Just to make the final update to a series of Corner posts, the state of Arizona has no more ballots left to count, provisional or otherwise. Democratic gubernatorial nominee Katie Hobbs won by 17,116 more votes than Republican Kari Lake.
A margin of 17,000+ votes comes out to seven tenths of a percentage point. If all of those voters formed their own town, they would be the 45th-largest town in the state of Arizona. For perspective, that margin is a larger number of votes than the margin of victory in 37 U.S. House races in 2020.
Governor-elect Hobbs has already met with outgoing GOP governor Doug Ducey about the transition, and Ducey congratulated Hobbs on her victory.
Meanwhile, Lake’s War Room Twitter feed is retweeting Steve Bannon video clips and contending that “Hobbs presided over an illegitimate election & crowned herself as winner.”
One county is apparently withholding its certification of its own results, objecting to the election results.
The Republican majority on the Cochise County Board of Supervisors pushed back certification until Friday, citing concerns about voting machines. Because Monday was the deadline for all 15 Arizona counties to certify their results, Cochise’s action could put at risk the votes of some 47,000 county residents and could inject chaos into the election if those votes go uncounted.
According to Cochise County’s own publicly posted final results, Lake won the county with 27,481 votes, to Hobbs’s 19,137 votes.
It is conceivable, although unlikely, that the county simply would not submit any certified results for the elections which would have the opposite effect that the Republican board members desire:
An initial deadline of December 5 had been set for statewide certification. In the lawsuit, Hobbs’ lawyers said state law does allow for a slight delay if her office has not received a county’s results, but not past December 8 – or 30 days after the election.
“Absent this Court’s intervention, the Secretary will have no choice but to complete statewide canvass by December 8 without Cochise County’s votes included,” her lawyers added.
If votes from this Republican stronghold somehow went uncounted, it could flip two races to Democrats: the contest for state superintendent and a congressional race in which Republican Juan Ciscomani already has been projected as the winner by CNN and other outlets.
You hear a lot of nonsensical claims and accusations about disenfranchisement, but in this case, these two county board of supervisors members would effectively disenfranchise every voter in their county.