Election officials in Arizona’s most populous and politically important county announced Thursday that they would not complete counting ballots until early next week, adding to tensions in a state at the center of the false narrative that the 2020 election was stolen.
With control of the Senate hanging in the balance, the announcement came after a day of increasingly heated rhetoric from statewide Republican candidates, most prominently the nominee for governor, Kari Lake, suggesting without evidence that election officials in the county, Maricopa, were intentionally “slow-rolling” the results to delay what she predicts will be her victory.
Ms. Lake’s Democratic opponent, Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, had a small lead, but Maricopa has yet to count some 400,000 ballots, with tens of thousands outstanding in other counties, as well.