Kari Lake Appears to Be Gearing Up For a Legal Fight in Arizona to Contest Chaotic, Glitchy Election
By Debra Heine November 17, 2022
It’s been more than two days since the Associated Press called the governor’s race in Arizona for Democrat Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, but Republican spitfire Kari Lake is showing no sign of conceding the election.
She reacted with defiance, in fact, when the AP called the race for Hobbs, Monday night: “Arizonans know BS when they see it,” she tweeted.
The former news anchor currently trails Hobbs by about 18,000 votes, 49.7 percent to 50.3 percent, with 99 percent reporting. For the past week, the Lake campaign has urged potentially disenfranchised Republican voters to check and see if their votes were counted, and to “cure” their votes if they were not. The deadline for curing votes in Arizona was Nov.16 at 5:00 pm.
Ballot curing under Arizona law allows voters with inconsistent signatures or no signatures on their early ballot to fix their ballots.
According to the New York Times, Lake is currently working with other Republican state campaigns to prepare a legal fight. Lake didn’t immediately respond to an American Greatnessquery about her next move, but her campaign appears to be making the case that the chaotic and poorly-run Arizona election disenfranchised Republican voters.
For the past week, Lake’s campaign has been collecting video testimonials that can be used in court.
One poll watcher who was stationed at the Eldorado Community Center in Scottsdale from 6:00 am to 1:00 pm on Nov. 8, explained in a video that things were running smoothly until a county technician showed up at around 11:30 am to check the voting equipment. After that, he said, the tabulators started malfunctioning.
“We started experiencing issues with tabulators not accepting voters’ ballots,” he explained.
These voters were told to reenter their ballots four different ways in the original tabulator, then if all failed, do the same thing in the second tabulator. Then if it failed again, go back to the first tabulator and try again. If all 12 attempts failed, they were given the choice of spoiling their ballot, having another printed, fill out their ballot again, and then try submitting them into the tabulators again.
He noted that the whole process took over 30 minutes, on top of the hour plus they had spent in line. “They’re only other option was to place their ballot in drawer number 3,” he explained.
The poll watcher said that between 11:30 and noon, approximately 10 percent of all of the ballots were failing, and between noon and 12:30, approximately 20 percent of the ballots were failing. By 1:00, he said, “four out of every ballots were failing.”
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“I’ll never forget the look on these affected voters’ faces,” he added. “They were in disbelief that our system of voting was failing them en masse on the most important election day of the 2022 cycle. In the 44 years I have been voting—99 percent which was in person—I have never experienced such chaos, confusion, and voter suppression.”
A voter in a “deep red” section of Maricopa County said an election worker at her polling place wouldn’t accept his ballot.
Another voter from Gilbert said the voting machine at her polling location rejected the ballots of “EVERYONE in line in front of and behind me.”
Executive Director of the Arizona GOP said AZGOP staffers who manned the ballot curing hotline heard many heartbreaking stories from disenfranchised Republican voters over the past five days.
Arizona Young Republican Ari Bradshaw spoke forcefully about the election day voter suppression issues during a meeting of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors.
Meanwhile, a video has emerged online that allegedly shows illegal ballot harvesting at an Arizona drop box in the weeks before the election.
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Under Arizona law ballot harvesting is a class 6 felony.
The Republican National Committee (RNC) and the Republican Party of Arizona have already filed a lawsuit against the Maricopa County recorder and other Maricopa County election officials, requesting information related to the “staffing and composition of polling place Election Boards, Special Election Boards, and Central Counting Boards.”
The lawsuit, filed in October, claims that Maricopa County failed to hire an equal number of Republican and Democrat poll workers during the primary in August, and refused to provide documentation that demonstrated the County’s efforts to fix the problem.
The plaintiffs allege that during the August 2022 primary, 11 voting centers in Maricopa County “lacked even a single Republican poll worker.” Thus, the Republican plaintiffs are requesting “documentation that demonstrates the County’s efforts to hire Republican poll workers at the 11 voting locations.” Additionally, the RNC requests “[d]ocuments sufficient to identify the respective numbers of registered Republicans, registered Democrats, and individuals with other or no political party affiliations who have been hired” to administer the 2022 midterm elections.
The plaintiffs argue that not providing this information “prevents [them] from monitoring election activity in the most populous county with highly competitive races for statewide offices.” The plaintiffs request a writ of mandamus (a court order compelling a party to take a certain action) requiring the defendants to produce the information the Republicans demand regarding poll workers and other election administrators.
In a couple of tweets Wednesday, Lake signaled what her next move could be.
A German court voided a state election on Wednesday after severe election-day glitches caused confusion and chaos at many polling stations, DW reported. The problems resulted in long lines and many disenfranchised voters, as was seen in Arizona on November 8.
Long lines formed outside many polling stations as voters struggled with extra ballot papers. Some polling stations ran out of ballot papers during the day and others received ones for the wrong district, leading to a large number of invalidated ballots.
Another issue was that the election was supposed to end at 6 p.m., but voters waiting in line at that time were allowed to cast their ballots — at a time when exit polls were already public.
The constitutional court of Berlin declared the September 2021 vote invalid and ordered a rerun, according to DW. In a statement, the court said that a partial rerun wouldn’t be good enough “in view of the large number and severity of the election errors.”
In her last tweet on Wednesday, Lake posted a campaign-style video with Tom Petty’s 1989 hit “I Won’t Back Down” playing in the background.
Lyrics to Won’t Back Down:
Well, I won’t back down
No I won’t back down
You could stand me up at the gates of Hell
But I won’t back down
No I’ll stand my ground
Won’t be turned around
And I’ll keep this world from draggin’ me down
Gonna stand my ground
And I won’t back down
Hey baby
There ain’t no easy way out (I won’t back down)
Hey I will stand my ground
And I won’t back down
Well, I know what’s right
I got just one life
In a world that keeps on pushin’ me around
But I’ll stand my ground
And I won’t back down
Hey baby
There ain’t no easy way out (I won’t back down)
Hey I will stand my ground (I won’t back down)
And I won’t back down
Hey baby
There ain’t no easy way out (I won’t back down)
Hey I won’t back down
Hey baby
There ain’t no easy way out (I won’t back down)
Hey I will stand my ground (I won’t back down)
And I won’t back down (I won’t back down)
No I won’t back down
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