“The people of Arizona have spoken, their votes have been counted, and we respect their decision.” Gov. Doug Ducey said. In his first remark to the public since Katie Hobbs’ election, outgoing Arizona Governor Doug Ducey said on Wednesday that his Republican government would enable a smooth transition of power to the Democrat Katie Hobbs.
More than a week after it became apparent that she would win, and just a few days after the final ballots were tabulated, Ducey went to Hobbs’ office to meet with him. However, defeated Republican Kari Lake has not conceded. She has worked since the election to bring attention to voters who allege they were affected by an issue with ballot printers at some polling stations in Maricopa County. Kari Lake was beaten in the election, but she has not surrendered.
In a statement, Governor Ducey said, “All of us have waited patiently for the democratic process to play out.” “The people of Arizona have spoken, their votes have been counted, and we respect their decision,” they said. “We respect the decision of the people of Arizona.” The day after The Associated Press and other news sources declared Hobbs, the election winner, Ducey called to congratulate Hobbs. Still, he did not publicly discuss the contest’s conclusion until Wednesday.
Although Ducey was a co-chair of the Republican Governors Association, which spent more than ten million dollars on television advertisements targeting Hobbs, he was not a fervent backer of Lake. Hobbs was defeated in the election. He supported her opponent in the Republican primary, and although he kept the entire Republican ticket in the general election, he did not campaign with Lake. He did, however, support the whole Republican ticket.
She will be the first Democrat to hold the state’s top office since Janet Napolitano resigned to become the United States Secretary of Homeland Security after the 2008 election. Currently, Hobbs holds the position of secretary of state, and she has formed a transition team that is currently screening potential staff members in preparation for her new role.
The meeting between Ducey and Hobbs took place a day after the Republican National Committee and the candidate for attorney general of the Republican Party in Arizona, Abraham Hamadeh, filed an election challenge in his race. Hamadeh is trailing by 510 votes, so the race is scheduled for an automatic recount.
This challenge, submitted to the superior court in Maricopa County, asserts that several different issues influenced the outcome of the highly close race. It is stated that some ballots that should not have been counted were and that other ballots were rejected when they should have been counted.
It asserts that election workers made errors in duplicating votes that automated tabulators could not read and in discerning voters’ intent when ballots were confusing. The allegations are contained in the complaint.
In addition, the lawsuit asserts that sure voters in Maricopa County were not allowed to cast a ballot due to a problem that was widely publicized at a number of vote centres, in which printers produced ballots with markings that were too faint to be read by on-site tabulators.
This problem occurred at some vote centres. Some voters who encountered issues departed the polling place without casting a vote and did not check out with the poll workers. As a result, those voters could not vote in another location since the county’s computer system portrays them as having already cast a ballot.
According to the complaint, Hamadeh and the Republican National Committee are not “alleging any fraud, manipulation or other intentional wrongdoing that would impugn the outcomes of the general election that took place on November 8, 2022.”
According to a statement released by Hamadeh, “The citizens of Arizona demand answers and deserve openness concerning the blatant incompetence and mismanagement of the General Election by certain elected officials.”
Democrat Kris Mayes will ask a judge to dismiss Hamadeh’s complaint, Mayes’s attorney Dan Barr said. “Abe Hamadeh’s complaint is devoid of facts,” Barr said. “It does not plausibly allege that mistakes in the administration of the election occurred, and if they did occur, they would have made any difference in the result.”
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