedures used in Maricopa County resulted in some votersβ ballots not being tallied. They want a judge to bar the election results from being certified until certain disputed ballots are reviewed.
The lawsuit comes as the latest tallies Saturday added 32,478 new votes in Arizona for the president over Friday nightβs figures, compared to 23,835 for Democrat Joe Biden.
That put Trump within about 21,000 votes of taking the lead.
More to the point for Republicans, the daily spread gives the president about 57.7% of the votes between him and Biden. That is close to a rate that, if it continues, is enough to make up the difference by the time all the votes are counted, GOP officials contend.
But itβs going to be close.
There were only about 118,000 votes yet to be tallied.
If Trump continues at that 57.7% rate, he would get about 68,170 of those votes. That would bring his total to slightly more than 1.674 million.
Conversely, Biden getting 42.3% of whatβs left would add about 49,974 to his total and put him over 1.677 million β about a 2,000-vote edge.
And that doesnβt account for the fact that Libertarian Jo Jorgensen has been pulling in about 1.5% of all the votes cast in the state.
Arizona GOP spokesman Zach Henry said Saturday that, as far as the party is concerned, nothing has changed from Thursday or Friday when party Chair Kelli Ward argued there is a path to victory for the president. In fact, he said, the Saturday numbers only βreinforce it.β
But that didnβt stop the party from filing suit.
The litigation concerns what happens when automated equipment at polling locations rejects a ballot due to defects, stray marks or other problems.
Voters have an option to cast a new ballot. They also can deposit it into a separate drawer within the device, with the idea that people working at the counting center will review it and determine the voterβs intent.
But Republicansβ attorney Kory Langhofer said what has happened is that some voters, based on advice from poll workers, simply chose to have the problematic ballots submitted as is, meaning no further review.
What that means, he said, is that if a field on the ballot contains what the machinery considers a defect or irregularity, the voterβs intended selections will not be tabulated βeven if the voterβs intent could be discerned by a visual review of the ballot.β
Langhofer wants a judge to order a visual review of those ballots once they are identified.
There was no immediate response from Maricopa County Recorder Adrian Fontes.
Democrats declare Arizona for Biden
Democrats, for their part, were more than anxious to declare victory.
βArizona has delivered its 11 Electoral College votes to now President-elect Joe Biden,β said state Democratic Party Chair Felecia Rotellini in a prepared statement Saturday.
Election department employees process and verify ballots from the 2020 General Election at the Pima County Election Center in Tucson on Nov. 2…
βWe are a part of the broadest coalition ever assembled by a Democratic presidential nominee in Arizona,β she said. βWe built the kind of team we needed to succeed.β
A Biden win in Arizona would be a Democratβs first in a presidential race in 24 years.
Rotellini also celebrated that Arizona will have two Democratic U.S. senators, something that hasnβt occurred in more than half a century β when Harry Truman was president. Mark Kelly halted Martha McSallyβs bid to keep the Senate seat she got last year from Gov. Doug Ducey that used to belong to John McCain.
Kelly, however, gets just the last two years of McCainβs original term before he has to seek reelection in 2022.
The presidential and Senate races were in many ways linked in Arizona.
McSally banked on her loyalty to Trump to carry her over the top. But as it ended up, she got fewer votes in Arizona than the president.
Ducey defended his 2018 decision to name McSally to the vacant post on the heels of her having just lost that yearβs Senate election to Democrat Kyrsten Sinema.
βThe governor is very proud of his appointment,β Ducey press aide Patrick Ptak told Capitol Media Services. He called McSally βan exceptional public servant who has delivered again and again for her constituents.β
Mixed results in down-ticket races
Neither Democrats nor Republicans managed to flip any U.S. House seats in Arizona, with the five incumbent Democrats and four Republicans winning reelection.
Democrats had high hopes of unseating Rep. David Schweikert, who was fined $50,000 for multiple ethics violations.
His win was an example of how Arizona Democratsβ overall goals for the election were less successful down-ticket than at the top of the ballot.
Their hopes of taking control of the Arizona House β or even picking up a single seat to get a 30-30 tie with Republicans β quickly faded.
In the state Senate, meanwhile, one close race in north-central Phoenix and Paradise Valley remains to be decided. But even if Democrat Christine Marsh defeats incumbent Republican Kate Brophy McGee there, it would still leave Republicans with a 16-14 edge in the Senate.
Further down the ticket, Maricopa County Recorder Fontes, a Democrat, was running about 2,500 votes behind Republican challenger Stephen Richer.
Rotellini said she was not discouraged by the results. βI think we held our own,β she said Saturday.
βI will agree that we werenβt as successful as we thought we would be,β she said. βAnd that means we need to go back and recalibrate, study the data and see where we excelled and where we could have had opportunities but didnβt.β
Why Arizona might still matter for Trump
One reason that Republicans are continuing to fight in the Arizona presidential race is that the results here could become meaningful if there is litigation in Pennsylvania that wipes out the 20 electoral votes that apparently went to Biden on Saturday.
An order by Justice Samuel Alito required election officials in Pennsylvania to separate out the ballots that came in after Election Day.
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court had earlier ruled that any ballot postmarked by the deadline should be counted. But the Trump campaign contends the U.S. Constitution empowers only the state legislature to make such decisions.
Alito did not forbid the state from counting those late-arriving ballots. But it opens the door for them being removed from the totals should the full high court side with the Republicans.
Also still in play as of Saturday were the 16 electoral votes from Georgia, where Biden was last leading, and 15 in North Carolina, where Trump was ahead.
PHOENIX β With President Donald Trump's reelection hopes looking worse by the hour, pro-Trump demonstrators held rallies in critical battlegro…