Arizona certifies midterm election results despite GOP challenges
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Arizona election officials certified the midterm election results on Monday, declaring Democrats winners in high-profile Senate and gubernatorial races over Republican candidates who falsely claimed the 2020 election was rigged.
The certification now opens a five-day window for challenges to the election. The Republican candidate for governor, Kari Lake, is expected to file a lawsuit after criticizing the administration of the election.
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Katie Hobbs, the Democratic secretary of state, will be the next governor, Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) will keep his seat for a six-year term, and Adrian Fontes, the former Maricopa County recorder, will be secretary of state. The attorney general’s race will go to an automatic recount following the certification after Democrat Kris Mayes led Republican Abraham Hamadeh by only 510 votes, a result of recent rule changes by the state legislature.
Arizona was the only state in last month’s midterm elections where Republicans running for top positions had all embraced former President Donald Trump’s false claims of fraud in the 2020 election. All of those candidates lost or are behind their Democratic opponents in the vote count. The certification became a battle between election officials and some Republican candidates, and there were allegations of printer malfunctions and voter disenfranchisement.
Several Republican-controlled counties delayed their certifications despite no evidence of problems with the vote count. Last week, Cochise County, a rural conservative county, was ordered by a judge to certify its results. GOP board members in Mohave County also sought to delay certifying their vote canvasses.
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Hobbs signed documents to certify the results in all 15 counties at an event on Monday alongside Gov. Doug Ducey (R-AZ), Attorney General Mark Brnovich, and Robert Brutinel, the chief justice of the Arizona Supreme Court.
“Arizona had a successful election,” Hobbs said. “But too often throughout the process, powerful voices proliferated misinformation that threatened to disenfranchise voters.”