As of press time, Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake was close to Katie Hobbs, with only 32,200 or so votes separating them, with 350,000 more ballots awaiting tabulation statewide.
It has long been believed that Election Day votes—in person and early ballots dropped off at a voting center—will break in favor of Republican statewide candidates. But there have been complaints from Lake’s campaign that tabulated ballots thought to be from pro-Lake parts of Maricopa County are being held back.
This has kept Lake at a thin margin behind Hobbs going into Saturday night, despite the current Secretary of State’s lack of involvement in widescale public events and Hobbs’ lack of a publicized platform during the campaign.
One consideration is that many of the 17,000 “drawer 3” ballots cast in-person on Election Day, which were not immediately tabulated due to printer toner issues, have been set aside at Maricopa County Tabulation and Election Center (MCTEC). Those ballots have been projected as likely coming from pro-Lake voters.
.@KariLake: "We're very confident that these counts are going to start going heavily our way and we will win this. I assure the people of Arizona we will fix our elections." pic.twitter.com/rTBqSlX5Cd
Lake and her campaign have remained positive, expressing confidence that the ballot remaining to be tabulated will break for her and the other statewide Republican candidates.
We're not in the business of spreading false hope.
Our confidence hasn't wavered & we haven't moved an inch since election day.@KariLake will be the next Governor of Arizona. pic.twitter.com/zU8mp0MFTX
Meanwhile, Sen. Mark Kelly gave a victory speech on Saturday, although his Republican challenger Blake Masters called on Arizonans to wait until all ballots are counted.
And for his part, Attorney General nominee Abe Hamadeh alleged that the Election Day printer toner issue in Maricopa County was directed against Republicans.
.@AbrahamHamadeh: "We knew this was going to happen. They didn’t take election integrity seriously. Instead, they were so smug about it. Calling us election deniers, conspiracy theorists, but if you saw what we witnessed… it was a total disenfranchisement against Republicans." pic.twitter.com/Pjykgf6Fau
Outgoing Arizona Rep. Mark Finchem has also declined to concede his race for Arizona Secretary of State, although Adrian Fontes had a nearly 120,000 vote lead. He would need roughly 70 percent of the remaining votes to hold even with Fontes.
One person who did concede already is Democrat Martin Quezada, who acknowledged Kimberly Yee as the winner of a second term as State Treasurer by a margin of more than 225,000 votes.
THANK YOU, ARIZONA!
I am so honored that you have elected me to serve another four years as your State Treasurer. I pledge to continue to live up to the trust Arizonans have placed in me to responsibly and prudently manage our state’s finances. 1/ pic.twitter.com/2TK7890ZxA
And as previously reported by AZ Free News, Arizona’s second populous county is warning that Pima County’s election results may not be determined for several more days.
Meanwhile, elections officials in all 15 counties were required to begin a state-mandated hand count audit. That audit involves a predetermined number of randomly selected sampling of early ballots cast and election day in-person ballots cast.
But those hand counts can only occur if the political party chairs in each county provided the names of participants by a pre-election deadline. And then the participants must actually show up to conduct the audit.
During the 2020 Primary Election in August, there was no hand count audit performed in Apache, Graham, Greenlee, or Santa Cruz counties due to a lack of participation.
Today Maricopa County's political parties are completing a hand count audit for races in the 2022 General Election. This is a key step to validate the accuracy of the tabulation system through a random hand count audit. Watch it live at https://t.co/3xsiCA1dkx. pic.twitter.com/Jswzn6YNJp
— Maricopa County Elections Department (@MaricopaVote) November 12, 2022
An effort by some Cochise County officials to conduct a 100 percent hand count audit of all ballots hit a roadblock when the Arizona Court of Appeals and the Arizona Supreme Court declined to hear the matter on an expedited basis.
Instead, the court of appeals set several deadlines for December to hear the arguments from Cochise County’s two Republican supervisors and Republican County Recorder as to why they have authority to hand count more ballots than what is required in state law.
The appeal stems from a Pima County judge’s ruling that hand counting all ballots conflicts with language in state law for a “random” selection of ballots. A Nov. 15 meeting has been called by the board in hopes of modifying their full hand count directive to one calling for the audit of only 99.9 percent of ballots.
Attorneys for the board contend this complies with the randomness concern. One outstanding question is how Recorder David Stevens, whom the board has tasked with the expanded hand count audit, will get his hands on the ballots which are currently in the legal custody of the county’s election director, Lisa Marra.
Cochise County Attorney Brian McIntyre, himself a Republican, authored a Nov. 10 letter to Marra’s attorney outlining several “potential criminal acts” that could result if attempts are made to take the ballots from Marra’s custody without a court order.
McIntyre’s letter was copied to Cochise County Sheriff Mark Dannels, who has not taken a public position on how his deputies will respond if the expanded hand count moves forward.
Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake was unable to close the gap between her and Democrat Katie Hobbs as of Wednesday night. Hobbs widened her lead from just over 8,100 votes to over 13,000 votes.
Hobbs gained 33,000 votes, putting her at 953,700 votes; Lake gained over 28,000 votes, putting her at over 940,700 votes.
There remains around 400,000 ballots to be counted in Maricopa County. In a press release, the county approximated this to be 17,000 Election Day ballots, 382,900 early ballots, and 7,800 provisional ballots.
Maricopa County – 62,034 Ballots Reported
Kari Lake – 28,058 (45.9%) Katie Hobbs – 33,018 (54.1%)
~360,000 Ballots left in Maricopa
Reminder(!!!) – This drop is only about 15% of the total ballots remaining and the batch we expected to be the worst for the Republicans. #AZ
Lake told Fox News that she anticipated overtaking Hobbs in the coming days. Hobbs didn’t post about the ballot dump as of press time.
.@KariLake: “I feel 100% certain I’m going to win…We’re only down by a few thousand votes right now, when those votes come in we’re gonna see a lot of liberal minds blowing up.” pic.twitter.com/QX5EGcnSXw
Arizona’s closest races were yet to be called as of Wednesday night, as incoming ballots close the gap between Democrats and Republicans. At least 611,300 ballots are yet to be counted.
Maricopa County delayed updating its remaining ballot counts for several hours. AZ Free News was unable to get the counts by press time.
The second-highest number of uncounted ballots comes out of Pima County. Their recorder, Gabriela Cázares-Kelly, told reporters on a press call that it may be until next Monday or Tuesday before they finish counting those ballots.
When could Pima County finish counting ballots?
"The 14th or 15th, we should have the majority and just be looking at those last … ballots," @GabriellaCKelly tells reporters …
A court ruled against a request to extend Maricopa County polling hours despite mass voting machine failures, after Senator Mark Kelly (D-AZ) petitioned to reject the request. Kelly is in a highly contested race against one of the GOP candidates that filed suit, Republican challenger Blake Masters.
Two Republican candidates, Masters and Kari Lake, filed an emergency request on Tuesday afternoon to extend the polling hours to 10 pm, after the mass failure of tabulation machines across the county for over eight hours. This extensive failure resulted in issues such as voters spoiling ballots, leaving without voting, or unwillingly casting a provisional ballot.
One of the lawyers that filed the case, Harmeet Dhillon remarked that Kelly’s intervention was hypocrisy given his public commitments to thwarting voter disenfranchisement.
“Goes to show you that Democrats’ platitudes about voting rights are often situational, at best,” said Dhillon.
Hearing concludes. Court rules against the TRO request, despite the admitted problems with voting in Maricopa County, and multiple factual declarations from voters affected by bad instructions and malfunctioning equipment at over 25% of polling places in Maricopa County. https://t.co/Dl3slewbYG
A lawyer for the Arizona GOP, Alex Kolodin, called the court’s rejection “unfortunate” in an interview with “The Conservative Circus.” Kolodin shared that frustrated voters left polls, or were forced to cast a provisional ballot after they checked in at a malfunctioning vote center. The law doesn’t allow for voters to cast a ballot at another polling location after they’ve checked in at one location.
“The campaigns tried to explain to the judge that this was a very unique situation with this widespread issue where voters really were deprived of the right to vote and that made it a unique circumstance that warranted keeping the polls open a couple extra hours,” said Kolodin.
Lawyer Alex Kolodin discusses why voters were not granted more time to vote given the high percentage of counting m https://t.co/XfTYCfF7Za
Kolodin said that at least 33 to 40 percent of vote centers were affected by tabulation machine failures. Kolodin stated that the timing marks on the ballots likely weren’t printed properly, which meant the tabulators couldn’t read them.
Kolodin added that printers have been a major issue for Maricopa County since the 2020 election, and were at the root of the SharpieGate controversy.
“It’s funny, the county has known about ballot printing issues for two years,” said Kolodin.
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.
As the end of Election Day drew near, Republican candidates Blake Masters (Senate) and Kari Lake (gubernatorial) filed an emergency motion in court to keep Maricopa County polls open until 10 pm. Polls close at 7 pm.
The complaint cited that voters were convinced by poll workers to spoil (discard) their ballots or not vote at all. Reportedly, those voters convinced to spoil their ballots were erroneously told that they could again cast a vote at another location.
“[N]umerous individuals presenting to vote at some or all of these locations were unlawfully induced by poll workers to discard their ballots or otherwise forfeit their opportunity to cast a legally sufficient vote,” stated the complaint. “Immediate judicial intervention is necessary to prevent irreparable injury to the Plaintiffs, vindicate the clear directives of the Arizona Legislature, ensure the fair and equal treatment of all Maricopa County electors guaranteed by the Arizona Constitution, and secure the integrity of the results of the November 8, 2022 general election.”
The lawsuit stated that at least 36 percent of all vote centers in Maricopa County experienced ballot tabulation machine failures — or, about 80 vote centers. That’s an increase from the noontime estimate given by Maricopa County Board of Supervisors Chairman Bill Gates, who said that about 60 vote centers, or 27 percent, were impacted by malfunctioning tabulators.
We’re getting reports that lines are getting shorter! Many people are just now getting off of work & headed to VOTE!
Reminder: if you are in line at 7:00 when polls close, stay in line! They legally must let you cast your ballot.
As AZ Free News reported Tuesday, it took officials eight hours to announce the potential cause for the tabulation failures: printer settings.
The Republican National Committee (RNC) and an individual, former state legislator and elector Jill Norgaard, joined in the petition.
In addition to keeping vote centers open, the group also asked the court to suspend the public release of tabulated early ballot returns in the county until 11 pm. They also asked that polling inspectors allow voters to complete and cast a provisional ballot if they’re recorded as having already cast a vote.
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.
Democratic gubernatorial candidate Katie Hobbs said she would remove the shipping containers closing up the border wall gaps if elected. Governor Doug Ducey closed the border gaps using shipping containers topped with razor wire in August; he refused the Biden administration’s demand last month that he remove them.
In an interview with KYMA, Hobbs called Ducey’s shipping containers nothing more than a “political stunt.” She insinuated that Ducey’s motive wasn’t so much to secure the border wall as to instigate a legal fight with the Biden administration. Hobbs indicated that the Biden administration had the border situation under control.
“We need to work with the federal government to implement solutions that are right for Arizonans,” said Hobbs.
Democratic nominee Katie Hobbs said she would remove the containers from the gaps to avoid a potential lawsuit as the containers were placed on federal land.
"These kinds of things are political stunts that aren't really solving issues at the border," Hobbs said. pic.twitter.com/RsE5d5x7So
The shipping containers took 11 days and about $6 million to install. For well over a year in office, the Biden administration refused to add to the border wall. They spent an estimated $3 million every day to not complete the border wall under contracts set by former President Donald Trump, or around $2 billion in total.
Yet, Hobbs claimed in an NBC interview a little over a week ago that Arizonans were “tired of inaction at the border.” Hobbs implied that she would largely pass the border crisis buck onto the federal government.
“[T]his is largely a federal issue,” said Hobbs.
Arizonans are tired of the inaction at the border, and more importantly, they’re tired of Washington using the border as a political football. Here's what I'll get done: pic.twitter.com/8zmRb8YLWV
Unlike Hobbs, Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake told KYMA that she would ignore the Biden administration’s request to remove the shipping containers.
Lake’s campaign later remarked that Hobbs wanted no border wall at all.
Any barrier is preferable to no border.@katiehobbs knows this. She just doesn't care.
She is an open borders activist.
Hobbs wants to make the rest of the world's problems our own.@KariLake will secure our border & protect Arizona. https://t.co/vFTnZDICyX
Hobbs’ endorsements from law enforcement included a prominent sheriff who denied the existence of the border crisis. Santa Cruz County Sheriff David Hathaway rejected Arizona National Guard assistance for his people last April. Hobbs said that Hathaway’s support as a border sheriff reflected her border policy.
Securing the border means stopping crime at the border. That’s something we can all agree on. My border plan is endorsed by 2 border sheriffs because my focus is keeping communities safe & taking real action on border security – not playing politics w/ this issue like my opponent pic.twitter.com/Xywe7m213Q
