Phoenix (AP) — Republican official Rural Arizona County On Monday, he refused to prove the 2022 election before the deadline, amid pressure from prominent Republicans to reject vote counts won by Democrats in the U.S. Senate, governor, and other statewide elections.
The state board of elections has vowed to sue Cochise County if the board fails to meet Monday’s deadline to approve the official tally of votes known as the canvas. We’ve held off canvas voting until we hear again about concerns about authentication of tallyers, but election officials have repeatedly explained that the equipment is properly approved.
Democratic election attorney Mark Elias pledged on Twitter to sue the county. Spokesperson Sophia Solis Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, did not immediately comment. Hobbes’ office had previously promised to sue the county if the deadline was not met.
After hearing angry comments from residents about problems with Maricopa County’s ballot printers, Mojave County Republican overseers have postponed certification ballots until late Thursday.
Election results are largely accredited without issue in jurisdictions across the country. That was not the case in Arizona, which has been the focus of efforts by former President Donald Trump and his supporters to overturn the 2020 election and spread false narratives of fraud.
Arizona has long been a stronghold of the Republican Party, but Democrats have won most of the high-profile election campaigns over those who actively promoted Trump’s lies in the 2020 election. Kali LakeThe Republican gubernatorial nominee who lost to Hobbes, Secretary of State Mark Finkem, refused to concede defeat. I am accusing.
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Navajo County, a local Republican-leaning county, voted unanimously to certify after county attorneys warned supervisors that they could be sued if they did not. In , residents urged the oversight board not to approve the election results, citing problems in Maricopa County. The meeting was in progress.
The Mojave County Republican Overseer said last week that he would like to register a protest over the Maricopa County ballot issue, which he will sign Monday. They demanded proof that the ticket counting machine was legally certified.
State elections director Cori Rorick said the machine was properly certified for election use. In a letter last week, she wrote that the state would appeal to Cochise County supervisors to force certification, or the county ballot would be barred if it did not do so by the Dec. 5 statewide canvas deadline. The move threatens to flip winners from Republicans to Democrats in at least two close races (a House seat and a state school principal).
Lake noted that Maricopa County had a problem on Election Day. There, printers at some vote centers produced ballots with markings too light for on-site counters to read. Lake says the line receded in the confusion, which may have dissuaded some of her supporters from voting.
She filed a public records lawsuit last week, demanding the county produce documents clarifying the matter before she votes to prove the election on Monday. I asked for clarification before.
The county responded Sunday, saying no one was being blocked from voting and 85% of vote centers had never queued for longer than 45 minutes. Most Vote Centers had other Vote Centers nearby with shorter wait times.
In response, prominent Republicans, including leader Kerry Ward, told supporters on Twitter not to put their ballots in secure boxes so they would be tallied later by the more robust machinery at the county elections headquarters. He accused him of causing confusion.
According to the county, just under 17,000 ballots were put into these secure boxes on Election Day and they were all counted. Of the 1.56 million votes cast in Maricopa County on Election Day, only 16% were cast in person. Those votes overwhelmingly went to the Republican Party.
The Republican National Committee and Republican Arizona Attorney General Abraham Hamade challenged the election, but Hamade will be automatically recounted by 510 votes.
Ward urged his supporters to push county supervisors to postpone the certification vote until the afternoon of the scheduled hearing in the Hamade case.
