Arizona Republican Senate candidate Blake Masters refused to concede his race against Democrat incumbent Sen. Mark Kelly Saturday, hours after news outlets called the election in Kelly’s favor — and vowed to fight on until “every legal vote is counted.”

“For my people who knocked doors in 115-degree heat, and for the million+ Arizonans who put their faith in me, we are going to make sure that every legal vote is counted,” Masters wrote in a statement posted to Twitter.

Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly won his bid for reelection Friday in the crucial swing state of Arizona, defeating Republican venture capitalist Blake Masters to put his party one victory away from clinching control of the chamber for the next two years of Joe Biden’s presidency.

With Vice President Kamala Harris’ tiebreaking vote, Democrats can retain control of the Senate by winning either the Nevada race, which remains too early to call, or next month’s runoff in Georgia. Republicans now must win both those races to take the majority.

The slow pace of counting mail ballots in states such as Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin was a key source of election disinformation in 2020. The delays provided President Trump and his allies with a pretext to claim that the election was being stolen from them as mail ballots, which overwhelmingly went for Biden, were counted and added to vote totals. “We were winning everything, and all of a sudden it was just called off,” Trump complained. “This is a fraud on the American public.” 

Election officials in the largest county in Nevada said Wednesday that ballot counting will continue through next week, though the majority of 2022 ballots could be counted by Friday, as the nation anxiously awaits election results for the state’s Senate seat.

Clark County Registrar of Voters Joe Gloria said in a news conference that Tuesday, Nov. 15, is the deadline to verify mail-in ballots and Thursday, Nov. 17, is the latest date for releasing the final, unofficial election results.

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Democrats kept control of the Senate on Saturday, repelling Republican efforts to retake the chamber and making it harder for them to thwart President Joe Biden’s agenda. The fate of the House was still uncertain as the GOP struggled to pull together a slim majority there.

The five most expensive Senate races of 2022 have seen nearly $1.3 billion in spending across the primary and general elections, according to OpenSecrets, a staggering sum that speaks to the massive amounts of money flooding the political system.

Leading the way is the Pennsylvania Senate race, where Democratic Lt. Gov. John Fetterman and Republican Dr. Mehmet Oz are squaring off in the general election. All told, nearly $375 million has been spent on the race this cycle, OpenSecrets found.

About 1 in 5 polling locations in Maricopa County, Ariz., were experiencing a technical problem with their ballot tabulator machines in the first hours of Election Day — but officials say the votes will still be counted, thanks to their redundancy protocols.

"We've got about 20% of the locations out there where there's an issue with the tabulator," Board of Supervisors Chairman Bill Gates said in a video update posted online. Describing the problem, he said that after some voters fill out their ballot, the machine won't accept it.

As Arizonans continue to run into issues in Maricopa County while trying to vote, Maricopa County officials gave an update, saying they’re trying to fix ongoing issues with their tabulators "as quickly as possible."

The update from officials comes as more reports of malfunctioning voting machines emerge in the Arizona county. One poll worker was seen telling a voter that "nothing is working for the last half hour," and reiterated the statements made by county officials.