Arizona secretary of state sues after Republican
officials refuse to certify county election results
Cochise county officials have endorsed claims of voter
fraud despite no evidence of any problems
Gloria
Oladipo and agencies
Mon 28 Nov
2022 22.22 EST
Republican
officials in a rural Arizona county refused on Monday to certify the results of
the 2022 midterm election, despite no evidence of anything wrong with the count
from earlier this month.
Some
officials who have embraced voter fraud theories held out, defying a state
deadline and setting the stage for a legal battle.
The move
came amid pressure from prominent Republicans to reject results showing
Democrats winning top races, and the county was holding out in the afternoon of
a nail-biting day that was the deadline for several counties to confirm
results.
In a
lawsuit on Monday, the secretary of state, Katie Hobbs, a Democrat who narrowly
won the race for governor, asked a judge to order county officials to canvass
the election, which she said was an obligation under Arizona law. Lawyers
representing a Cochise county voter and a group of retirees filed a similar
lawsuit on Monday, the deadline for counties to approve the official tally of
votes, known as the canvass.
The two
Republican county supervisors delayed the canvass vote until hearing once more
about concerns over the certification of ballot tabulators, though election
officials have repeatedly said the equipment is properly approved.
The state
elections director, Kori Lorick, wrote in a letter last week that Hobbs was
required by law to approve the statewide canvass by next week and would have to
exclude Cochise county’s votes if they weren’t received in time.
That would
threaten to flip the victor in at least two close races, a US House seat and
state schools chief, from a Republican to a Democrat.
Hobbs’
lawsuit asks the Cochise county superior court to order officials to certify
the results by Thursday. Failing to certify them would undermine the will of
the county’s voters “and sow further confusion and doubt about the integrity of
Arizona‘s election system”, lawyers for Hobbs wrote.
“The board
of supervisors had all of the information they needed to certify this election
and failed to uphold their responsibility for Cochise voters,” Sophia Solis, a
spokeswoman for Hobbs, said in an email.
Democratic
election attorney Marc Elias also pledged, via Twitter, to sue the county.
Elsewhere,
Republican supervisors in Mohave county postponed a certification vote until
later on Monday after hearing comments from residents angry about problems with
ballot printers in Maricopa county.
Officials
in Maricopa county, the state’s largest, where the state capital Phoenix is
located, said everyone had a chance to vote and all legal ballots were counted.
Election
results have largely been certified without issue in jurisdictions across the
nation despite tub-thumping by rightwingers during their campaigns who sought
to undermine public faith in US democracy. Many of the most extreme candidates
lost.
But it has
been a rockier road in Arizona, which became a focal point for efforts by Trump
and his allies to overturn the 2020 election and push false narratives of
fraud, following Joe Biden’s surprise win in the state – a result that was
first called by Fox News, another fact that infuriated Trump as he railed
against losing the White House.
Arizona was
long a GOP stronghold, but this month Democrats won most of the highest-profile
races over Trumpist Republicans.
Lake, who
lost the governor’s race to Hobbs, and Mark Finchem, the candidate for
secretary of state, have refused to acknowledge their midterm election losses,
however. They blame Republican election officials in Maricopa county for a
problem with some ballot printers.
David
Becker, executive director of the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation
and Research, said the officials delaying certification were breeding an
illegitimate distrust in elections and disenfranchising voters.
“In the
last year, it’s become an unprecedented dereliction of duty for county
officials to violate their oaths of office and refuse to certify election
results, citing ‘gut feelings’ or alleged problems in [other] jurisdictions,”
Becker said.
Navajo, a
rural Republican-leaning county, conservative Yavapai county and Coconino,
which is staunchly Democratic, voted to certify on Monday.
In Cochise
county, GOP supervisors demanded last week that the secretary of state prove
vote-counting machines were legally certified before they would approve the
election results.
State
elections director Kori Lorick has said the machines are properly certified for
use in elections. She wrote in a letter last week that the state would sue to
force Cochise county supervisors to certify, and if they don’t do so by the
deadline for the statewide canvass on 5 December, the county’s votes would be
excluded.
That move
threatens to flip the victor in at least two close races – a US House seat and
state schools chief – from Republican to Democrat.
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