President Donald Trump gained ground on Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden in Arizona with the latest ballot count on Tuesday.
Maricopa County, Arizona’s most populous, submitted the ballots. Trump won 56 percent of the new ballots; Biden won nearly 42 percent.
According to the county, they have about 13,000 votes left to tally. County officials said they expect to be done counting this week.
Arizona has about 46,000 ballots outstanding, mostly in Maricopa and Pima counties.
The new margin between Biden and Trump is 0.39 percent. Arizona law allows recounts if the margin is within 0.1 percent or 200 votes, whichever is the smaller number.
Arizona delivers the winner 11 electoral votes.
“When a machine detects an overvote on a ballot, poll workers should inform in-person voters of the error and give them an opportunity to correct the issue. Instead, poll workers in Maricopa County pressed, and told voters to press, a green button to override the error,” the campaign said in a statement. “As a result, the machines disregarded the voter’s choices in the overvoted races.”
Trump and his campaign have maintained confidence that the president will ultimately win Arizona.
Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, earlier Tuesday responded to a request from state Senate President Karen Fann, a Republican, for an independent analysis of the voting machines used by the state.
Fann said she wasn’t sure whether fraud occurred but a probe would help provide answers.
Hobbs wrote that Fann suggesting extraordinary actions was promoting conspiracy theories.
“It is patently unreasonable to suggest that, despite there being zero credible evidence of any impropriety or widespread irregularities, election officials nonetheless have a responsibility to prove a negative,’’ Hobbs said.
“To be clear, there is no ‘current controversy’ regarding elections in Arizona, outside of theories floated by those seeking to undermine our democratic process for political gain. Elected officials should work to build, rather than damage, public confidence in our system.’’
Fann told Capitol Media Services in response that voters have a lot of questions.
“And for the integrity of our democracy, why wouldn’t we want to get to the bottom of these questions?” she said.
