On Election Day, the most populous county in Arizona faced multiple issues at the polls, causing a delay in the state’s election results. Initially, the results were expected to be solidified on Friday. Now, Maricopa County has announced that its election count likely won’t be completed until after the weekend.

On Thursday, Ali Bradley, a News Nation network correspondent reported that a spokesperson for Maricopa County elections told her “the majority of ballots won’t be done being counted until after the weekend.”

As Election Day began in Maricopa County, it was quickly reported that about 20% of the county’s electronic vote tabulation machines were malfunctioning. This affected about 70 machines, and, 8 hours into voting, only 17 had been fixed and were operational.

If this didn’t delay the voting process enough, this was not the only problem faced by the county on Election Day. Dozens of polling stations also ran out of paper ballots, impacting tens of thousands of votes.

Despite the multiple problems at the polls, a Maricopa County judge ruled that the polls still had to close at their initially-set time of 7 pm.

Affected by this delay is the tight gubernatorial race between Republican candidate Kari Lake, and Democrat Katie Hobbs. Another race being closely monitored is the race for Senate between Mark Kelly (D) and Blake Masters (R).

Trump-backed candidate Lake is just barely trailing behind her opponent Hobbs, who has 50.7% of the vote. The race for AZ Senate is less of a tight race, with Masters having 46.1% of the vote so far, while Kelly has secured 51.7%.

Lake has been very vocal about her disapproval of the way elections are panning out in Arizona this year. Appearing on Fox News with host Tucker Carlson, Lake announced that these voting issues would be at the top of her agenda if she wins the election.

“I’m getting my lawmakers, I’m getting the legislators, to a special session to change our elections so that they are fair, honest, and transparent, and we’ll get rid of those machines that are not reliable,” said Lake.

“We’re going to go back to small precincts where it’s easier to detect problems and easier to fix them,” she added. “We won’t do another election like this.”

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