Kari Lake Sues to Overturn Election Loss

UPDATE Dec 10, 2022 7:00 AM CST

Kari Lake promised last month that her fight for the Arizona governorship wasn't over, and on Friday she made good on that promise. The Trump ally filed a civil complaint Friday in Maricopa County that, per ABC News, seeks "unprecedented and likely unlawful relief of fully overturning the state's election and certifying her as the winner instead of [Katie] Hobbs." "This case is about restoring trust in the election process," claims the 70-page suit, which ABC notes contains "multiple falsehoods and distorted assertions." Lake's beef includes complaints about issues with printers and tabulating machines on Election Day in the state's largest county, but Maricopa County officials say those problems were intermittent and that voters were given other options at the polls, meaning no one was deprived of their ability to vote. Arizona officials certified the state's election results on Monday.

Nov 17, 2022 11:00 AM CST

Kari Lake, the Arizona gubernatorial candidate who refused to commit to accepting a losing election result, is now challenging her loss to Democrat Katie Hobbs. "I am still in this fight," the Trump-backed Republican says in a video posted to Twitter on Thursday, adding she's assembled the "best and brightest" legal team to challenge the election in which she claims "tens of thousands of Maricopa County voters were disenfranchised." Throughout the race, Lake—who supports former President Trump's claims of a stolen election in 2020—called on Hobbs, Arizona's secretary of state, to recuse herself from overseeing the election. After the race was called for Hobbs, Lake described the result as "BS."

"For two years, I've been sounding the alarm about our broken election system here in Arizona. And this past week has confirmed everything we've been saying," Lake, a former TV news anchor, says in the video, per Mediaite. "The fox was guarding the henhouse, and because of that, voters have been disenfranchised." She claims "nearly half of all polling locations had problems with tabulating machines and printers" on Election Day. Election officials have acknowledged issues with ballot tabulation machines in some 70 of Maricopa County's 223 voting centers but say no one was disenfranchised, per the New York Times. They say affected voters were simply asked to deposit their ballots in a secure box so they could be tabulated later.

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Regardless, Republican groups are collecting accounts of voters who experienced issues at the polls, which the Times notes "could become fodder for lawsuits claiming the election was troubled." The outlet adds Lake's stance "could prove a turning point for her party and the far-right faction of election deniers." While establishment Republicans have been urging Lake to concede—Republican Gov. Doug Ducey called to congratulate Hobbs on Monday—others are urging her to keep up the fight, Trump among them. According to the Times, Trump called Lake on Sunday and falsely claimed Democrats were trying to steal her election victory—a claim he repeated on his social media site. (More Kari Lake stories.)