Katie Hobbs, the Secretary of State of Arizona, and Kris Mayes, a Democratic candidate for Attorney General, are both named defendants in a lawsuit.
Arizona Republicans have filed a lawsuit claiming that election officials were corrupted by their own ineptitude, which affected the outcome of the midterm elections.
Abraham Hamadeh, the Republican contender for attorney general in Arizona, and the Republican National Committee filed a lawsuit against many election officials on Tuesday.
Katie Hobbs, the Secretary of State of Arizona, is named in the case, as are all of the county recorders and boards of supervisors in the state.
Republicans have said they are not charging “fraud, manipulation, or other deliberate misconduct,” and they have also said the alleged mismanagement did not have any bearing on the outcome of the election.
Hamadeh claims that the people of Arizona “want answers and need transparency” after the General Election was “grossly incompetent and mismanaged” by some election authorities. Due to “pervasive blunders by our election authorities,” thousands of Arizona residents had their votes invalidated, and their voices were effectively muzzled.
In Arizona’s attorney general election, Hamadeh’s Democratic opponent Kris Mayes came up 510 votes ahead, prompting a recount.
Supervisor Bill Gates of Maricopa County, Arizona, had to issue an apology when tabulation devices failed at almost 20% of polling places within hours of Election Day’s start.
Vote tabulation was delayed because the county claimed that certain voting machines’ printers were malfunctioning and failing to produce enough dark ink.
Election authorities in Maricopa County said that at least 60 polling places had trouble printing ballots. The assistant attorney general is requesting a detailed report on these matters, as well as the “check-out” procedures and official ballot reports from each polling place.
Hamadeh and the RNC claim that authorities in Maricopa County improperly rejected provisional votes and incorrectly marked early voters.
There are more Arizona lawmakers than just Hamadeh and the RNC who are unhappy with how the state’s electoral system performed in the elections.
On Saturday, Assistant Attorney General Jennifer Wright wrote to the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office, asking for an explanation of the election problems before next week’s certification of the results.
Wright reported that hundreds of complaints had been filed with the Elections Integrity Unit of the Arizona Attorney General’s Office since Election Day over problems with the conduct of the 2022 General Election in Maricopa County. The allegations “go beyond sheer conjecture” and include “first-hand witness testimonies that raise issues over Maricopa’s lawful compliance with Arizona election law.”