Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake has fueled fears of mail-in ballots. Now she is taunting officials for not counting them fast enough after a record number of people kept their mail-in ballots until Election Day.
Lake accused poll workers of deliberately slowing the count and withholding results, commenting in social media posts and in interviews on conservative news sites.
His campaign, Kari Lake War Room, said in a tweet Friday that the Maricopa County Elections Department was creating a slew of new Holocaust deniers, addressing its refusal to accept the results of the 2020 presidential election.
“This process is a non-transparent joke,” the campaign said. “Our elections shouldn’t be like this. When @KariLake is governor, they won’t be.”
Lake went further, describing the counting process in interviews as “embarrassing” and likening the county’s ballot processing to a banana republic.
Election coverage: Live Voting Updates | Arizona election results
“It’s simple. Stop dragging your feet and post the Election Day voting numbers,” she tweeted Thursday.
About 290,000 mail-in ballots were cast at polling centers across the county on Election Day, surpassing the record number of ballots cast by 70 percent.
Bill Gates, the chairman of the board of supervisors, pushed back against Lake’s claims on Friday, saying staffers were working 18-hour days and counting up to 80,000 ballots a day.
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“I’m going to stand up for my state. We’re doing it the right way,” Gates said. “We’re not doing anything wrong at all.”
Lake’s rhetoric was amplified by other hard-line Republicans, including former President Donald Trump, who fired on election officials’ shifting schedule to complete the count.
“Arizona even said ‘by the end of the week.’ – they want more time to cheat,” Trump said in a social media post on Friday. “Kari Lake MUST win!”
Officials in Arizona’s most populous county initially estimated they would complete the vote count by Friday. But they announced on Thursday that counts would continue on Veterans Day and through the weekend as they grapple with the massive number of ballots cast by voters on Election Day.
Charlie Kirk, the founder of Turning Point USA, a conservative Christian organization aimed at recruiting young Republican voters, also raised concerns about the count.
“Prolonged election counts like this create suspicion and mistrust and are unacceptable,” he said in a tweet on Friday. “The appearance of impropriety can be just as damaging as actual impropriety. Every state must adopt a system to count all votes on election night. Period.”
County officials have long said voters should not expect results on election night, and a final tally will take time. Signatures on each ballot must be verified before being scanned and then counted by tabulators.
State law gives them until Nov. 28 to complete the count.
As Lake criticized the slow count, she trumpeted her electoral victory. She said the ballots would propel her to the governor’s seat because they were Republican ballots.
Shortly after county officials announced Friday that there were 350,000 ballots left to count, Lake suggested she was ready to take legal action if the votes did not go her way.
Election coverage: Voting Updates | Arizona election results
“Arizona and America: Rest assured that I have the brightest and finest lawyers in the nation, right here on the court in Arizona,” she said in a tweet on Friday. “Every ballot has eyes on it. The GOP (Election Day) ballots start rolling in tonight. Keep your champagne chilled, our votes are about to begin.”
Lake and other Republicans have for months urged voters not to trust their mail-in ballots or drop off ballot boxes and personally take them to the polls on Election Day.
Lake and Secretary of State nominee Mark Finchem have made voter fraud conspiracies a cornerstone of their campaigns, discouraging mail-in voting and urging supporters to vote in person.
They filed a joint lawsuit to ban the use of tabulation machines in the 2022 election and proposed adopting manual ballot counting. The lawsuit failed and they filed a notice of appeal.
Finchem said Friday the count was not going fast enough.
“Polls closed days ago and Maricopa County’s incompetence is holding the nation hostage for several close races,” Finchem said in a tweet.
Lake told Fox News personality Tucker Carlson on Friday that she understands why voters are wary of the Arizona election.
“We had such terrible elections. They are mismanaged. They are full of fraud,” she said.
Lake previously aimed problems with voting machines on election day to suggest there was a conspiracy against Republican voters, a claim his own lawyer debunked.
She said in an interview with Carlson on Thursday that the countywide voting machine issues occurred Tuesday “primarily in Republican neighborhoods around the city.” Lake provided no evidence to support his claim.
Vote tabulators at 30% of polling stations on Tuesday were unable to read formatting markers on ballots. The printed markers were not dark enough for the machines to register properly.
Republican National Committee attorney Kory Langhofer said on Tuesday the problems plaguing polling centers were not aimed at districts or Republican voters.
Abe Hamadeh, the Republican candidate for attorney general, lambasted the county on social media on Friday for the breakdown of voting machines.
“30% of FAIL tabulation machines on election day is unacceptable,” he said in a tweet. “Incompetent elections sow doubt and threaten democracy.
Hamadeh claimed an early victory on Wednesday after falling votes gave him a narrow lead over his Democratic opponent Kris Mayes. Additional results reported hours later put Mayes in the lead.
Mayes maintained his lead through Friday afternoon.
Gates said “it’s offensive” for Lake and others to accuse Maricopa County officials of unethical behavior.
He also chastised national media networks for “not being truthful” about why the count was not going any faster.
Maricopa County is following the election process established by the state legislature, he said.
He noted that election observers from both parties were watching the counting process and said nothing unusual happened.
Robert Anglen is an investigative reporter for The Republic. Join it at robert.anglen@arizonarepublic.com or 602-444-8694. Follow him on Twitter @robertanglen
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