Lawsuit Filed To Stop GOP Obstruction Of Election Results

0
635

Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, who was recently elected as governor and will replace outgoing Republican Doug Ducey, has filed a lawsuit seeking to compel the county board in Cochise County to finalize its canvass of the results from the recently concluded midterm elections after the majority-Republican — but only three-member — board delayed the move amid baseless election integrity concerns.

This time around, some have raised concerns about issues on Election Day with the equipment at polling places in Maricopa County, where printers evidently produced ballots too light to be read by scanning devices. Although the problems created technical issues and administrative hurdles, there is no evidence of an intentional conspiracy, and voters did not lose access en masse to the opportunity to cast ballots. Those who encountered the problems were able to either go to another polling place or place their ballots into a secured bin for later tabulation. “DYK “door 3” has been used as the back-up tabulation plan in @maricopacounty since 1996?” the county said on Twitter this week. (“Door 3” is where voters leaving their ballots for later tabulation placed their votes.) “Voters use it in every election. AND in the majority of AZ counties, central tabulation is the ONLY way votes are counted on Election Day including in Coconino, Pima and Mohave counties.”

Per the lawsuit filed by Hobbs, the Republican county board members in Cochise County acted “without statutory authority, and based on demonstrably false allegations about the testing, certification, and accreditation of electronic voting equipment.” Despite an aggressive public comment period during this week’s canvassing proceedings, in which multiple local residents raised the threat of, well, death — one via talking about “interference,” which the individual claimed was a capital offense, and another via sharing a portion from the Bible that talked about the slaughter of the wicked, as it went — the board in Maricopa County opted to finalize its canvass, dispatching the figures to state authorities for further certification. Hobbs is under her own legal requirements demanding the certification of the results, and she can legally move forward — as the rhetorical clock runs out — without the results from Cochise County, potentially leaving the votes from that locale out of state totals and possibly even changing the outcomes of key elections.

“The Board’s unprecedented inaction should not disenfranchise tens of thousands of voters in Cochise County,” the lawsuit said. “The Secretary thus brings this action to ensure that those voters’ voices are heard and their votes counted.” Trump has also gotten involved in the Arizona push, demanding new elections be held, although the GOP’s Senate pick in the state has seemingly largely abandoned all of this, leaving the conspiracy theory-driven fight to Kari Lake and Abe Hamadeh, who were running for governor and attorney general, respectively, and both lost according to initially available results. Hamadeh’s race is going to an automatic recount because of the thin margin — under a half of a percentage point — by which the Democratic candidate ended up ahead.