Kari Lake, the Republican defeated in Arizona governor’s race, is formally challenging her loss to Democrat Katie Hobbs, asking a court to throw out certified election results from the state’s most populous county and either declare her the winner or rerun the governor’s election in that county.
The lawsuit filed late Friday by Lake centers on long lines and other difficulties that people experienced while voting on Election Day in Maricopa County. The challenge filed in Maricopa County Superior Court also alleges hundreds of thousands of ballots were illegally cast, but there’s no evidence that’s true.
Lake has refused to acknowledge that she lost to Hobbs by more than 17,000 votes.
The Donald Trump-endorsed gubernatorial candidate has bombarded Maricopa County with complaints, largely related to a problem with printers at some vote centers that led to ballots being printed with markings that were too light to be read by the on-site tabulators.
Lines backed up in some polling places, fueling Republican suspicions that some supporters were unable to cast a ballot, though there’s no evidence it affected the outcome. County officials say everyone was able to vote and all legal ballots were counted.
Lake sued Maricopa County officials and Hobbs in her current role as Arizona’s secretary of state.
Sophia Solis, a spokesperson for the secretary of state’s office, said Lake’s lawsuit was being reviewed but had no other comment on the filing.
Jason Berry, a Maricopa County spokesperson, declined to comment on Lake’s request to throw out the county’s election results in the governor’s race. But he said the county “respects the election contest process and looks forward to sharing facts about the administration of the 2022 general election and our work to ensure every legal voter had an opportunity to cast their ballot.”
Hobbs in a post on her Twitter account called the lawsuit “Lake’s latest desperate attempt to undermine our democracy and throw out the will of the voters.” She posted a statement from her campaign manager that called the lawsuit a “sham” and said her camp remained focused on “getting ready to hit the ground running on Day One of Katie Hobbs’ administration.”
Lake’s lawsuit says Republicans were disproportionately affected by the problems in Maricopa County because they outvoted Democrats on Election Day 3-1. GOP leaders had urged their voters to wait until Election Day to vote.
In late November, Lake filed a public records lawsuit demanding Maricopa County hand over documents related to the election. She was seeking to identify voters who may have had trouble casting a ballot, such as people who checked in at more than one vote center or those who returned a mail ballot and also checked in at a polling place.
During the summer, a federal judge also rejected a request by Lake and Mark Finchem, the defeated Republican candidate for secretary of state, to require hand counting of all ballots during the November election.
The judge has since sanctioned lawyers representing Lake and Finchem, saying they “made false, misleading, and unsupported factual assertions” in their lawsuit. The lawyers told the court that their claims were “legally sound and supported by strong evidence.”
Hobbs in her role as secretary of state has petitioned a court to begin an automatic statewide recount required by law in three races decided by less than half a percentage point.
The race for attorney general was one of the closest contests in state history, with Democrat Kris Mayes leading Republican Abe Hamadeh by just 510 votes out of 2.5 million cast.
The races for superintendent of public instruction and a state legislative seat in the Phoenix suburbs will also be recounted, but the margins are much larger.
(AP)
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8 Responses
The AP was relatively even-handed here, meaning not total leftist.
“Lake sued Maricopa County officials and Hobbs in her current role as Arizona’s secretary of state.”
Hobbs had no business being at all involved in the workings of any election in which she was a candidate, as happened here. That this even happened is an embarrassment to democracy.
You can tell an AP article from a mile away
It drips with hatred towards republicans and trump in particular
HaKatan,
Did you object when Brian Kemp supervised HIS election as Governor of Georgia?
Besides in AZ the Secretary of State doesn’t supervise the elections. They are run by county governments. And the County Government in Maricopa County is Republican.
Lake lost and is a sore loser.
Hakatan, how is that supposed to work? The Secretary of State is a candidate at every election, except his very last one when he decides to retire from public office. Otherwise he is running either for reelection, or for some other office. So according to you the secretary of state should never do his job of running the election?! That would make no sense!
And if not the secretary of state, who do you think should run elections? Would you give it over to the unelected bureaucracy, i.e. the Deep State?! Surely not. That would be pure goo-gooism, straight out of the 1910s!
> Modern
While it seems true that Brian Kemp was Secretary of State during the election preparation and during much of the voting, he resigned before the certification process. In other words, some else certified the results, he never certified himself as winner.
And as a note, the Democrats did file a federal lawsuit against Brian Kemp exactly on the grounds that he was Attorney General that could have influenced (they claim – without any more evidence than similar Republican claims – that he did influence) the election. And in fact, to quote on news source:
> Democrats and voting rights groups argued Kemp should have stepped down before the election. Former President Jimmy Carter — who served as Georgia’s governor and lives in the state now — called on Kemp to resign.
> modern
No one person supervises an entire state in anything. It always goes down the chain. The point is that the rules under which the local supervisors work (and answer to) is determined by the Secretary of State, and the local supervisors must bring evidence that they followed those rules before the Secretary of State will certify the results (without that certification, the whole election is meaningless).
In terms of Republicans – really? Lake is a pro-Trump Republican and these supervisors are anti-Trump (“never-Trumpers”) Republicans and the two are like the Hatfields & McCoys.
it’s like deja blue all over again.
Not to be taken seriously since the state had Republican leadership, and other Republicans won.