PHOENIX (AP) — Arizona’s most populous county certified its primary election results Monday, setting in motion a recount for the Democratic nomination in an open congressional district where 42 votes separate the top contenders.
The certification by the five-member Maricopa County Board of Supervisors is formally known as a canvass. The largely ministerial step was required before Secretary of State Adrian Fontes' office can conduct a recount in the 3rd Congressional District.
Former Phoenix City Council member Yassamin Ansari is leading over former state lawmaker Raquel Terán by less than .5 percentage points — the margin that triggers a recount under Arizona law.
Fontes confirmed the need for a recount and petitioned the Maricopa County Superior Court to authorize it, court records show. The secretary estimated the recount process will be completed by Aug. 19 if everything begins as planned Tuesday.
Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Jennifer Ryan-Touhill officially ordered the recount, records show. The judge scheduled a hearing to announce the results on Aug. 20.
Whoever wins the Democratic bid will face Republican Jeff Zink in the November general election. The district leans Democrat and encompasses parts of Phoenix. The seat was left vacant when U.S. Rep Ruben Gallego decided to seek a U.S. Senate seat. He'll face Republican Kari Lake in November.
The canvass of election results had long been a dull, unceremonious act of government business in the Grand Canyon State. But since Joe Biden’s defeat of Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election in Arizona, election conspiracies have flourished and — at times — hindered the process.
This year, the certification of primary election results largely has gone smoothly across Arizona, with the majority of the state's 15 counties approving the results without issue. The state's canvass is scheduled later this week.
Some residents, though, continue to cast doubt over elections.
During the public comment session in Maricopa County, several people questioned the integrity of the primary election and opposed certification. One speaker accused the county of perpetuating fraud and asked why it doesn't conduct elections with paper ballots like Russia.
Vice Chairman Thomas Galvin responded with his own question about whether the woman has more confidence in Russian elections than elections in the U.S. She said she did.
Galvin then pushed back, his voice rising.
“Are you kidding me? That is Putin propaganda," he said, referring to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
In neighboring Pinal County, the all-Republican board of supervisors certified the primary election results after Supervisor Kevin Cavanaugh alleged inconsistent voting patterns in his failed run for sheriff and in a handful of other countywide races.
Pinal County recorder Dana Lewis said every time that Cavanaugh professed an anomaly, his own statistics didn’t back it up.
Some of Cavanaugh's colleagues dismissed his claims of cheating as a “clown show." Chairman Mike Goodman banged his gavel nearly 30 times in a heated exchange with Cavanaugh, who ultimately voted to approve the results “under duress."
Cavanaugh earlier submitted a complaint to the attorney general's office, which confirmed receipt Monday but declined to say if it would investigate.
Elsewhere in Arizona, rural eastern Cochise County certified the primary results without drama Friday. The GOP stronghold on the U.S.-Mexico border was roiled after the midterm contests two years ago amid rampant election denialism and unsuccessful calls for a hand count of all ballots.
The board is made up of the two Republicans who demanded the hand count in 2020 and a Democrat who was not at Friday's meeting.
Officials and government websites in the rest of Arizona's counties confirmed canvasses there were successful, with a scattering of automatic recounts triggered. Those included county supervisor races separated by just three votes in La Paz and Yuma counties.
Govindarao reported from Florence, Arizona. Associated Press reporters Anita Snow and Jacques Billeaud in Phoenix contributed to this report. Gabriel Sandoval is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.
Voters walk to a voting station to cast their votes Tuesday, July 30, 2024, in Guadalupe, Ariz. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)
BEIRUT (AP) — Lebanese health authorities reported that at least three people were killed and more than a dozen others wounded in an Israeli strike on Beirut on Friday, the first such Israeli attack on the Lebanese capital in months.
The Israeli strike came after Hezbollah pounded northern Israel with rockets and the region awaited the revenge promised by the militant group’s leader Hassan Nasrallah for this week’s mass bombing attack on pagers and walkie-talkies belonging to Hezbollah members.
The target of Israel’s airstrike in Beirut’s crowded southern suburbs during rush hour, as people were leaving their work and students heading home from school, wasn't immediately clear. Lebanon's Health Ministry didn't elaborate on the identities of the victims.
Lebanese news stations broadcast footage of wounded people being pulled from the ruins of a flattened building as ambulances rushed to the scene of the strike.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows below.
BEIRUT (AP) — Israel hit a Beirut suburb with an airstrike Friday, not long after Hezbollah pounded northern Israel with 140 rockets following a vow by the militant group’s leader Hassan Nasrallah to retaliate against Israel for a mass bombing attack, the Israeli military and the militant group said.
The Israeli military said it had carried out a “targeted strike” in Beirut. It offered no further immediate details, but explosions could be heard coming from the city’s southern suburbs.
Beirut-based Al-Mayadeen TV reported that a drone fired several missiles on the heavily-populated area known as Dahiyeh.
A Hezbollah official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to speak to the media, confirmed to The Associated Press that an airstrike struck the area, without giving further details.
The strike came after Hezbollah pounded Israel with 140 rockets, which the Israeli military said came in three waves targeting sites along the ravaged border with Lebanon.
Following the attacks, the Israeli military said that it had struck areas across southern Lebanon targeting Hezbollah infrastructure, but didn’t provide details of damage.
Hezbollah said that its attacks had targeted several sites along the border with Katyusha rockets, including multiple air defense bases as well as the headquarters of an Israeli armored brigade they said they’d struck for the first time.
The Israeli military said that 120 missiles were launched at areas of the Golan Heights, Safed and the Upper Galilee, some of which were intercepted. Fire crews were working to extinguish blazes caused by pieces of debris that fell to the ground in several areas, the military said.
The military didn’t say whether any missiles had hit targets or caused any casualties.
Another 20 missiles were shot at the areas of Meron and Netua, and most fell in open areas, the military said, adding that no injuries were reported.
Hezbollah said that the rockets were in retaliation for Israeli strikes on villages and homes in southern Lebanon, not two days of attacks widely blamed on Israel that set off explosives in thousands of Hezbollah pagers and walkie-talkies.
On Thursday, Israel said its military had struck “hundreds of rocket launcher barrels” in southern Lebanon, saying that they “were ready to be used in the immediate future to fire toward Israeli territory”
The army also ordered residents in parts of the Golan Heights and northern Israel to avoid public gatherings, minimize movements and stay close to shelters in anticipation of the rocket fire that eventually came Friday.
Hezbollah and Israel have exchanged near-daily fire since Oct. 8, a day after the Israel-Hamas war’s opening salvo, but Friday’s rocket barrages were heavier than normal.
Nasrallah on Thursday vowed to keep up daily strikes on Israel despite this week’s deadly sabotage of its members’ communication devices, which he described as a “severe blow.”
At least 20 were killed in the attacks and thousands were wounded when pagers, walkie-talkies and other devices exploded in Lebanon on Tuesday and Wednesday.
The sophisticated attacks have heightened fears that the cross-border exchanges of fire will escalate into all-out war. Israel has neither confirmed nor denied involvement in the attacks.
In recent days, Israel has moved a powerful fighting force up to the northern border, officials have escalated their rhetoric, and the country’s security Cabinet has designated the return of tens of thousands of displaced residents to their homes in northern Israel an official war goal.
Fighting in Gaza has slowed, but casualties continue to rise.
Overnight, Palestinian authorities said that 15 people were killed in multiple Israeli attacks in the Gaza Strip.
Those included six people, including an unknown number of children, in an airstrike early Friday morning in Gaza City that hit a family home, Gaza’s Civil Defense said. Another person was killed in Gaza City when a strike hit a group of people on a street.
Israel maintains that it only targets militants, and accuses Hamas and other armed groups of endangering civilians by operating in residential areas. The military, which rarely comments on individual strikes, had no immediate comment.
Gaza’s Health Ministry says that more than 41,000 Palestinians have been killed in the territory since Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack. The ministry doesn’t differentiate between fighters and civilians in its count, but says a little over half of those killed were women and children.
Israel says it has killed more than 17,000 militants, without providing evidence.
More than 95,000 people have also been wounded in Gaza since Oct. 7, the Health Ministry said.
The war has caused vast destruction and displaced about 90% of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million.
Israeli Iron Dome air defense system fires to intercept a rocket fired from Lebanon, in northern Israel, Friday, Sept. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)
