Two Arizona Counties Delay Election Certification After AG Sends Brutal Letter to Maricopa County
Two counties in Arizona are withholding certification of the 2022 election.
The move by one of them — Mohave County — is admittedly just to make a statement regarding apparent irregularities in voting in Maricopa County, according to the Associated Press.
The other withholding certification is Cochise County, where a pair of Republican county supervisors said there was not proper certification of machines that count votes, according to The Daily Wire.
Both counties, Mohave in the northwest, and Cochise in the southeast, are controlled by Republicans.
At stake is the determination of the races for governor and attorney general.
Although legacy media has called the gubernatorial race for Democratic Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, the Republican, former Phoenix television news anchor Kari Lake, has cited voting irregularities and refused to concede.
On Saturday, the office of state Attorney General Mark Brnovich, a Republican, ordered an account by Maricopa County officials about their handling of the Nov. 8 election.
Jennifer Wright, who heads up Brnovich’s Election Integrity Unit, said in a letter to the Maricopa county attorney said that the attorney general’s office “has received hundreds of complaints since Election Day pertaining to issues related to the administration of the 2022 General Election in Maricopa County.
“These complaints go beyond pure speculation, but include first-hand witness accounts that raise concerns regarding Maricopa’s lawful compliance with Arizona election law.”
Home to the Phoenix metro area, Maricopa County is Arizona’s most populous county.
There were problems in Maricopa County when tabulation machines would not read some of the ballots. Voters were told to place ballots in what was described as a secure box for later counting, according to the AP.
Wright wants an accounting for the machine problems before Maricopa County certifies balloting on Monday.
And she wants to know how untabulated ballots got scrambled at polling sites and what happened when voters left polls to go to sites where tabulators were working.
“Arizonans deserve a full report and accounting of the myriad problems that occurred in relation to Maricopa County administration of the 2022 general election,” according to Wright.
The tabulation machine problem affected 17,000 ballots, the AP said. Election Day voting — which tends to favor Republicans — totaled only 16 percent of the 1.56 million Maricopa County votes.
In conjunction with the Mohave County board of supervisor’s vote not to certify the election, assessor Jeanne Kentch said local votes had been “worth less than they were prior to this vote due to the mismanagement and disfunction of the Maricopa County Elections Department.”
Acknowledging that the county’s action was merely symbolic, board of supervisors member Ron Gould said, “It is purely a political statement. But it’s the only way we can make that statement.”
Friday, Cochise County’s board of supervisors said they would not certify the election unless vote tabulation machines in their county were properly certified.
Monday, Arizona Elections Director Kori Lorick provided what was described by the AP as certification from the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, threatened a state lawsuit if Cochise County did not certify, and said if certification is not done by Dec. 5 all county votes would be invalidated.
As of mid-day Tuesday, Hobbs was leading by 17,116 votes in the governor’s race at 50.3 percent of the tabulation; Lake had 49.7 percent, according to the secretary of state’s website.
A mandatory recount is required in the nearly 50-50 tie race for attorney general. Democrat Kris Mayes was leading Republican Abe Hamadeh by 510 votes of some 2.5 million cast.
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