Arizona Republican gubernatorial candidate and staunch ‘America First’ supporter Kari Lake warned her supporters that Americans are “tired of shoddy elections run by imbeciles” as the state awaits the release of midterm election results.
Lake, one of Donald Trump’s most prominent election integrity candidates, and Democrat Katie Hobbs are neck and neck in the campaign for governor. Hobbs’ hold on power is nonetheless weakening, and Lake is prepared to proclaim triumph.
Arizona is a swing state that might determine which party controls Congress; yet, according to Lake, it could take Democrats many days to accept the inevitable.
According to a portion of the news media, a potential legal battle looms in the coming days and weeks when the final vote tally is completed.
“The Lake campaign has made clear it is prepared to pursue legal action over the election, potentially over the counting of ballots and the observation of that process, according to sources familiar with the matter. A member of Lake’s legal team who requested anonymity tells TIME that “a subject matter of a lawsuit” could be “the counting of the ballots and the monitoring of the counting.” They wouldn’t say whether any specific suits were planned as of yet,” TIME reported, adding:
“Such an action could ultimately focus on the final batch of ballots—roughly 275,000 mail ballots that were delivered in person on Election Day—that will be counted on Thursday and published later that evening.”
“We’ve said from the beginning that this was going to be a tight race,” Nicole DeMont, campaign manager for the Hobbs campaign, said in a statement. “Each and every Arizonan deserves to have their ballot counted and their voice heard, and in the days to come we will continue to watch these results closely to make sure that happens.”
Hobbs, the Arizona secretary of state, led Lake by around 13,000 votes with approximately 70% of the ballots tabulated as of Wednesday evening. Tuesday night, Hobbs assumed a commanding lead after winning the early mail-in ballots by almost 14 percentage points. The difference was then narrowed by Lake’s lead among voters who cast votes in person on Election Day.
This leaves around 275,000 ballots from Arizonans who voted absentee but dropped off or sent their ballots on Election Day. A knowledgeable Arizona election official who asked anonymity because they were not permitted to discuss the governor’s race anticipated that the votes would be evenly divided among Democrats, Independents, and Republicans.
Wednesday evening, the Lake campaign reposted a message concerning voting machine difficulties in a massive Arizona county:
“MESSAGE FROM BOS: To impacted voters, we recognize this isn’t how you pictured Election Day & we apologize for that inconvenience. We are committed to counting all legal votes and then finding the root cause of what happened so that it does not happen again.”
https://t.co/TuzYo14bjo pic.twitter.com/WLcE2UBHGF
— Kari Lake War Room (@KariLakeWarRoom) November 10, 2022
More on this story via The Republic Brief:
Arizona Republicans are banking on those ballots leaning toward Lake. They say that many Republicans stayed on the absentee voter rolls after 2020 but weren’t comfortable mailing in their ballots or voting early. It’s a trend that remains a legacy of former President Donald Trump’s bashing of voting by mail as being rife with fraud, despite no substantial evidence to support that claim, which he became especially vocal about two years ago, as many states expanded mail voting to facilitate elections amid the pandemic. CONTINUE READING…