Katie Hobbs, Arizona’s secretary of state, said Wednesday she would caution campaigns against “celebrating victories” at the moment, saying there are many ballots remaining to be counted in the critical state.
She said her job isn’t to call races and that she would leave that to the prognosticators.
“But there are still hundreds of thousands of ballots left to count in Arizona, primarily in Maricopa County, and so I think that I would advise caution in terms of celebrating victories right now,” Ms. Hobbs said on KTAR radio.
She said Maricopa — Arizona’s most populous county — still had approximately 250,000 ballots left to be counted.
“Those are late early ballots that were dropped off yesterday or received Monday and they will start counting those today,” she said.
Ms. Hobbs said other, smaller counties might be reporting updates throughout the day but that the Maricopa count likely wouldn’t come in before the end of the day.President Trump’s campaign has strongly disputed calls from Fox News and the Associated Press that Joseph R. Biden has won Arizona.
The latest data shows Mr. Biden holding about a 51% to 48% lead, or about 93,500 votes, over Mr. Trump in the state, with a projected 86% of the votes reported.
Mr. Trump’s team contends that there’s plenty of time to make up ground as more ballots from Election Day voters get tabulated.
According to the secretary of state’s website, Mr. Biden is leading Mr. Trump by a 52% to 46% margin, or about 99,000 votes, among the more than 1.6 million votes cast so far in Maricopa County.
Mr. Trump carried Maricopa in 2016 by a 46.5% to 43.7% margin, or about 44,000 votes, over Hillary Clinton out of more than 1.6 million votes cast.
• David Sherfinski can be reached at dsherfinski@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.