A judge in Arizona’s Pima County Superior Court denied a push by Republican congressional candidate Martha McSally’s campaign to stop the ballot counting in Democratic-leaning precincts of Pima County, according to Tucson Weekly.
McSally is in a tight race against Rep. Ron Barber (D-AZ). Her campaign had moved to stop the counting of provisional ballots through a temporary restraining order in Pima County Superior Court. But on Monday Superior Court Judge James Marner found that there would be no “irreparable harm” in allowing election officials to keep counting the provisional ballots.
McSally’s team wanted provisional ballots that were missing an election official’s signature to not be counted right away and asked for those ballots counted at a later time, according to the Arizona Daily Star.
McSally currently leads Barber by a tiny 341 votes in the race for Arizona’s 2nd Congressional District.
Officials estimate that there are 9,300 provisional ballots that have not yet been counted in the race, according to Tucson Weekly. But it’s not clear how many of those ballots are in the 2nd Congressional District.
As TPM has previously noted, Pima County is 35 percent Hispanic and five of the Pima County precincts in question went for President Barack Obama over Mitt Romney in 2012.
Correction: This post previously said it was unclear how many provisional ballots are from Pima County. It’s actually unclear how many are from the 2nd Congressional District, which encompasses part of Pima County.
Cue the whining. Time to call the whaaaaambulance.
And yet Republicans love to say that if there is a question about a voter’s status, they can use a provisional ballot. Sorry, not buying that one. The GOP loves to go to court and have provisional ballots thrown out.
Hey Judge, I’m ahead right now. The rest of those votes don’t matter. Gotta stop counting before I lose this race!
Well, she knows she’ll lose that race if all ballots are counted.
Question: why are some provisional ballots missing an election official’s signature in the first place, and how large a percentage of the 9300 uncounted provisional ballots are unsigned?