Arizona election results not expected until next week as trailing Kari Lake ‘100% confident’ in governor win

Democratic Secretary of State Katie Hobbs has a slight lead against Republican former news anchor Kari Lake in Arizona’s race for governor on Thursday, as officials in Maricopa County addressed issues with counting ballots.

Arizona has tabulated about 1.9m votes, but 619,012 ballots remain uncounted. In addition, 339,191 need to be processed, while 16,740 provisional ballots remain to be processed. And 315,415 remain ready for tabulation.

Ms Lake is one of the most outspoken promoters of former president Donald Trump’s lie that the 2020 presidential election was stolen. She has called for Arizona and Wisconsin’s election results to be decertified.

Ms Lake sounded a confident note on Thursday, saying “put a fork” in the race.

“We’re going to win this, and there’s not a darn thing they can do about it,” Ms Lake said on Charlie Kirk’s podcast. “But they’re trying to pour cold water on this movement. This movement is on fire and no amount of water is going to put that fire out. We the people are taking our government back. And I want my supporters to know: Don’t lose faith, let what’s happening here in Maricopa County and Arizona elections only make you want to win and work harder to save our republic. Because it’s going to take each and every one of us pressuring lawmakers to do the right thing and bring about meaningful reform to our elections, in order to save our republic for our children.”

Meanwhile, Ms Hobbs had a more measured approach.

“Hang tight Arizona — and let’s let our local election officials do their jobs, without fear or interference,” she tweeted on Wednesday night

On Wednesday evening, the elections office for Maricopa County, the largest county in the state, addressed what happened when polling places ran out of paper ballots, Fox News reported.

Chairman Bill Gates and Vice Chairman Clint Hickman said that the matter would be investigated.

“All ballots will be counted securely and accurately,” they said in a joint statement. “Over the past 24 hours, we have learned more about the printer issue that caused some ballots to not be read at Vote Centers yesterday. While the issue impacted less than 7 per cent of Election Day voters (about 17,000 ballots), we understand that for people who went through it, this was frustrating, inconvenient, and not how they pictured Election Day.”

Mr Gates was speaking told CNN on Thursday that the remaining votes in the county were unlikely to be counted until next week.

“I think that we’ll see the lion’s share wrap up by early next week.”

The chairmen also addressed the on-demand printing machines that were operated during the primaries.

“The printer settings for the Ballot-On-Demand printers at Vote Centers were the same ones we used in the August Primary. The paper was the same thickness. Prior to the General Election, the Elections Department test-printed and test-tabulated hundreds of ballots without issue,” they said.

Arizona is one of the closest-watched elections for governor in the country. Former president Donald Trump endorsed Ms Lake during the primary while outgoing Republican Governor Doug Ducey and former vice president Mike Pence supported her opponent.

In addition, Arizona is still tabulating results for the closely watched Senate race between Senator Mark Kelly and venture capitalist Blake Masters, which could help determine control of the Senate.