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McSally vs. Sinema vs. Election Officials (Updated)
Kyrsten Sinema has taken a slim lead over Martha McSally in the razor-thin Arizona vote for a new US Senator.
Arizona, like Florida, is commonly subject to close votes and slow counting. The vast majority of Election Day votes were recorded by the wee hours of Wednesday morning. From 1.1% reporting to 99% reporting, Republican candidate McSally led Democrat Sinema by about one percent. (Much in line with my prediction earlier Tuesday.)
The counters spent Wednesday sorting and classifying the early mail-in votes, of which there were an estimated 650,000, and began counting those ballots on Thursday. At 5 pm local time (7 pm ET), the first chunk of those numbers came in.
On Wednesday morning, McSally led Sinema 49.36% to 48.39% — a 0.97% advantage with 1,740,329 votes counted.
With the early voting returns starting to trickle in Thursday afternoon, Sinema leads McSally 48.91% to 48.80% — a 0.11% advantage with 1,869,265 votes counted. This is approximately 129,000 new votes. In numbers, Sinema now leads by 2,106 votes.
Understandably, partisans on both sides worry about shenanigans from their opponents. The GOP already sued the state’s county recorders for not following a uniform standard for counting mail-in ballots. The judge rejected it, but Democrats claimed this was an attempt at voter suppression. Despite losing the case, it’s good to see that the Republicans are already lawyered up to make sure the vote isn’t stolen.
The vast majority of mail-in ballots come from Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix. More than half of Arizona’s residents live in this county, so about 345,000 more votes are expected from there. On Election Day, Sinema led slightly in Maricopa. Arizona’s Secretary of State is in charge of elections and she is a Republican. The Maricopa County Recorder is a Democrat.
With perhaps as many as half a million votes yet to be counted, we’ll need to wait a few days to determine the winner. And then, the recount. And the legal battles. And the court cases.
Update (8 pm ET): About 29,000 more votes have been added in the past hour from the heavily Democratic Pima County and Sinema’s lead has grown. She now leads McSally by 8,859 votes, or 0.47%. Remember that there are still approximately 470,000 votes to be counted.
Things we don't know: Was this the "late earlies" from over the weekend. If so they were expected to be good for Sinema (many Ds turned out then). If so, there's a round of votes that were dropped on election day, which was heavily R. So future rounds may toggle back to McSally
— Nick Riccardi (@NickRiccardi) November 9, 2018
Update (8:30 pm ET): As more votes roll in, Sinema’s lead has held. She now leads McSally 49.10% to 48.59%. This is a difference of 0.49%, or 9,610 votes. About 435,000 votes to be counted.
THIS SHOULD BE GOOD NEWS … for @MarthaMcSally on Friday. She leads @kyrstensinema 56-44 in Pinal County, rural/suburban county south of Phoenix. #AZSEN pic.twitter.com/h9sCkBPTlN
— BrahmResnik (@brahmresnik) November 9, 2018
This is part of bucket A released tonight: Early ballots returned Fri-Mon –> Sinema secured 57.4% of these 129,747 ballots. There are still 167,357 ballots like these to be announced. The next bucket is 195,296 ballots that will favor McSally — Earlies delivered day of election pic.twitter.com/WT1xFztK7P
— Vaughn Hillyard (@VaughnHillyard) November 9, 2018
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Published in General
@valiuth, please desist with the “hurt feelings” unargument. It adds no value to the conversation, and doesn’t help move things along.
Some reflection and a bit of research (start with comment #28) will show you that “election rigging” has a long and venerable history in the United States, and that suggesting there’s some going on right now may be partly a “heat of the moment” response, but that it’s not an unreasonable thing to suggest. Please focus more on facts and issues, and less on your own reflexive response. Thanks.
The law of averages? Looks like once again 100% of close elections will go to the Dem. Believe what you want to believe and open the borders to all. Perhaps another Irving Berlin will be discovered in the next wave of illegals which would in and of itself obviously justify an open border policy along side our generous welfare system for all.
All is not lost. We have substantial voting by mail. There are three groups of votes to be counted sequentially.
First to be counted are the early ballots that came in before election day. The Democrats are winning those.
Second to be counted are ballots that were dropped at their polling place on election day. I am part of that group, while I dropped off my ballot at the County Recorder’s Office. Republicans historically win this group.
Third to be counted are votes that come in the mail, provided that they are post-marked before election day. These are primarily members of the Armed Forces. There aren’t a lot of votes here, but Republicans historically win this group.
With each of these ballots, the County Recorder checks the signature on the outside of the ballot to confirm that it is the same as the signature of the voter that is on file. (I believe that there is also a check that the voter did not vote on election day!)
It is a slow and tedious process. If I had it all my way, everybody would vote in the polls on election day, but Arizona’s have embraced voting by mail.
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John Kyl agreed to serve in the Senate for only a temporary period, primarily to vote for Kavanaugh. If he resigns, he must be replaced by a Republican. If Martha McSally loses a close election, I hope that Kyl resigns, and McSally is named to his seat.
I predict that whoever loses this very close election will be running in the 2020 Senate election!
They have a lot of experience with handling votes, I’ll have you know.
Yes, but wallowing in their cheating rhetoric does? It is no more unreasonable to suggest that accusations of cheating are soreloserism than that they are real. Especially when the arguments always seem couched in “oh isn’t it convenient” formats, and “we all know” declarations. But Ricochet’s standards about conspiracy mongering never apply to the well loved Republican conspiracies.
So here let me put this forward as a rebutal. Democrats have to manufacture new votes to offset electoral fraud perpetrated by Republican state governments in the form of targeted disenfranchisement of Democratic voters. Because we all know that Republicans structure election laws and in states they control to systematically inconvenience and suppress Democratic constituencies. Furthermore isn’t it convenient that Republican election officials like to close down polling places in Democratic leaning districts? Hm… What about that naked cheating! How many races have Republicans narrowly stolen that way? But Democratic soreloserism is casually dismissed on Ricochet as just that, sadly we don’t have the introspection to notice our own form of it.
Al Franken 2008 down by thousands in Senate race when polls closed. Hennepin County’s 3-card monte batch recounts added at least 135 votes twice; felons and fictitious also rallied and Al wins by 300…
2004 Washington Governor race Gregoire comes from behind after polls close and beats Rossi on the third recount Dems gaining each time until she wins by 127; in King County entire boxes of votes “found” late….
2000 Al Gore gains each time a Democratic County recounts but oddly GOP votes never grow in the recount….Gore wins Wisconsin by 5,000. Over 3,000 known illegally registered voters from investigation by Milwaukee police post-election.
1994 Maryland, Parris Glendening wins Governorship by only 6,500. Within 2 weeks GOP proves 2,500 were dead people in Baltimore. (Democratic appointed) appeals court refuses more time to examine the extent of widespread cheating (GOP Governor Ehrlich later has state buy SocSec deceased index to run against voter rolls to exclude the dead) . …
2016 Hillary Clinton demands a recount in Michigan. Court refuses because the margin was too great. Irony was that Hillary would have lost ground in the recount because one-third of all Detroit precincts were ineligible to be part of the recount because they reported more votes than voters who actually showed up or mailed in…
In 2008, 2012 and pretty much all the time, multiple Philadelphia precincts have 100% or greater than 100% turnout. Obama drew 100% of the vote in several precincts with perfect attendance. Nobody sick, in jail, dead…
2002, Johnson defeats Thune for SD Senate by 500 votes. Suspicious late increase in registration and turnout from Native American reservations, some voters in those precincts actually observed brazenly giving more than one name before being given a ballot for a name on the list. GOP later claims over 2,000 suspect votes cast.
(And we have not yet got to New Orleans, Atlanta…)
Claiming that Democrats don’t cheat routinely and even more aggressively in recount battles is simply stupid. It is the norm, not the exception. A GOP candidate must always win by greater than the margin of fraud. Can you find evidence of civic-minded integrity on the part of Democrats in any close race? Prove that.
Government Is How We Steal From Each Other™
Whacked socialists are popular. They are everywhere. The Minnesota Democrats are hellbent on single-payer again. They have a serious and detailed plan.
That damn ACA was the Cloward and Piven strategy from hell.
People want and need government largess more than ever.
Sinema makes me ill. Gillum is a worse version of Obama. Cocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar are hackneyed idiots.
OldB,
Val is sure that when in heavily Democratic districts voting machines and/or ballots are misplaced for days and then found again always with a huge % of Democratic votes (sometimes more than 100% of the registered voters) it is just a whoops. No matter how many times it happens and in just exactly the same way one must not jump to conclusions.
https://youtu.be/ruAd5yTArms
Regards,
Jim
Al Franken’s recount attorney was Marc Elias. Elias was the bagman for the DNC to get money to Fusion GPS under attorney-client privilege. Now he’s in Florida.
What I am convinced by is that in all cases of these hotly contested close call recounts ample litigation is filed and pursued. If impropriety is demonstrated judges ruling on the matter can and do order ballots to be not counted or included as deemed appropriate. Did Coleman in 2009 manage to prove any of these allegations of fraud by Democrats in a court of law? There was certainly plenty of litigation on the matter at all levels of State Government. But I guess a judge ruling against you is also part of the fraud too. Like how the Supreme Court handed George Bush the presidency?
As is the habit of all partisans things are only fair when they go your way.
Coleman was out-lawyered. The Democrats applied far more resources and were more cutthroat, is my understanding. Coleman should have gotten James Baker involved or something.
Trump Tweets … Signatures don’t match in Arizona
It would have been a civil rights violation to point out that Keith Ellison urged every imam in the Somali Muslim community to get out the vote, so issues such as illegals voting were not pursued. I would wager any amount of money that Franken received more than 136 illegal votes. I am old enough to remember when Loretta Sanchez beat B1 Bob Dornan in Orange County by 400 votes, Dornan proved within 8 hours that there were thousands of illegal ballots. The California Republican Party shut it down because they didn’t want to seem anti-Hispanic,.
See the ongoing malfeasance in Florida.
Those wacky democrats, soooooo forgetful.
Once you (a) mix contested/provisional/fake ballots into the mix (e.g., Broward 2018); (b) sever the ballots from authenticting lists/logs or destroy logs (e.g., Maricopa 2018) then you can successfully hold legitimate ballots hostage so a judge won’t dare toss the whole lot and also has no way to order a correction or cleansing of the total because the means of doing so have been destroyed.
It is Election Fraud 101, @valiuth. If you think there is a legit process in play, I have bridge to sell you.
GOP lawyers arrived to help Coleman too late— the shuffle and mix was already done so the recount was farce. The staging of the review was deliberately chaotic. Both sides admitted that half of Franken’s winning margin was composed of twice-counted votes. By that time any opportunity for a court to arrive at an honest total was lost.
It can even more blatant: Philadelphia precincts sometime physically expel GOP poll watchers knowing that there will be a court order to let them back in but in the interval the turnout and the Democratic vote can reach the desired 100%.
It also helps that the courts in Democratic states are typically majority- or entirely politically connected Democrats. When an election is stealable, Democrats of integrity are scarce.
My brother practiced law in New Orleans back in the Edwards era. I asked him why he never reported the egregious vote frauds he witnessed directly. He explained that when the entire government is elected by corrupt means and everybody already knows it, who you gonna call?
Dismissing ng these concerns as sour grapes about outcomes in a legit system is utterly asinine. The system is broken and corrupt Democrats and their enablers bear the blame.
If we slip too deep into Banana Republicanism then nobody trusts anybody and it all becomes about tribalism, who you know, rule of man, and the slave class no longer has any chance whatsoever.
The good news is that if things get too far gone then at some point we become merely another failed experiment and caravans of future Americans will have to build then destroy another country.
All of this stuff is facilitated by bad Fed policy. Since 1996, minimum. If we had natural interest rates there wouldn’t be so much corrupt government to seize by any means necessary.
I agree with Valiuth. Why cry about it or even fight about it? We all know how it is going to end. We should just toss in the towel and move on.
Bugger that. To hell with RINO surrender monkeyism.
This is my experience. At work the other day a few of us discussed voter fraud we were part of over the years. It was funny watching the straight Democrats who believe that there is no such thing as voter fraud against the reality of known sources. It took the a few minutes to erase the exchange as nut wing conspiracy. The thing all my life I have been a Democrat. Some of that time active in the party and trusted or at least overlooked. I never did any of the real nasty stuff but I did know about it and even seen it. But who you going to tell and why tell it? Nobody is gonna stop it and all telling would do is cause you trouble. Best to just keep your head down and go along.
FJ/JG,
Well gosh, I didn’t want to upset you or anything. I wouldn’t expect you to feel guilty and actually do something rash like changing your registration to the other party. I will tell you this that a long time ago in Pittsburgh “the numbers” were big. When I got a look at Brenda Snipes she looked just like what they used to call a “numbers Queen”.
FJ/JG, I used to be a Democrat. There’s a reason, in fact more than one, that I changed my registration. I guess I could sum it up that I just couldn’t stand the smell anymore. You must have a stronger stomach than mine.
Regards,
Jim
Count every vote!
Count good votes at least twice!
Something smells worse than rotten in Arizona; and worse, it seems from my perspective as if McSally rolled over and gave up. Have the Progs gotten to her or something?
Not a peep out of McSally – no? I confess to be a bit shocked that there is not more (visible) fight in her.
Indeed. If counting votes once is good, counting them twice must be better, no?
And did changing your registration help you any? Where I come from being a non Democrat gets you less street service, trash collection, police may not show up when you call or be slow. You lose business, opportunities, permits, etc. your property tax is higher, your zoning gets changed. In a Democrat ran world you play the game the Democrat way or you play not at all. If you really annoy them you may go to jail. I see no ROI in annoying them.
FJ/JG,
Well their pardner, I’ll be glad to tell you that in 38 years of being a Republican I have never profited by it in the way you are implying. Frankly, if I died tomorrow I wouldn’t regret it for one minute. I feel sorry for somebody who by choice would live his whole life under that kind of corrupt tyranny. If it really is that bad where you live then just move.
Suit yourself.
Regards,
Jim