Kari Lake, the Republican candidate for governor of Arizona who was defeated by Katie Hobbs, is formally challenging her loss to Hobbs. She is asking a court to throw out the 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. Hobbs is the Democrat candidate for governor of Arizona who was elected.
The complaint that was filed by Lake late on Friday focuses on the long lines and other obstacles that voters encountered when casting their ballots on Election Day in Maricopa County. In addition, the challenge that was submitted to the superior court in Maricopa County claims that hundreds of thousands of ballots were cast unlawfully, although there is no proof to support this claim.
Lake has refused to recognize the fact that Hobbs defeated her by a margin of more than 17,000 votes. Maricopa County has been inundated with complaints from the candidate for governor who has Donald Trump’s endorsement. The majority of these complaints are related to a problem with printers at some vote centers, which caused ballots to be printed with markings that were too faint for the on-site tabulators to be able to read them.
In certain polling places, lines backed up, feeding Republican claims that some supporters were unable to cast a ballot, even though there is no evidence to suggest that this had any impact on the outcome of the election. According to officials from the county, voting was open to everyone, and all valid ballots have been counted.
In her capacity as Arizona’s current secretary of state, Lake filed a lawsuit against officials from Maricopa County and Hobbs. Sophia Solis, a representative for the office of the secretary of state, stated that the complaint filed by Lake was being evaluated, but she did not have any more comments on the filing.
Maricopa County’s spokesperson Jason Berry declined to comment on Lake’s request to throw out the county’s election results in the contest for governor. Lake requested that the results be thrown out. On the other hand, he stated that the county “respects the election contest process and looks forward to providing facts concerning the administration of the general election in 2022 and our work to guarantee that every lawful voter has the opportunity to cast their ballot.”
In a statement on her Twitter account, Hobbs referred to the lawsuit as “Lake’s latest desperate attempt to subvert our democracy and throw out the will of the voters.” Lake is a member of the Lake family. She published a statement on her website that was penned by her campaign manager. In it, he referred to the lawsuit as a “sham” and stated that her campaign was still focused on “getting ready to hit the ground running on Day One of Katie Hobbs’ administration.”
According to the allegations made in Lake’s lawsuit, Republicans were unfairly targeted by the issues that arose in Maricopa County since they outvoted Democrats by a ratio of 3-1 on Election Day. The leaders of the Republican Party had advised its supporters to refrain from voting until Election Day.
At the end of November, Lake initiated a legal action about public records, in which he demanded that Maricopa County send over materials that were associated with the election. She was looking for voters who may have had difficulty 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. She also wanted to find voters who checked in at a polling place in addition to returning a mail ballot.
A federal judge denied a request made by Lake and Mark Finchem, the unsuccessful Republican candidate for secretary of state, to mandate hand counting of all ballots during the election that took place in November. The request was made during the summer.
Since then, the judge has taken disciplinary action against the attorneys who were defending Lake and Finchem in their complaint, finding that the attorneys “made false, deceptive, and unsubstantiated factual representations.” The attorneys testified in front of the judge and argued that their arguments were “legally sound and supported by compelling evidence.”
In her capacity as secretary of state, Hobbs has asked a court to initiate the legally mandated automatic recount of votes across the state in three contests that were determined by margins of less than half of one percentage point.
Only 510 votes separated the Democrat Kris Mayes and the Republican Abe Hamadeh in the election for attorney general out of a total of 2.5 million that were cast. This campaign was one of the most competitive in the state’s history. Recounts will also be conducted for the contests for state superintendent of public instruction and a state legislature seat in the Phoenix suburbs; however, the margins of victory in these two races are significantly less.
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