[RELATED SATIRE] Kari Lake Claims Victory in Georgia Runoff || Photograph by Justin Sullivan / Getty
By Stacey Barchenger and Robert Anglen || The Arizona Republic
Former candidate for governor Kari Lake on Friday filed a lawsuit asking the courts to set aside her electoral loss to Democrat Katie Hobbs and declare her the winner instead.
If a judge won’t declare her the winner, Lake wants an order requiring Maricopa County to re-do the gubernatorial election.
Lake, a former television news anchor and first-time candidate for office, has signaled for weeks she would file a legal challenge over the election, which saw her fall 0.7 percentage points — or about 17,000 votes — short of Hobbs, who is Arizona’s secretary of state.
That filing came Friday, within a five-day window from certification of the election result that is set in Arizona law, and on the same day that several defeated Republican candidates filed their own challenges.
[RELATED SATIRE] Kari Lake Claims Victory in Georgia Runoff
Republican secretary of state candidate Mark Finchem and U.S. House candidate Jeff Zink contested their losses saying Arizona’s election was not full, fair or secure — and must be nullified.
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“A process that should be sacrosanct oozes impropriety,” they said in a joint statement of election contest filed in Maricopa County Superior Court. “Our election is the only mid-term election in the 50 states with such a comical and tragic outcome.”
Republican Abe Hamadeh, who was defeated by Democrat Kris Mayes in the race for attorney general by about 500 votes, also filed a lawsuit that stood in stark contrast to the others, in that it explicitly did not allege fraud or intentional wrongdoing, but sought to eliminate or add votes Hamadeh claims were improperly counted. That race is headed to a recount.
Lake’s 70-page lawsuit includes a laundry list of problems and allegations related to the Nov. 8 election, including echoing many claims she has raised in recent weeks over long lines and printer issues creating “chaos” at voting locations. She claims “hundreds of thousands of illegal ballots infected the election in Maricopa County.”
