A recent lawsuit found that Arizona Democrat Katie Hobbs received a new batch of “found” votes after election day that tallied to nearly precisely the number she needed to win the state’s governor’s race.
QUICK FACTS:
- A lawsuit filed by Arizona Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake revealed her Democrat opponent, Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, received a new batch of unexpected votes after election day that tallied to nearly exactly the amount she needed to win.
- The lawsuit, filed last Friday, alleged that there was a 25,000 vote discrepancy in the number of ballots Maricopa County initially reported in the midterm elections and the total later reported in the week. The number of new votes found after election day is significant because the amount just exceeds the 17,000 votes required to put Hobbs over the margin to win.
- Lake’s attorney identified the discrepancy as a “ballot chain of custody problem” in the legal brief.
- “Highlighting the chain of custody failures … is the fact that two days after Election Day was completed Maricopa County found more than 25,000 additional ballots, whereas properly followed chain of custody procedures would require Maricopa County election officials to know the exact number of ballots submitted by the day after Election, November 9, 2022,” the legal team said in the brief.
- The team went on to say that Maricopa County’s “public statements concerning remaining ballots to be counted on November 9, 2022, and November 10, 2022, show an increase of approximately 25,000 votes with no explanation of why the number of remaining ballots could increase.”
KARI LAKE ON THE ARIZONA ELECTION DAY “DEBACLE”:
“Our lawsuit exposes many of the issues that have plagued our election system in Arizona and have disenfranchised hundreds of thousands of Arizonans. Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know that Election Day in Maricopa County was an absolute debacle,” Lake said.
BACKGROUND:
- After the midterms last month, Lake gathered a legal team to “correct the many wrongs” in the state’s election.
- “I’m doing everything in my power to right these wrongs,” Lake said at the time. “My resolve to fight for you is higher than ever.”
- While it was originally estimated that 20% of Maricopa tabulators malfunctioned, an updated report showed that 48% of printers and tabulators malfunctioned.
- After Maricopa County certified its election on November 28th, Lake did not concede to Hobbs, saying that Arizona was “still in the fight” and that Arizona’s election system was broken.
- “Maricopa County, where it took two weeks to count [votes] is the poster child for broken, botched elections,” Lake said. “I can promise you one thing. This fight to save our republic has just begun.”
Jon Fleetwood contributed to this report.
