Two Democratic Candidates in Arizona During the 2016 Elections: A Call on the Public Integrity of Elections and the Rule of Law in Arizona

Two other Arizona Republicans who lost their elections have filed lawsuits, one of them being Ms. Lake. Mr. Hamideh was joined in his suit by the Republican National Committee, which he is trailing in the recount race by 511 votes.

On Twitter, Ms. Lake and Mr. Masters have projected victory. Ms. Lake told Fox News that she would be the next governor of Arizona. Mr. Hamadeh, after taking a small lead in his uncalled race, posted a photo on Twitter of himself at a rally and seemed to claim victory, writing, “I want to thank the people of Arizona for entrusting me with this great responsibility.” He has since lost ground and is slightly trailing.

In an email to supporters on Thursday, the Masters campaign said it had seen “troubling” issues during the election and asked for contributions: “We’re expecting a contested road forward and legal battles to come.”

On Twitter, Mr. Finchem jokingly asked his followers to “make sure” Ms. Hobbs and Mr. Fontes weren’t “in the back room with ballots in Pima or Maricopa.” Mr. Fontes fired back, writing, “Stop with this conspiracy garbage.”

Both Ms. Hobbs and Mr. Fontes have called on supporters to respect the vote-counting process. “Despite what my election-denying opponent is trying to spin, the pattern and cadence of incoming votes are exactly what we expected,” Ms. Hobbs wrote on Twitter.

Concerns about possible delays in determining the winners of important races in a close state have arisen because of the confrontation in Cochise County. In Arizona, the deadline to certify results is 20 days after the last day of voting.

During the last few weeks of the campaign, the state elections were cast as crucial to preserving the nation’s democracy. They called Ms. Lake and the other top Republican candidates in Arizona divisive and dangerous, and described the midterms as a referendum on election deniers whose ascension to the state’s highest public offices would have dire implications for how elections are run and how power is transferred.

Democrat Adrian Fontes, who previously ran elections for Arizona’s largest county, has been narrowly elected to oversee voting in the entire state as secretary of state, according to a race call by The Associated Press.

Fontes defeated Republican Mark Finchem, a far-right candidate with ties to the extremist group the Oath Keepers, who was at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

In the run up to the election, democrats, election officials and democracy experts were certain that Finchem would win the race and lead the state down a dark path.

The state was a key battleground for governor and Senate in the past and will likely be again in the near future. Leading Democratic figures, including former President Barack Obama, warned that the GOP’s embrace of Trump’s election falsehoods and conspiracy theories could put democracy at risk if they were to sweep to power.

How Dem Dem Demographics Derive: Counting Election Votes During a Candidate Race in the United States and the Uncalled House of Representatives in California

After Republican candidates lost in Michigan, Minnesota and New Mexico, the race call made Finchem the latest denier to lose in a secretary of state race.

Finchem criticized the state’s election administration as counting continued on past Election Day, and alluded to some sort of conspiracy involving Fontes.

One of the most famous vote-counting conspiracies, dubbed “SharpieGate,” was started in Maricopa after voting ended in 2020 and Fontes became the county recorder.

“We’re going to take off the gloves,” Fontes said. I don’t care who you are, I will call out the election denialists for lying. I am willing to let the people know there are no two sides in this conflict. There’s one side. There’s the American side. The other side is illegitimate.”

Lake was one of the biggest liars in the Republican Party, promoting former President Donald Trump’s lies as the centerpiece of her campaign. While most of the other election deniers around the country conceded after losing their races in November, Lake has not. She wanted the judge to order a revote or declare her the winner.

In Arizona, where CNN predicts Sen. Mark Kelly will win reelection, the GOP’s nominee for Senate, Blake Masters, wants the votes to be counted before anyone predicts the outcome.

So far, Democrats will hold 49 seats in the Senate and Republicans will hold 49 – meaning Democrats only need one more seat to clinch the majority in the Senate (with Vice President Kamala Harris casting the tie breaking vote). If they are successful in Nevada, they could reach that critical 50-seat threshold.

There are at least 21 races still uncalled in the state of the House. Democrats have won 203 seats so far, while Republicans have won 211 (218 seats are needed to control the House), according to CNN projections. Many of the uncalled House races are in California.

Control of the US House is still in doubt. Even if the GOP wins a majority, it will be less than they had hoped. Kevin McCarthy, the House Minority Leader, had hoped to become the next House majority leader, but the unexpected outcome has already produced a lot of second-guessing on his part.

The Closing Process in Clark County, Nevada, was canceled at the 14th of November and the Census Director for Pima County

CNN says there are about 30,000 more mail-in ballots that need to be counted in Clark County, which includes Las Vegas.

“Curing” is a process in which voters correct problems with their mail ballot, ensuring that it gets counted. This can mean validating that a ballot is truly from them by adding a missing signature, or by addressing signature-match issues. The deadline for voters in Nevada to fix their ballots is the 14th of November.

The elections director for Pima County told CNN that she expected to have around 85,000 left to count on Friday.

He said he was certain that most of the votes would be recorded by Tuesday. He said the county will continue to report about 85,000 votes per night until they are done.

Hargove said that she hopes by Monday that Pima County will have the majority of the remaining votes counted. She had told CNN that the votes would be counted by Monday morning. She said on Friday night that she would no longer be the case due to large amounts of votes received earlier in the day.

Comments on an Arizona Election Results by Mr. Gates, David Stevens and the Campaign for a Scaled-Down Hand Count Audit

Gates said the allegations were offensive and that they shouldn’t have been made.

Masters also accused the county of mixing up uncounted ballots with ballots that had already been counted. The Republican National Committee and the Republican Party of Arizona said in a statement that the election has exposed some deep flaws in the election administration. It is important that an accurate and prompt announcement of election results that can be accepted by all voters is made in Arizona.

On Friday night, the RNC and the Republican Party of Arizona tweeted a statement criticizing the county’s process, and demanding that it require “around-the-clock shifts of ballot processing” until all of the votes are counted, along with “regular, accurate public updates.” The groups also threatened that they would “not hesitate to take legal action if necessary.”

The past couple of decades, the average time to complete the count has been 10 to 12 days. It’s not because of anything that Maricopa County has decided to do. The way Arizona law is set up means that we follow the law to make sure that the count is accurate.

After suffering setbacks in court, Arizona officials who have sought to conduct a hand count audit of a rural county’s election results are considering a scaled-down version of their plan that could still inject chaos and delay into the process of certifying the state’s results.

In a vote on Thursday, a state appeals court said it wouldn’t be reversing a court order that bars the full hand count in time for the elections. A lawyer for Cochise County. Recorder David Stevens – a proponent of the hand audit – said that the county isn’t giving up on its efforts to conduct a hand conduct that goes beyond the usual procedures.

Dem Demographers: a Reversal of fortune for the Democrats in Nevada after the Covid-19 Pandemic, and when Lombardo lost the election

Trump, who saw several key endorsed candidates fizzle out in the general election, is trying to cast blame on Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and gin up opposition to the Kentucky Republican ahead of Senate GOP leadership elections next week, CNN reported Friday.

McCarthy needs support from a majority of Republicans to become the speaker, which is more complicated than McConnell can do because he only needs Senate support.

The leader of the House Freedom Caucus met with McCarthy. He said afterward that the meeting “went well” but wouldn’t say if McCarthy has his – or the Freedom Caucus’ – support for speaker.

Friday night marked a stunning reversal of fortune for the Democrats, who had appeared to be in trouble heading into Tuesday’s elections. Candidates like Kelly and Cortez Masto were laboring under President Joe Biden’s low approval ratings, an unfavorable economic climate – with inflation and high gas prices pinching the budgets of families all across the country – and facing historical trends that tend to lead to steep losses in the first midterm cycle of a new president.

But this has been a complex cycle with many different crosscurrents affecting voter behavior, including the Supreme Court’s decision in June overturning abortion rights that angered many voters across the country. Republicans were also hamstrung by Trump’s decision to boost far-right candidates who were loyal to him, but often too extreme to appeal to the swing voters who decide elections. In the end, many independent voters and moderates appear to have rejected candidates they viewed as too extreme or too closely aligned with Trump – and Democrats turned out in droves to protect their incumbent candidates.

The only bright spot for Republicans was Nevada, where voters elected Joe Lombardo as the state’s next governor, ousting Democrat Steve Sisolak. Lombardo, the popular Clark County sheriff, had reminded voters of their struggles during the Covid-19 pandemic, when unemployment in Nevada had peaked at nearly 30%. The economy has rebounded but Lombardo argued that Sisolak’s policies had hampered the state’s recovery.

Counting Election Denials in Maricopa, Arizona: After Biden and Gates, the GOP Propagator Wins 2020

A spokeswoman with the Maricopa County Elections Department told CNN’s Kyung Lah the county office has “redundancies in place that help us ensure each legal ballot is only counted once.”

We reconcile the total ballots against check-ins to make sure they match the results from specific locations. The practice has been in place for decades, and is done with political party watchers present.

Bill Gates, the chair of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, rejected Masters’ suggestion that the county should wipe the slate clean and start counting over again, stating that “is simply not allowed for under Arizona law.” The count of the ballots is in line with previous years, according to Gates.

“Let the count continue on and at the end, if they have issues they choose to take to court, they have every right to do that, and we’ll let that process play through,” Gates added.

Kelly entered the 2022 cycle well positioned to withstand the headwinds facing Democrats – even in a purple state like Arizona that Joe Biden narrowly won – because of his formidable fundraising and unique personal brand as a retired astronaut, a Navy veteran and the husband of former Rep. Gabby Giffords.

Masters, a first-timer, was able to make it to the GOP primary with the help of Peter Thiel, his former boss. He appealed to Republicans by promising to prioritize immigration issues, and in a campaign video released last year, he said he believed Trump won the 2020 presidential election.

The phone call from Trump urging Masters to go stronger on election denials was caught in a Fox documentary, and Masters seemed to change his mind. In the final week of the campaign, Masters told CNN’s Lah he didn’t believe moderates were bothered by his comments about the 2020 election, insisting that voters were far more focused on their concerns about inflation, crime and the border.

After his primary victory in August, Masters scrubbed his website of language that included the false claim that the election was stolen. Under questioning from the moderator during a debate with Kelly, Masters conceded that he had not seen evidence of fraud in the 2020 vote counting or election results in a way that would have changed the outcome. In that debate and on the trail, Kelly had argued that the “wheels” could “come off our democracy” if election deniers like Masters were elected.

Throughout the campaign, Kelly portrayed Masters as a candidate who was outside the mainstream, who would jeopardize abortion rights, as well as Social Security and Medicare. In a state where lawmakers passed a new ban on abortion at 15 weeks earlier this year – and where there are legal efforts underway to ban abortion in almost all cases – Kelly’s campaign kept a relentless focus on Masters’ anti-abortion stances.

The Dead Are Dead: The Counting of the Undecided Primary Election Voting Numbers in California, Oregon, and Nevada

It’s Saturday, and election workers are still tallying the votes in pivotal races across the country. As Election Day turns into Election Weekend, here are some things to know.

The razor-thin elections for Nevada’s Senate seat and Arizona’s governorship have yet to be called Saturday as counties in both states work to whittle down the tens of thousands of ballots that still need to be counted.

The Arizona Senate candidate Masters, the Republican National Committee and the Republican Party of Arizona criticized the tabulation process in Maricopa County Friday.

The political world’s eyes are now on the battle for control of the House, where Republicans appear to be slowly inching toward a narrow majority but Democrats’ hopes have not yet fully faded.

Democrats scored a major coup in Washington’s Republican-leaning 3rd District, where on Saturday CNN projected that Democrat Marie Gluesenkamp Perez would defeat Republican Joe Kent, who had aligned himself closely with former President Donald Trump.

Her success came as a result of Trump’s efforts to punish Republicans who voted to impeach him. Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler, a moderate who was widely viewed as a lock for reelection, did not finish in one of the top two slots in the primary and therefore didn’t advance to the general election.

Many of the undecided races are in California, where counting mail-in ballots can take weeks and significant shifts can occur late in that process. Other states with large quantities of mail-in ballots, including Arizona and Oregon, also have undecided races.

The Geography of Senator Joe Biden’s First Term in the White House: How He Wins and Why he Can’t

President Joe Biden’s first term in the White House will get a huge boost as a result of the outcome. Democrats will have the ability to confirm Biden’s judicial nominees, avoiding the situation where former President Barack Obama faced in 2016 when McConnell refused to hold a vote on his Supreme Court nominee. It also means that Senate Democrats can reject bills passed by the House and can set their own agenda.

He said the Democratic Senate candidates beat some very flawed challengers who did not believe in democracy, honor or truth. The candidates never lost faith even though the polls looked bleak.

He also touted Democrats’ ability to block any GOP measures that would ban abortion rights in the wake of the Supreme Court’s June decision to reverse Roe v. Wade.

The Senate control that is already decided will take some of the national spotlight away from the Georgia Senate race.

“It’s just simply better. The bigger the number the better,” Biden, who is in the midst of an international trip, told reporters in Cambodia shortly after CNN and other news outlets projected Democrats would keep their Senate majority.

“It’s about who has the competence and character to represent us; who’s willing to tell the truth; who has the knowledge needed for the job,” a narrator says in the spot.

overtime will be necessary in Georgia, the second time in a year, when no candidate gets more than 50% of the vote.

Democrats won the Georgia Senate runoffs in Jon Ossoff and David Perdue. Johnny Isakson resigned from the Senate because of health reasons, and was replaced by the now-20-year-old loeffler. Warnock defeated her in the special election for the remainder of Isakson’s term.

If she wins, Lake would be a rare Trump-supported election denier to win a competitive statewide race this year. In addition to the governor’s races in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, other Republican candidates lost secretary of state races in Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, and more.

Democrats won a special election in August and Mary Peltola is likely to break the 50% mark. But Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski faces a stiffer challenge from Republican Kelly Tshibaka, who is backed by Trump as part of his bid for retribution against Murkowski and others who for his impeachment after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol.

The Count of Votes in Maricopa County, Arizona: A News Story from a Campaign to Save a Lady from All I Ever Wanted

“We’re taking ballots in that we’re required to take in according to the law, there’s no way that we can find ballots,” Gloria said. “They’re brought here by the United States Postal Service. As long as it’s postmarked [by Election Day], we process those ballots and put them in the count.”

In a Saturday morning message, Laxalt acknowledged that mail-in ballots that had arrived over the past couple of days continued to break in higher Democratic margins than his team had calculated. He stated that this has narrowed the victory window. The race was going to come down to Election Day drop offs in Clark County. If they are Republican or DEM leaning then we can still win. If they continued to trend heavy DEM. then she will overtake us.”

The close race and Laxalt’s encouragement to voters to ‘cure’ their ballots to make sure there are no technical errors or other issues will make voters think twice before casting their ballot. The deadline to cure ballots is Monday.

“For my people who knocked doors in 115 degree heat, and for the million+ Arizonans who put their faith in me, we are going to make sure that every legal vote is counted,” Masters tweeted. If Senator Kelly has more of them than I do, I will congratulate him on his hard fought victory. Let the voters determine, not the media.

The election officials in Arizona countered Masters argument that the vote count was moving too slowly in the most populous county.

“It’s really, really unfortunate that some candidates, some activists are deciding to spread this misinformation,” Gates told CNN’s Jim Acosta. “We have spent weeks at Maricopa County, getting that word out that people should not anticipate results on election night or even the next day. It takes this long.

A Moment of Truth: Doug Ducey’s (Corrupt) Promise to the State of Arizona During the December 8, 2018 Voting Breakdown

Editor’s Note: Jon Gabriel is editor-in-chief of Ricochet.com and an opinion contributor to the Arizona Republic. He can be reached on social media with the handle@ExJon. The views are of his own. Read more opinion at CNN.

The certification of the state’s voting results was calm and free from the turmoil of the Arizona election. Boring, even. And most voters on both sides seem content with that.

Seated alongside the governor, attorney general and chief justice were the Secretary of State, who officially certified the November 8 results.

The bipartisan group of officials smiled for cameras, showing no sign of the extended post-election battle still wending its way through courtrooms. There were no protesters outside the venue, or anywhere else for that matter.

Election Day was dogged with long lines at polling places, malfunctioning tabulation machines and a last-minute lawsuit to extend voting hours. This was followed by a 13-day vote count, which ended with razor-thin margins in key races. And allegations of fraud and conspiracy ever since.

Yet conspiracy theories, which made a big impact in 2020 in Arizona and elsewhere, are barely making a ripple today. Losing candidates can make accusations of fraud, but Republicans in Arizona now demand proof. Two years of Trumpian “stop the steal” nonsense wore everyone down – even many of the true believers.

Before he signed the certification documents, outgoing Republican Gov. Doug Ducey said he wouldn’t take the responsibility lightly. “It’s one that recognizes the votes cast by the citizens of our great state. Voting is a fundamental principle of our nation’s democracy. It’s an important right and an effective method in ensuring Americans’ voices are heard.

Ducey, a staunch conservative, earned the ire of the “America First” wing of his party back in 2020. During the certification period, he seems to have silenced a phone call from Donald Trump, focusing on his legal duties as governor. During the crazy December, it became a viral moment.

In Cochise County voters chose the GOP by a large margin, so they tried to keep the results from being certified. Their Board of Supervisors finally gave in after a judge ordered them to do so.

Outside of angry statements online and conservative media, few are interested in challenging the results. Nobody is following Lake’s team as they try to start a parade.

State law allows Lake to file her lawsuit five days after the official certification. She must be hoping it will go better than her previous lawsuit in this election.

Lake, who has also amplified former President Donald Trump’s lies about the 2020 election, makes numerous claims in the 70-page suit, including that printer failures at some polling places disenfranchised voters in Maricopa County, creating a “debacle” in the county.

The suit was dismissed for standing in August, with US District Court Judge John Tuchi calling it full of “conjectural allegations of potential injuries.”

Last week, Tuchi agreed, sanctioning Lake and Finchem’s legal team to deter “similarly baseless suits in the future.” The final damages will be announced in about a month.

At Monday’s certification, there was one official who will oversee Lake’s next lawsuit. Outgoing Attorney General Mark Brnovich made sure to clarify that he only served as a witness and not as a party in the court case.

Many Arizonans of all political persuasions still have doubts about the results of the upcoming elections, according to a statement by the state’s Attorney General.

“As attorney general, I have made it one of my office’s highest priorities to defend our election laws and advocate for changes when necessary,” he added. Throughout the rest of my term, I will keep doing that.

Ms. Lake’s lawsuit against the social media company, Cyber Ninjas, and a loose denial network in Maricopa County, Arizona

She appeared on a radio show, accused the social media company of disabling likes and re-postings, and pitched her appearance at a conference with two other people.

One of Ms Lake’s lawyers was involved in an earlier federal lawsuit. The case was filed before the election but a federal judge found that it was false and misleading. The judge said there were misleading assertions and sanctions should be imposed. He said he would determine who among the lawyers involved in the case should be sanctioned at a later date.

The former news anchor at Fox 10 in Phoenix was one of the top candidates for governor in the year of 2022, along with another Republican.

Last month, Ducey said he’d met with the winner of the election and he’d work to make it seamless.

Some of the people who are cited in the lawsuit, and one of the attorneys who filed it, are members of a loose election denial network led by the pillow company owner, Mike Lindell. Another Lake lawyer, Bryan Blehm, represented the contractor Cyber Ninjas during the partisan audit of Maricopa County’s 2020 election results last year and also represented supervisors in Cochise County this year in a lawsuit over an attempt to carry out a hand-counted audit plan.

Dan Barr, a lawyer for Mr. Hamadeh’s opponent, Kris Mayes, said the lawsuit was “based on speculation” and contained “no real facts.” He said he planned to file motions to dismiss it and move it to Maricopa County early next week.

Daniel McCauley was part of the Cochise County team that tried to deny certification of the election results.

Lake is appealing the dismissal of her lawsuit with the Arizona Supreme Court. Hobbs takes office as governor on Monday.

In a decision Saturday, Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Peter Thompson, who was appointed by then-Republican Gov. Jan Brewer, found that the court did not find clear and convincing evidence of the widespread misconduct that Lake had alleged had affected the result of the 2022 general election.

The judge acknowledged the anger of the voters who were not able to vote, and noted that setting aside the results of an election had never been done in the United States.

The judge said that the Court’s duty isn’t solely to incline an ear to public outcry. It is to bring all the actions of the defendants to the attention of the court.

The Election Day Problem in Maricopa County, Arizona. A lawyer’s challenge to the results of a Republican 2022 attorney general race

County officials say everyone had a chance to vote and all ballots were counted, since ballots affected by the printers were taken to more sophisticated counters at the elections department headquarters. They are looking at the root cause of the printer problems.

Lake faced extremely long odds in her challenge, needing to prove not only that misconduct occurred, but also that it was intended to deny her victory and did in fact result in the wrong woman being declared the winner.

Her attorneys pointed to a witness who examined ballots on behalf of her campaign and discovered 14 ballots that had 19-inch (48-centimeter) images of the ballot printed on 20-inch paper, meaning the ballots wouldn’t be read by a tabulator. The witness insisted someone changed those printer configurations, a claim disputed by elections officials.

A person who takes public opinion polls testified on behalf of Lake, claiming technical problems at polling places had disenfranchised enough voters that it would have changed the outcome of the race in Lake’s favor. The expert called by the election officials to testify said there was no proof that the pollster’s claims of up to 40,000 people not voting due to Election Day problems were true.

Earlier on Friday, another judge dismissed Republican Abraham Hamadeh’s challenge of results in his race against Democrat Kris Mayes for Arizona attorney general. The court decided that the votes didn’t add up for the man who finished 511 votes behind Mayes.

A court hearing is scheduled Thursday to present results of recounts in the races for attorney general, state superintendent and for a state legislative seat.

The recount confirmed that Kris Mayes won the attorney general race. The Arizona Superior Court in Maricopa County announced the results of the recount Thursday.

The two were running to succeed Attorney General Mark Brnovich, who finished a distant third in this year’s Republican primary to take on Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly.

The attorney general race remained the last chance for a statewide victory for the candidate endorsed by Donald Trump after Democrats won the US Senate, governor and secretary of state.

Lake and Finchem unsuccessfully sued to overturn the outcome of their elections. Hamadeh filed a lawsuit in State Superior Court in Mohave County challenging the 2022 election results based on what the suit described as errors in the management of the election and the vote counting. Mohave County Superior Court Judge Lee Jantzen ruled against Hamadeh last week.

Hamadeh, a former Army intelligence officer who worked in the Maricopa County prosecutor’s office, parroted Trump’s 2020 election lies during the campaign and said he would increase the size of the attorney general’s office’s election integrity unit.

The Closed Maricopa County Sheriff’s Court: The Final Results from November’s Election Recounts and “Critical Race Theory”

The highly anticipated results announced Thursday in Maricopa County Superior Court are among the last in the country to come out of November’s election and solidified another victory for Democrats who shunned election fraud conspiracies in what used to be a solidly Republican state.

Republicans running in battleground states who spread a false claim that the 2020 election was stolen have lost their races.

Judge Timothy Thomason, who also announced the results of recounts in two other races, said Republican Tom Horne prevailed in the race for state superintendent of public instruction and Republican Liz Harris won a state legislative seat in the Phoenix suburbs.

Outside court, Mayes attorney Dan Barr said the results should give the public confidence in elections, despite the adjustments in vote totals as a result of the recount.

“They didn’t just do a rubber stamp of what it was,” Barr said. “They did a careful evaluation of the votes and they came up with a different result. And so I think people should have a lot of confidence in the process.”

“critical race theory,” which is not taught in public schools but is a hot-button issue for social conservatives, had been promised by Horne to be shut down. He also had said schools were shut down for far too long during the pandemic at Hoffman’s urging.