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Arizona Attorney General Wants To Keep Election Results Mum Until Last Vote Cast

Arizona's top prosecutor wants to bar county election officials from releasing any election results until the last person waiting has cast a ballot.

Attorney General Mark Brnovich noted that people were still standing in line for hours after polls for the state's presidential preference election closed at 7 p.m. Tuesday. Some didn't get into polling places until close to midnight. Yet county officials released results long before then.

Brnovich said some folks standing in line, learning the primaries had already been called for Trump and Clinton, probably just gave up. So he wants state law rewritten so that no results are released until the last vote is cast anywhere in the state.

"Some of this should just be common sense," Brnovich said. "But I do think we want to make sure that folks don't feel like their right to vote is being undermined or that it's being wasted because somebody else has already told them the results of the election."

Gov. Doug Ducey's press aide Daniel Scarpinato said his boss wants to study the proposal. "We'd be supportive of any measure that would prevent the kind of chaos that occurred on Tuesday."

Lawmakers are planning hearings for next week to take a look for themselves at what went wrong and what changes to election laws might be necessary.