In a distressing turn of events, Kyrsten Sinema has apparently taken the lead over Martha McSally in the Arizona senate race by 9,600 votes. There are approximately 400,000 votes still left to count. As of 8 pm on Thursday night, Sinema had won 932,870 votes compared to McSally’s 923,260 and Green Party candidate Angela Green’s 43,838.

With only 83% of the vote counted, the race stands at 49.1% to 48.6%.

There are still 345,000 left to count in Maricopa County and as well as many mail-in ballots dropped off at polling places on Election Day.

Although the McSally campaign remains upbeat that she will finish on top, others are less optimistic. Fox News reported that, “Republican Gov. Doug Ducey, who easily cruised to reelection on Tuesday, was significantly outperforming McSally in several GOP-leaning areas of Arizona. Some analysts, including Fox News host Laura Ingraham, said it’s very unlikely McSally will reclaim the lead.”

Just got a text that Pima County (Tucson) numbers just came in and Sinema is now up by 9,000. Very unlikely McSally wins at this point. The trend will likely continue.

— Laura Ingraham (@IngrahamAngle) November 9, 2018

I’m not seeing any talk of foul play involving state election officials in Arizona, although these situations always seem to go in one direction.

More concerning are the events currently taking place in the state of Florida where ballots seem to be materializing overnight as the legally mandated recount proceeds in the senate race between current Florida Governor Rick Scott and current Senator Ben Nelson. Please read yesterday’s post by RedState’s Streiff here.

The situation heated up last night causing Scott to file a lawsuit against Broward and Palm Beach counties “accusing Democrats of conducting a coordinated effort to “steal” elections in a campaign of possibly “rampant fraud,”” Fox News reports that:

Rick Scott filed explosive lawsuits late Thursday against the top election officials in two heavily Democratic counties, as they continue to report new votes and three major races in the state appear headed for recounts.

In their lawsuit against Broward County, Scott and the National Republican Senatorial Committeee (NRSC) allege that officials there are hiding critical information about the number of votes cast and counted. And in a parallel suit against Palm Beach County, Scott and the NRSC charge that the election supervisor there illegally used her own judgment to determine voter intent when reviewing damaged or incorrectly filled-out absentee ballots, while refusing to allow impartial witnesses to monitor the process.

“I will not stand idly by while unethical liberals try to steal an election,” Scott, who is currently Florida’s governor, said at a press conference outside the Governor’s Mansion, as he slammed potential “rampant fraud” in the race.

Most upsetting is the role played by Broward County Elections Supervisor Brenda Snipes, who Sen. Marco Rubio says “has a history of violating the law.” Her office allegedly destroyed ballots from a 2016 congressional primary that were under subpoena calling it “a mistake.”

A circuit court judge ruled in May that her office broke federal and state law by destroying the ballots too soon after the August 2016 primary, while the lawsuit was pending.

She OK’d the ballot destruction a year after the primary. The law requires preservation of the ballots for 22 months.

Gov. Scott and the NRSC are being represented by Fort Lauderdale lawyer Bill Scherer, who was also involved in the state’s 2000 Bush/Gore vote recount. Snipes was appointed by then-Gov. Jeb Bush in 2003. Scherer said he’s “been having to file lawsuits against Brenda Snipes ever since for voting irregularities in Broward County … Brenda Snipes and her election apparatus causes everybody to have doubts about where these votes are, how many are left.”

Deja vu? Well, it sure looks suspicious, doesn’t it? So does Marco Rubio. He said,  “a U.S. Senate seat & a statewide cabinet officer are now potentially in the hands of an elections supervisor with a history of incompetence & of blatant violations of state & federal laws.”

Should Republicans be worried? I think so. Considering the lengths to which Democrats have gone to first derail President Trump’s candidacy, and then to destroy his presidency, this is small potatoes.