Suddenly, Mia Love has HOPE!

Mia Love is now only 900 votes behind Ben McAdams based on tallies released last night and she’s now suing to challenge some of these provisional ballots:

POLITICO – Republican U.S. Rep. Mia Love sued Wednesday to halt vote counting in the Utah race where she is trailing her Democratic challenger by a razor-thin margin, saying her campaign must be allowed to issue challenges if they dispute the validity of mail-in ballots.

In a contest where “every single vote is crucial,” the Love campaign claimed poll-watchers have seen a few cases where voter signatures on ballots accepted by election workers did not appear to match those on file in Democratic-leaning Salt Lake County.

County attorneys pushed back in court documents, arguing state law gives the campaign no right to interrupt the vote count, and letting the campaign question signatures could violate voters’ rights by revealing who they cast their ballots for.

Love’s campaign is “not accusing anyone of anything,” but they believe a few instances deserve more scrutiny, campaign attorney Robert Harrington said in a statement. Voting is done primarily by mail in Utah.

County Clerk Sherrie Swenson, a Democrat, said Love’s campaign staff was granted access to observe the tallies but is not allowed to be interactive participants in the signature verification process. Results her office released Wednesday night sliced into McAdam’s lead, putting Love less than half a percentage point behind him. Her campaign manager Dave Hansen cheered the news, saying she is on a “path to victory.”

A judge is set to hear arguments on Thursday.

McAdams is leading Love by less than 900 votes as counting continued more than a week after Election Day. He is the mayor of Salt Lake County, where 85 percent of voters in the district live.

She’s now so close that every ballot matters, which is why she’s suing. Because there are a lot more ballots to be counted.

Here’s more on the numbers:

Since election night, Mia Love’s campaign has hung its hopes on ballots counted after election night being better for her than the ones that were reported after polls closed.

So far they’ve been right, and Wednesdays results out of Salt Lake County were a huge blow to Democrat Ben McAdams. Love won the day, taking 6,318 of the new votes to 5,964 for McAdams. That cut McAdams’ lead to 873 votes, with about 64,000 ballots still to come from both Utah and Salt Lake counties (not all of them in the 4th District).

The author goes on to give a lot more details about the recount. But suffice it to say that he believes if the current trajectory holds true, Mia Love could either pull out a victory or that the vote count could be close enough to force a recount.

Either way she’s definitely got momentum going for her right now, with or without a lawsuit, and Trump might have to eat his words from the other day if she pulls out a victory.


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