Arizona GOPers spread baseless conspiracy theory suggesting vote counting process is rigged
Members of Arizona's Republican Party are spreading unfounded conspiracy theories arguing that the state's voting processes are rigged.
As midterm elections come to a close across the country, the state of Arizona still has hundreds of thousands of votes left to count to determine the winners of several statewide elections.
According to HuffPost, Kari Lake, Arizona's Republican gubernatorial nominee, recently expressed concern about the state's ballot-counting process as she claimed the state's election officials were “slow-rolling” the counting efforts and “dragging their feet.”
Speaking to right-wing pundit Charlie Kirk, Lake said, "They don’t want to put out the truth, which is that we won,” adding, “Katie Hobbs is not winning, she has never been winning; they’re just not counting votes.”
Posing an argument similar to former President Donald Trump's claims following the 2020 presidential election, Lake has been laying the groundwork for those unfounded claims over the past several months.
During the time leading up to the Republican primary in Arizona, Lake said, “We’re already detecting some stealing going on” and added that her loss would be evidence of cheating. After winning the primary, she said, “We out-voted the fraud.”
As of Thursday, November 10, Lake's Democratic opponent Katie Hobbs had a slight edge in the race as votes continue to be counted.
The news outlet reported: "Hobbs had a slight advantage over Lake as of Thursday evening, but as of the night prior, there were about 600,000 ballots left to be counted in Arizona – far too many to presume any result. Most of them were in Maricopa County, home to most of the state’s residents. Voters there turned in 290,000 mail-in ballots on Election Day ― likely a result of Republicans urging their supporters not to trust drop boxes or the Postal Service, as Laurie Roberts noted in The Arizona Republic."
Despite Lake's arguments, the state's election officials shed light on the possible election timeline, "We know everyone would like results faster,” Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer (R) told The Washington Post on Monday. “If you want to help us out with that, well, then get your ballot back to us now.”
Although Arizona allows for processing of early submissions, Lake accused election officials of "intentionally" trying to "bring down the excitement for Republicans."
“There could be some intentional actions here to slow-roll this,” she said. “They always intentionally have the early ballots ready to go, we roll those out on election night, they favor the Democrats and they want to bring down the excitement for Republicans."
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