Arizona was one of the states in the center of the 2020 Presidential election controversy.
Now the Grand Canyon State is at it again in the 2022 Midterm cycle.
And Arizona’s election day mayhem continues to wreak havoc as questions remain.
Arizona can’t seem to count
Questions surrounded a handful of states in 2020.
Arizona was one of those states.
Katie Hobbs was the Secretary of State in charge of the vote count.
In 2022, Hobbs decided she deserved a promotion and ran for Governor.
Polling showed her as a huge underdog to Republican Kari Lake in the election.
Given controversies in past elections run by Hobbs, and the conflict of interest in counting ballots in her own race, former Secretaries of State in Arizona – including one Democrat – suggested Hobbs recuse herself from the count.
She refused.
After a full week of counting, and problems with voting machines in GOP stronghold precincts on election day –presto change-o, whaddayaknow, Hobbs received just enough votes for the upset victory over Lake.
Now the Lake campaign has hired investigators to look into all the election irregularities that took place, especially in Maricopa County – by far the largest in the state – on election day.
The investigators have found the election day problems were much larger than first reported.
In fact, they’ve found that nearly two-thirds of precincts – 63% – in Maricopa County experienced “material problems with the tabulators not being able to tabulate ballots.”
“In many vote centers, the tabulators rejected the initial insertion of a ballot almost 100% of the time, although the tabulators might still accept that ballot on the second, third, fourth, fifth, or sixth attempt to insert the ballot,” the RNC attorney report states. “However, many ballots were not able to be tabulated by the tabulators at all, no matter how many times the voter inserted the ballot.”
This resulted in more than half – 51% – of Maricopa County election day voters having to wait at least 2-3 hours to vote.
Many couldn’t wait and left without voting.
That is the definition of voter suppression.
While Democrats dominated in early voting, upwards of 70% of election day, in-person voters were Republicans.
Lake has started posting testimonials of her supporters whose votes weren’t counted on her Truth Social page.
Meanwhile, two Arizona counties have said they will delay certifying election results due to the election day voting issues.
And Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich – who says his office has received hundreds of complaints, including first-hand witness accounts – is also holding off on certification until he receives answers from Maricopa County election officials.
The AG’s office has given the county until Nov 28 to respond.
However, Maricopa County election officials are finding themselves in even more controversy.
Stephen Richer is a top-ranking election officer in the county.
News: @stephen_richer, the Maricopa County recorder, is launching a PAC to support Rs running for non-federal AZ offices who "acknowledge the validity of the 2020 election and condemn the events of Jan. 6, 2021 as a terrible result of the lies told about the November election."
— Meg Cunningham (@Meg_Cunn) November 17, 2021
But Richer is no non-partisan bystander.
He’s a radical Never-Trumper, who launched a PAC opposing candidates who question the results of the 2020 election and/or don’t think January 6, 2021 was the worst day in American history.
It’s also been discovered via campaign finance reports, Richer is a donor to the radical resistance group, PatriotTakes.
PatriotTakes is by no means patriotic, describing itself on Twitter as a group of “dedicated researchers monitoring and exposing right-wing extremism and other threats to democracy.”
In other words, it’s a doxing group that targets political opponents.
Now all eyes remain on Arizona, where gubernatorial, U.S. Senate and House, and Attorney General races ran incredibly close.
Patriot Political will keep you up-to-date on any developments to this ongoing story.
