Arizona Secretary of State Ken Bennett tells media more than 524,000 early and provisional ballots statewide have yet to be processed and counted. That’s down 107,000 from Thursday.
Reports Friday said Arizona’s uncounted votes accounted for 15% of the total uncounted nationwide.
Bennett says the total includes nearly 353,000 early ballots.
Maricopa County Recorder Helen Purcell says approximately 120,000 provisional ballots and about 220,000 early ballots still remain to be processed for counting.
Voting- and immigrant-rights advocates, have called on the Justice Department to investigate, raising accusations of disenfranchisement, saying the same Latino voters they worked so diligently to register might have been disproportionately affected.
Based on accounts they have been collecting since before the polls closed, among the 115,000 voters who cast provisional ballots in Maricopa County on Tuesday were many first-time minority voters who signed up to get their ballots by mail, but never did, The New York Times reported.
Three Congressional races remained too close to call on Friday, and there were also some misgivings about the outcome of several other races. One of them was the United States Senate race, where, as of Friday, Jeff Flake, a Republican congressman, was ahead of his Democratic challenger, Richard H. Carmona, by 78,775 votes, according to unofficial results posted by the secretary of state.
Carmona conceded on Tuesday; on Friday, in a message to supporters, he wrote, “We will take every necessary step to make sure all of our supporters’ ballots are counted.”
Also: Experts say Arizona’s Latino voters are now a force to be reckoned with/Cronkite News
Supreme Court to consider striking part of Voting Rights Act
