Republican Kari Lake rejects Arizona results, promises legal fight
Lake has five days to take legal action against Katie Hobbs' election results.
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Fallen-from-grace White House official Steve Bannon interviewing Kari Lake at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Dallas, Texas, August 5, 2022. (Reuters)
Arizona Republican Kari Lake is promising to take the election results to court after rejecting results of the voting race with Secretary of State Katie Hobbs for the state governor's office.
By gathering 17,000 votes, Hobbs certified her win over Lake, with the state's governor Doug Ducey, Attorney General Mark Brnovich, and state Supreme Court Chief Justice Robert Brutinel as witnesses, as reported by ABC News. Because the certification is done, Lake has a period of 5 days to file legal a court case.
“We’re ready to go with what we believe to be an exceptional lawsuit. And we believe we will be victorious in that lawsuit,” Lake told Real America’s Voice “War Room” host Steve Bannon, who was found guilty of contempt of Congress in July.
“We’ll take it all the way to the Supreme Court if we have to. We will not stop fighting. Because the people of Arizona were disenfranchised,” she continued. “The voters who decided to go to the polls on Election Day, as stated in our Arizona Constitution, were disenfranchised.
“Nobody believes Katie Hobbs won. I know Katie Hobbs knows she didn’t win,” Lake argued, warning that "It's going to be real ugly."
By the end of November, Republican officials in an Arizona county refused to certify the results of the 2022 midterm election, even though there is no evidence of anything fraud with the count from earlier this month. Officials who believe in voter fraud fought back, defying a state deadline and setting the stage for a legal battle.
The county was holding out in the afternoon of a stressful day, which was the deadline for several counties to confirm results, and the move came amid pressure from prominent Republicans to reject results showing Democrats winning top races.
In a lawsuit, the Democratic Secretary of State, Katie Hobbs, asked a judge to order county officials to canvass the election, which she said was an obligation under Arizona law.
The two Republican county supervisors postponed the canvass vote until they heard from election officials again about concerns over the certification of ballot tabulators, despite election officials' repeated assurances that the equipment is properly approved.
Democratic election attorney Marc Elias also pledged, via Twitter, to sue the county.
Read next: US midterms: The new 'voting integrity' militias - Le Monde
