Lawyers for Arizona Republican congressional candidate Martha McSally’s campaign are moving to throw out provisional ballots of voters in Pima County, which has a large Latino population.
McSally is the Republican running against incumbent Rep. Ron Barber (D-AZ) in Arizona’s 2nd Congressional District, one of the tightest races that still hasn’t been called. Right now, McSally is leading Barber by a slim margin of 341 votes according to the Arizona Daily Star. But about 9,000 provisional ballots have not been counted yet, according to Tucson Weekly.
McSally’s lawyers suggested that they could go to court in an effort to stop some of the provisional ballots from being processed. McSally’s campaign, in particular, is focused on six precincts in Pima County, five of them happen to be in the 2nd Congressional District, according to the Tucson Sentinel. Notably, Pima County is 35 percent Hispanic or Latino, according to the United States Census Bureau. Five of those Pima County precincts went for President Barack Obama over Mitt Romney in the last presidential election.
It’s actually something of a repeat move for McSally. Back in 2012 she filed a motion to stop the election director in Cochise County — also a county with a lot of Latino voters — from counting a number of provisional ballots.
Eric H. Spencer, an attorney for McSally, emailed F. Ann Rodriguez, the county recorder, on Sunday demanding that provisional ballot forms that did not have a signature from a poll worker as well as a voter be discounted.
In response, Rodriguez and Pima County registrar of voters Chris Roads said they would just keep processing the ballots.
As Tucson Weekly notes though, it’s not clear how many of the yet to be counted votes are in Pima County.
“Martha McSally will do anything to stop Southern Arizonans from making their voice hears at the ballot box,” Barber spokeswoman Ashley Nash-Hahn told Tucson Weekly. “We’ve seen her tricks before when she tried to throw out votes in Cochise County, and we aren’t surprised to see her desperate moves to silence the voters of Southern Arizona.”
Hey Got Obsessive Paranoia, if you don’t trust hispanic voters, why should they trust you? just sayin’
The GOP likes to talk about reaching out to Latino voters but when it comes down to it they would rather deny the vote to anyone who does not vote Republican.
Teatroll Outreach! Reaching out to snatch your ballot right from your fingers!
TPM reporter Dan Strauss has decided McSally is a “GOPer”. To me that reads Tea Party Tin Hat Brigade. BUT McSally is anything but a fringe candidate. She is not as crazy as many in her party are and it would be unfair to paint her that way. How do I know this? Well, for one I live in Tucson and in the 2nd Congressional District which she wants to represent. Second this is, compared to many many other places in Arizona, a reasonably democratic place. Registered democrats are in a slight majority. A fringe candidate or right winger would not make it here. Historically we have elected people who are centrists. Mo Udall (D), Jim Kolbe ®, Gabby Giffords (D), and Ron Barber (D) have represented my part of Tucson over the last 45+ years that I have lived here. These people have all been moderates. Third, there’s not a lot of difference politically between Ron Barber (incumbent) and Martha McSally. In the last election it was also extremely close. I voted for Ron Barber and I worked hard to get Arizona to go for democrats.
At the moment McSally leads by 341 votes and there are 9000 provisional ballots left to count. It could go either way.
Tucson is about 35%-40% Hispanic. A lot of those folks live in Raul Grijalva’s Congressional district (different from mine) and he won his election by a majority of 65%. There is a slim majority of registered democrats in AZ 2d Dist. where I live. The swing for the election always comes from independents who tend, locally, to make up their minds in the voting booth. There are Tea Party types here but it’s not like it is up in Phoenix. We don’t have near the number of wackos they do. Tucson and Phoenix are politically and culturally very different, thank God.