By Ronald J. Hansen || Arizona Republic
If Democrat Kris Mayes holds on to her narrow lead in Arizona’s attorney general race, the votes that put her decisively ahead of Republican Abe Hamadeh likely were secured after Election Day.
Mission for Arizona, an organization jointly operated by the campaign for Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., and the Arizona Democratic Party, used the week after the election to “cure” an estimated 3,400 ballots they viewed as favorable for their party that had signature-mismatch issues.
Arizona Republicans worked aggressively to similarly cure thousands of ballots in the same span, but those efforts still left Hamadeh 511 votes short in the certified results now being recounted.
It means Mayes’ current winning total, aided by a relatively high Republican crossover rate generally and a boost in Democratic-friendly cured ballots at the finish, may have put her over the top.
That race appears to be Arizona’s closest statewide race by vote differential in at least 50 years. It is one of three currently subject to an ongoing automatic recount but is the only one possibly impacted by the parties’ post-Election Day maneuvers.
There were more than 14,000 ballots with signature-mismatch problems statewide. The effort by hundreds of volunteers in both parties in Arizona to get many of those ballots counted is a reminder of the sprawling duties that now go into winning races in one of America’s most competitive swing states.
