Republican Martha McSally led Democratic Congressman Ron Barber by 133 votes after Pima County completed a new batch of votes today.

But the margin is within the 200-vote threshold for a recount, so the race isn't quite over yet.

The recount is just the latest twist in a rematch between two candidates who were separated by less than 2,500 votes in 2012.

Pima County spokesman Mark B. Evans tells the Weekly that there are roughly 200 ballots left to count.

McSally expressed confidence that she would win the race.

“No doubt this has been a long process for everyone involved and we are grateful for all the support and encouragement we've seen,” McSally said via an emailed statement. “There are still ballots left to count, but we are confident that when all ballots are in, our lead will hold. We will continue to provide oversight of the process until then.”

But Barber spokeswoman Ashley Nash-Hahn said the race remained “too close to call.”

“This is the closest congressional election in Arizona history,” Nash-Hahn said via email. “The law calls for an automatic recount in a race this close, and that is where we are headed.”

She also suggested that Team Barber might take legal action to get provisional ballots that were tossed out by the Pima County Recorder’s Office included in the recount.

"We remain committed to protecting the integrity of the vote in Southern Arizona,” Nash-Hahn said. “In Pima County, 782 voters had their ballots rejected, and those votes have not been counted. During the legal recount process, we will work to see that every lawful vote is counted and that the voices of Southern Arizona are heard.”

More to come as we get more information.

Usher joins Honey Nut Cheerios in new campaign from MultiVu Video on Vimeo.

You thought it was bad when U2 had to resort to giving an album away no one really actually wanted to everyone with an iPhone, but now the record business has collapsed upon itself to the point that multi-platinum recording artist Usher is giving away a song in boxes of cereal...at Walmart:

A new song by Usher will be the prize at the bottom of select cereal boxes. Starting Tuesday, a exclusive single will be available for download with specially-marked Honey Nut Cheerios packages purchased at Walmart stores across the country.

The track is called "Clueless" and comes amidst a prolonged wait for the singer's new album, UR.

Would it hurt you to buy a CD every once and awhile? This is what it's come to, people.

The race to provide appealing entertainment on New Year's Eve is on, with the Rialto announcing that Chicha Dust will be headlining Tropidelica, "a tropical glow in the dark New Year's Eve" there on Dec. 31, with DJ Dirtyverbs. Tickets are $10 in advance, $15 at the door, which includes a champagne toast and favors.

VIP balcony tickets are also available for $30, but if you want to really get crazy $50 gets you on the stage, plus mega-VIP treatment. Maybe Brian Lopez will kiss you at midnight. I don't know how these things work, but it couldn't hurt to ask.

More info at rialtotheatre.com.

We'll keep you updated on your NYE options as they're announced.

I can't seem to wrangle Google to find a story on it now, but at some point, there was a state legislature somewhere considering a law to prohibit bands with more unoriginal members than original ones from advertising themselves as being the original band. Think Lynyrd Skynyrd, who just have one original band member, Gary Rossington, around these days, although they do have a tragedy to blame for part of that.

Metalcore act Norma Jean, who are coming to town this week, are sort of in the same boat, since only guitarist Chris John Day is still around from the band that recorded "Bless the Martyr and Kiss the Child" back in 2002. The group, fully committed to crunchy riffs and aggression, regardless of who joined when, are touring the southwest performing songs from their six albums, while promising some new stuff as well, stopping at 191 Toole on Tuesday, Nov. 11 at 7 p.m. with Night Verses, Scar Eater and Lariats opening.

Tickets are $18, but you can get the advance price of $15 at the door if you bring two cans of food. Why not bring the food anyway, even if you got your tickets in advance? This time of year, someone could certainly use it. More info at facebook.com/events/1487617151523905.

Republican challenger Martha McSally is now leading Democratic Congressman Ron Barber by just 179 votes in the tight race for Congressional District 2, following Pima County's tabulation of a batch of provisional ballots.

Pima County Elections officials counted 15 early ballots and 4,889 provisional ballots, according to Pima County spokesman Mark B. Evans, who added that roughly 4,000 provisional ballots remained to be counted.

How many of those provisional ballots are in CD2 is unknown, but in today's count, about 3,210 of ballots counted today were from CD2 and Barber picked up 162 votes.

County officials hope to finish the vote count tomorrow.

Diane Douglas hasn't taken office yet - she only just locked down the election after David Garcia ran out of possible votes to tip things his way - but hey, her apparent deep lack of qualifications and disdain for education itself has already spawned a social media call for her recall, with 789 signers-on as I write this.

Unfortunately for our state's educational system (but fortunately for Ms. Douglas' checking account), recalls can't be filed against officeholders until they've been on the job six months, but conveniently, the Secretary of State's office has a helpful guide already created to guide citizens through the process. Study up, because it won't be easy:

Every public officer in the state of Arizona, holding an elective office, either by election or appointment, is subject to recall from such office by the qualified electors of the electoral district from which candidates are elected to such office. Such electoral district may include the whole state. Such number of said electors as shall equal twenty-five per centum of the number of votes cast at the last preceding general election for all of the candidates for the office held by such officer, may by petition, which shall be known as a recall petition, demand his recall.

As of nowish, 1,432,178 votes have been counted in the Superintendent of Public Instruction race (and there are still some to be counted), so a recall would need around 400,000 signatures (and probably a few more to ward off a signature challenge) to be successful. Not an easy task, by any measure.

Still, considering Douglas is already backing down FROM THE ONE ISSUE SHE RAN ON, maybe Republicans would be inclined to help give her the boot as well:

Her single issue is Common Core standards, yet she told KTAR radio over the weekend, "We have standards now that we can't control, we can't change and we can't make sure that they work for Arizona." In other words, regarding the one issue on which she campaigned, she admits she has zero control over it.

Douglas is scheduled to take office on January 5, so the recall can be begin on July 5. Mark your calendars.

If you look at the comments following my posts that have anything to do with TUSD, you'll read over and over that the district is a complete, abject failure. You can hear the same refrain in other venues as well, of course. It comes from the "education reform" crowd who love to declare all traditional public education a failure so it can "solve the problem" through privatization. It also comes from a contingent of folks on the left who value public education but think nothing less than "throwing the bums out" will make things better — the bums being the current superintendent and his team of administrators as well as the school board members who enable the inept (and possibly corrupt) administration by rubber-stamping its agenda.

I have a question for the "TUSD is failing crowd": Failing compared to what?

Compared to the Platonic ideal of education? By that standard, absolutely, TUSD is a dismal failure. So is every school that ever existed and every teacher who ever held forth in front of a group of students from the beginning of time. There's no satisfying Plato. We teachers are all Parable-of-the-Cave-ers, showing kids shadows on the wall and pretending it's reality — all teachers with the possible exception of Socrates, and look what happened to him.

Or are we comparing TUSD to other large urban districts across the country? Then, not so much. Urban school districts are troubled places everywhere, and many of the reasons are beyond the ability of the schools to solve. They're embedded deep inside the urban socioeconomic landscape and need intervention that's beyond the reach of educators.

The occasional collaboration between delicious pizza establishment Vero Amore and also-quite-tasty Indian food truck, the Twisted Tandoor seems to be going well, so they're revisiting their Indian Pizza Night Tuesday night from 4 p.m. to 9 p.m.

If you'd like to try Chicken Tikka Masala, Saag Paneer or Keema on Vero's housemade dough, here's your chance to enjoy the taste of two culinary worlds colliding. More info at facebook.com/VeroAmorePizza.

Cleveland's Mr. Gnome are coming to Club Congress on Wednesday, Nov. 26 to promote their sublime new album The Heart of a Dark Star, which comes out about a week before. The group has a strange and beautiful live show and their new album captures a lot of that feel, with layers of guitars, organs and Nicole Barille's vocals.

If the track above piques your interest, the full album is streaming at NPR's First Listen.

A Pima County Superior Court judge has denied an effort by Republican Martha McSally’s congressional campaign to stop counting a group of ballots in Democratic precincts in her hotly contested race against Democratic incumbent Ron Barber.

Superior Court Judge James Marner said that he would not issue a temporary restraining order or preliminary injunction to stop the count of provisional ballots that were missing a signature from a poll worker.

The race remains extremely tight, with McSally leading Barber by 341 votes.

County officials say there are an estimated 9,300 provisional ballot awaiting tabulation in Pima County, where Barber ran ahead of McSally. An unknown number are in Congressional District 2.

Pima County Election Director Brad Nelson said ballot counting would resume this afternoon but he did not expect the complete the count of the provisional ballots.

Lawyers for both campaigns, as well as a deputy county attorney, were in court this morning to debate whether the questioned ballots should be set aside until a substantive argument could be made as to whether they are valid.

Attorney Dan Barr, representing the Barber campaign, said that the voters’ ballots shouldn’t be tossed aside based on a technical error.

Barr said the question was whether the court should “toss aside a voter’s ballot when they didn’t do anything wrong. They did everything they were supposed to do … and because of some technical error, we’re not going to count their vote.”

Deputy County Attorney Daniel Jurkowitz said that if these sorts of challenges regarding minor technical errors were regularly entertained, then elections would never be resolved.

“There’s no such thing as a perfect election,” Jurkowitz said.

Attorney Brett W. Johnson, representing the McSally campaign, said that an elections manual distributed by the Arizona Secretary of State’s office did include a provision that stated that administrative errors are grounds for disqualifying ballots.

But other sections of the manual conflicted with that rule and Secretary of State Ken Bennett testified that that were other safeguards to ensure election integrity beyond the signatures on the forms.

Marner said the election manual was “a bit of a head scratcher” but expressed his judgment that the McSally legal team was not likely to prevail on the merits of its case, so he would not grant their request to stop the counting of the questioned ballots.

The underlying question as to the validity of the ballots remains unresolved.