On Thursday, a judge will announce the winners of the Arizona attorney general’s race and two other tight elections that required mandated recounts.
The highly awaited results are among the last in the country to emerge out of the November election, and they might solidify another Democratic triumph in a state that was formerly reliably Republican.
In one of the closest elections in state history, Democrat Kris Mayes led Republican Abraham Hamadeh in the attorney general contest by 511 votes out of 2.5 million when the recount began.
In the Phoenix suburbs, Judge Timothy Thomason will also deliver recount results for the state superintendent of public instruction and a state legislative seat.
Hamadeh, who has not conceded to Mayes, filed a second challenge to the election results in his race last week, but the judge dismissed it.
Hamadeh argued that faults with ballot printers in Maricopa County led to a series of problems that disenfranchised voters and that his race was harmed by improper processing of votes that were duplicated or judged by humans because they could not be read by tabulators. In dismissing the lawsuit, the judge decided that Hamadeh did not prove the alleged mistakes in vote counting.
Before the start of the recount, Republican Tom Horne enjoyed a roughly 9,000-vote advantage over Democrat Kathy Hoffman in the contest for superintendent of public instruction. Hoffman had previously yielded to Horne, a former schools superintendent who served as attorney general for one term prior to losing the 2014 primary.
Horne had blasted Hoffman for adopting progressive teaching and vowed to eliminate any trace of “critical race theory,” which is not taught in state schools but is a contentious subject for social conservatives. At Hoffman’s suggestion, he stated that schools were closed for much too long during the outbreak.
Liz Harris entered the recount with a 270-vote lead against Julie Willoughby in the state House District 13 contest, which covers portions of Chandler, Sun Lakes, and Gilbert. Rep. Jennifer Pawlik, a Democratic incumbent, won one of the two state House seats in the district by a margin of victory that above the threshold for a recount.
Despite the fact that Republican Kari Lake’s lawsuit challenging her loss to Democrat Katie Hobbs in the Arizona governor’s election was unsuccessful, the outcome was not close enough to automatically need a recount.
In Arizona, recounts are required when the margin between the top candidates is less than 0.5%. Hobbs defeated Lake by a margin of 0.067 percent.
The court who dismissed Lake’s case rejected her contention that the malfunctioning ballot printers at several polling stations on Election Day were the product of deliberate misconduct.
Lake, who has not conceded, has filed an appeal with the Arizona Supreme Court about the dismissal of her claim. On Monday, Hobbs assumes office as governor.
Once a Republican bastion, Arizona’s top elections were won by Democrats with overwhelming majorities. Republicans chose a slate of candidates endorsed by former President Donald Trump who emphasized defending his false statements regarding the 2020 election. In addition to Hobbs and Mayes, Democratic Senator Mark Kelly and Democratic Secretary of State Adrian Fontes were reelected.
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