The results aren't even in yet and already Martha McSally and Republican Party officials and, of course, even President Donald Trump, are working themselves into an absolute lather over a nefarious Democratic scheme to steal the election.

Here's Trump:

Meanwhile, state GOP Chairman Jonathan Lines on Friday engaged in outright character assassination as he accused Maricopa County Recorder Adrian Fontes, a Democrat, of deliberately destroying evidence.

And McSally sent out a fundraising plea, suggesting the fix is in.

"This is what we're dealing with: Sinema and the Democrats have prepared millions of dollars to sue me in court to bend the rules and exploit loopholes in her favor,” she wrote. “The Democratic Machine will do whatever it takes to change the results of this election."

What results?

On Friday, three days after the polls closed, there were still a stunning 400,000 votes to be counted.

Why are Republicans panicking?

Yet the Republican Party already had filed a lawsuit, objecting to Fontes and elections officials in four other counties who still were allowing voters to confirm that they signed early ballots dropped off on Election Day rather than rejecting them outright for sporting signatures than didn't seem to match their voting registration file.

The GOP also is peeved that Fontes opened emergency voting centers the weekend before the election, for people who couldn’t make it to the polls on Tuesday.

Lines said Fontes was warned to set aside the ballots the GOP was disputing and instead mixed them together with the rest of the ballots.

“Adrian Fontes intentionally put himself above the law and the judicial process,” Lines said. “Such a man cannot be trusted to administer elections in Arizona. We are reviewing all legal options at this time and will continue to protect the rights of every legal voter in Arizona.”

The nerve of that Adrian Fontes, allowing eligible voters to vote – AND for those votes to actually count.

By day's end, the GOP had agreed to settle its lawsuit and now every county will do as Fontes and four other counties already were doing -- allowing early voters who dropped off their ballots on Election Day to verify their signatures until next Wednesday.

In other words, everybody agreed that Fontes was doing it right.

Yet Lines came out with yet another statement saying, "there must be a full accounting" of Fontes' actions.

"We will not forget, nor allow this settlement to sweep his possible misconduct under the rug," Lines said.

That would be the misconduct of ensuring that every eligible vote is counted?

Given the GOP hysterics, it was clear that things were reeeeally bad for McSally, who took a slim lead early on but steadily lost ground through the week as early ballots continued to be counted.

As of Friday morning, Sinema had a 9,000-vote lead over McSally. By Friday afternoon, her lead had expanded to more than 20,000 votes.

No wonder Republicans are in an all-out panic.

Shouldn't we know who won first?

Fontes says it’s all about ensuring that every vote counts.

Republicans say it's all about some nefarious plot, pointing out that not all counties are operating in the same way.

All counties certainly should operate in the same way – in a way that ensures every eligible voter can cast a ballot and that it will count.

But is the fact that 11 of them initially weren't -- at their choice -- evidence of a Democratic plot to steal the election?

Cue Trump's campaign manager, Brad Parscale:

Never mind that Maricopa County is a GOP stronghold, where Republicans outnumber Democrats by 130,000.

Or that there isn't a shred of evidence of any fraud, much less rampant fraud.

If McSally loses, it seems, it must be because Democrats stole the race.

No need to actually know who won before launching into an all-out panic attack about the election being stolen.

Reach Roberts at laurie.roberts@arizonarepublic.com.

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