Two Republican members of the Cochise County Board of Supervisors have refused to certify the November 8, 2022, general election results.
State election officials have vowed to sue Cochise County if the board of supervisors missed Monday’s deadline to approve the official tally of votes, known as the canvass.
Democratic election attorney Marc Elias pledged on Twitter to sue the county. Democratic Secretary of State Katie Hobbs’s office has previously said it would sue if the county misses the deadline.
The two Republican county supervisors delayed the canvass vote until hearing once more about concerns over the certification of ballot tabulators, though election officials have repeatedly said the equipment is properly approved.
Although Supervisor Peggy Judd said she was willing to accept the proof of certification from the Secretary of State’s office, in other news reports, she chose to follow Supervisor Tom Crosby’s move to leave the canvass approval dangling during Monday’s special meeting, according to the Herald Review.
Elsewhere, Republican supervisors in Mohave County postponed a certification vote until later Monday after hearing comments from residents angry about problems with ballot printers in Maricopa County. Officials in Maricopa County, the state’s largest, containing Phoenix, said everyone had a chance to vote and all legal ballots were counted, reports KTAR News.
The 2022 midterm election results have largely been certified without issue in jurisdictions across the country, according to the Associated Press. However, this is not true in Arizona, which was a focal point for efforts by former President Donald Trump and his allies to overturn the 2020 election and push false narratives of fraud.
And while Arizona has long been a Republican stronghold, the November midterm election upended the GOP’s hold, with Democrats winning most of the highest profile races over Republicans who aggressively promoted Trump’s 2020 election lies.
Kari Lake, the GOP candidate for governor who lost to Katie Hobbs, and Mark Finchem, the candidate for secretary of state, have refused to concede. They blame Republican election officials in Maricopa County for a problem with some ballot printers.
State Elections Director Kori Lorick has said the machines are properly certified for use in elections. She wrote in a letter last week that the state would sue to force Cochise County supervisors to certify, and if they don’t do so by the deadline for the statewide canvass on Dec. 5, the county’s votes would be excluded.
That move threatens to flip the victor in at least two close races — a U.S. House seat and state schools chief — from a Republican to a Democrat.
It appears that the issue with the voting machines was nothing more than conspiracy theories that first surfaced in early 2021. They focused on what appeared to be an outdated accreditation certificate for one of the companies that was posted online.
And when social media got hold of this piece of news, it grew out of proportion to what it actually amounted to. Federal officials investigated and reported that an administrative error had resulted in the agency failing to reissue an updated certificate as the company remained in good standing and underwent audits in 2018 and in early 2021.
