The last few days following the election saw a couple accusations of voter fraud in FL and AZ.  While the evidence seems stronger in FL, that has not stopped speculation about the senate race in AZ.

Where the race in AZ to fill the vacancy left by Jeff Flake currently stands, is Sinema with a lead around 32,000 votes.

There have been a few questionable things that occurred on election day, such as the foreclosure of a polling center in Chandler, AZ (part of a conservative area of the SE Phoenix area), and standing up emergency polling locations where no such emergency occurred.  The only thing that does look fishy was Maricopa County continued verifying signatures  on mail in/early ballots past election day, when other counties stopped.  This is an odd practice that typically doesn’t matter because most of the time statewide races are not this close.  These also represent the majority of ballots.  AZ allows vote by mail and the state even pays postage, making it easy to vote.  Upon a lawsuit filed by Republicans, all counties will continue to verify signatures until November 14.  Theoretically this helps McSally, as she has far greater support thus far in the rural parts of the state.  Maricopa County encompases Phoenix, and the surrounding area, with about half of the state’s population.

Another thing to mention is there are other statewide races that have seen some growth in the lead  or closing the gap or even taking the lead of a Republican candidate.  Nobody in the national media has paid any attention to these.

As far as the horse race goes, in the first link there is discussion of where the latest batch came from, and that is mostly from Pima county.  That county is Tucson and the surrounding area and tends to vote blue in federal and local elections.  The local business community often accuses the city government of hostility to business on a variety of issues— it is not Phoenix by a long shot.

McSally represented a district that included Tucson, and she won that district by under 200 votes in the last election, she is an unpopular candidate in that part of the state, which means the votes that came last couple days were votes she was not going to get anyway.  Sinema represents a district that encompasses part of Maricopa county, mainly S. Phoenix, Tempe and part of Mesa.  It stands to reason she was going to get votes from these areas.

The remainder are almost all from Maricopa county.  Phoenix itself may be blue but many surrounding cities are not.  Mesa, Gilbert, Scottsdale, Surprise, and Glendale in particular vote red.  Many believe these cities, coupled with the northern part of the state are why AZ has not turned into CO, but that’s a discussion for another day.

Bottom line, this race is still ridiculously close, and if it is going to change leads again, its going to have to happen soon.  If there is fraud, there needs to be more than accusations from partisan hacks.  We just spent the last month defending Brett Kavanaugh over accusations without evidence, we need to approach this the same way.  Where is the evidence?