Dem
51
GOP
49
When the dust had settled, and all the returns were in from November's elections, Kris Mayes (D) had been chosen state AG-elect over Abraham Hamadeh (R) by the very narrow margin of 511 votes. That was close enough to trigger an automatic recount, and yesterday the results of the recount were announced. Mayes is still your winner, this time by a margin of 280 votes.
As a member of the Trumpy wing of the Republican Party, Hamadeh might still try to resist this result, but he really doesn't have anywhere to go with his complaints. His challenge of the results was already rejected by a judge, and yesterday's announcement only came after a second judge took a long look and said there was no reason left to keep the results under lock and key. In other words, the would-be AG has lost in two ballot counts and two court rulings. And if he keeps fighting, Hamadeh might find himself stuck with a five-figure or six-figure tab for his trouble, as has already happened with would-be governor Kari Lake (R), who not only had to pay her lawyers, but also those of Gov.-elect Katie Hobbs (D). The decision to tilt at windmills is not as easy to make when it's your dime (or your $100,000) that's on the line).
This story also serves as a useful illustration of something we have written many times, namely that recounts rarely shift all that many votes, excepting some externality like the wonky butterfly ballot in West Palm Beach, FL, in 2000. In this case, Hamadeh picked up a total of 231 votes out of 2,509,338 cast—in other words, a change of about .009%. And his entire gain (plus some) can be attributed to a single, malfunctioning tabulation machine in Pinal County, where under-trained poll workers misunderstood the error messages they were receiving. Once Pinal re-ran its ballots, Hamadeh picked up 392 votes as compared to 115 for Mayes, a net gain of 277 for the Republican. In nearly every other county, the net change in vote totals was in the single digits.
Anyhow, the 2022 election isn't quite in the rear-view mirror yet—there's the mess in the Pennsylvania state house to be resolved, for example—but it's getting close. (Z)