Cochise County is the only one of the state’s 15 counties to refuse to certify the election as Trump candidates challenge the results in court.
After countless allegations of fraud in Arizona’s Nov. 8 election, Cochise County, the third most populous county, announced last week that it would not certify the results until an official explanation is provided for all the problems reported.
Broken machines on Election Day, more than 500 reports of people depositing bundles of hundreds of mail-in ballots at polling places, problems with tabulating devices during the count, and a dozen other issues recorded have led county officials, who are made up of both Democrats and Republicans, not to certify the outcome.
Without the Cochise result, the state cannot give a final result for any of the races, which has put Arizona’s Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, who is in charge of running Arizona’s elections, and at the same time, a Democrat candidate for governor, in a bind.
Hobbs, who is said to have believed fraud this time around would be a formality, as it was in the 2020 election, filed a lawsuit Monday to force Cochise, who has yet to certify her victory.
The lawsuit, filed in Arizona Superior Court, seeks to force the Cochise County Board of Supervisors to certify the results by Monday, Dec. 5.
According to preliminary results released by the Secretary of State’s Office, Hobbs won by 0.6% of the vote against Republican Kari Lake.
Whilecwas re-elected against Republican candidate Blake Masters by 5%, Democrat Prosecutor General candidate Kris Mayes won by 0.2% of the vote against Republican Abe Hamadeh, and Democrat Secretary of State candidate Adrian Fontes won against Republican Mark Finchem by 4%.
However, Cochise, one of the state’s 15 counties, was the only county to rebel against what was widely described as a fraudulent Democratic victory.
It refused to certify the election until it was investigated because of complaints from its residents about flaws in the machines that count the votes.
Among those that have already certified their elections is the unscrupulous Maricopa County, the place where the most allegations of fraud were made and where on Election Day.
When a more significant influx of Republican voters was predicted, voting machines began to fail, and thousands of people were sent home.
The certification came at a hearing where many table prosecutors presented objections and evidence of irregularities that Maricopa County officials ignored.
According to these prosecutors, the ballot rejection rate was as high as 52% in some places, an unprecedented number and even higher than the 37% that had been recorded in 2020, when there were also problems with the machines.
That number had already been a historical record; since records have been kept, the ballot rejection rate had been less than 3%.
An estimated 70 of the 223 polling places in Maricopa County reported malfunctioning tabulating machines on Election Day, resulting in approximately 16,000 ballots failing to make it through the electronic tabulators.
As we explained earlier, it is not illegal in Arizona for the person running the election to run for office and to use this position to their own advantage by abusing their power.
REPUBLICAN COUNTEROFFENSIVE
While the election is already close, and Cochise County’s resistance is unlikely to prevent blanket certification of the rest of the state, all eyes are on the Arizona Prosecutor General election.
Tuesday, Trump’s Abe Hamadeh filed a lawsuit challenging the preliminary statewide election results in a race headed for an automatic recount.
Hamadeh, who is running to be the state’s new Prosecutor General, reportedly lost the election to Democratic opponent Kris Mayes by just 510 votes.
In the recount for this particular race, Cochise County’s resistance may be pivotal. With that county finding 510 votes out of more than 4 million miscounted, the victory could break in the Republican’s favor.
Hamadeh’s lawsuit spotlighted irregularities in the infamous Maricopa County, where Hobbs is said to have managed to steal the election.
The court brief alleges that persons whose eligibility could not be confirmed were improperly and unconstitutionally deprived of the opportunity to cast a ballot.
Certain ballots that could not previously be electronically tabulated were improperly tabulated, and many of the signatures submitted on the vote-by-mail ballot did not match those of the voters.
With information from Derecha Diario