Four Arizona Republican parties are suing to stop the state’s board of elections from counting votes from Tuesday’s Senate race. Cindy McCain, the widow of Republican Sen. John McCain, is not happy about it.
@AZGOP I am one of those mail in ballots. I was under the impression my vote was always counted.
— Cindy McCain (@cindymccain) November 8, 2018
The four local parties filed suit on Wednesday against Maricopa and Pima counties, the state’s two largest counties. Both allow voters to fix or “cure” their ballots in the event that signature on their sealed ballot doesn’t match the signature on their voter registration.
In these two counties, voters can fix their ballots up to five days after Election Day. In other Arizona counties, however, the laws are different—voters are only allowed to “cure” their ballots until the polls close.
Those are also the two counties that have pushed Kyrsten Sinema, the Democratic Senate candidate, over the GOP’s challenger, Martha McSally.
A judge agreed on Friday to hear the suit, which asks that the state either stop the tally in Maricopa and Pima counties or allow the Arizona counties that have stopped curing absentee ballots to resume doing so.
Seventy-five percent of Arizona voters cast absentee ballots; Cindy McCain is, apparently, one of them. As of Thursday night, there were about 375,000 uncounted absentee ballots in Maricopa County alone, according to NBC.
The lawsuit claims that election-related calls, like calls to voters to inform them that their mail-in ballots should be fixed, should only be made before the election. However, there was no indication that the Arizona GOP had a problem with the Maricopa and Pima county laws before the Senate race became so close.
There’s no indication that Cindy McCain’s ballot is one that would need to be fixed. Arizona has still not declared a winner in the Senate race; it could be several more days before a winner is clear.
