Former President Donald Trump is alleging that “voter fraud” is to blame for Republican U.S. Senate candidate Blake Masters’s loss in Arizona to U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ), Fox News reports.
It was on Friday evening, three full days after election day, that decision desks began projecting Kelly as the winner.
At the time of this writing, only 83.06% of the votes have been reported. Kelly has received 1,128,917, or 51.78%, of the votes, while Masters has received 1,005,001, or 46.10%, of them.
This race, however, is already mired in controversy, and, just like in 2020, Maricopa County, Arizona, is at the heart of the controversy. There, Mail-in ballots continue to be counted.
“They’re at it again”
Trump, after the race was called for Kelly, took to his social media site, Truth Social, to highlight some of the election problems that occurred in Arizona.
“So, in Maricopa County, they’re at it again,” Trump wrote.
The former president explained:
Voting Machines in large numbers didn’t work, but only in Republican districts. People were forced to wait for hours, then got exhausted or had other things to do and left the voting lines by the thousands. Even [Arizona Republican gubernatorial candidate] Kari Lake was taken to a Liberal Democrat district in order to vote. Others weren’t so lucky. This is a scam and voter fraud, no different than stuffing the ballot boxes. They stole the Electron from Blake Masters.
Trump concluded by calling for the election to be redone, saying, “do election over again!”
Trump repeated this call in a subsequent message, stating, “Idiot, and possibly corrupt, officials have lost control of the tainted Election in Arizona. MACHINES BROKEN IN REPUBLICAN AREAS. A NEW ELECTION MUST BE CALLED FOR IMMEDIATELY!”
What now?
Kelly is already celebrating the victory. But, we have yet to hear from Masters.
Masters, over the past several days, has been insisting that things were going to break his way, stating on Thursday, “we are seeing the last few big, pro-Dem drops. Soon they’ll run out, & then there are hundreds of thousands of pro-R ballots to count. We will overtake them and win.”
It’s hard to believe that Masters will go down without a fight. But, it’s easy to believe that the powers that be are simply going to try to close the book on this election, just as they did in 2020.