Maricopa County Election Certification Delayed in Protest
While the 2022 midterm elections were largely less controversial than the 2020 presidential race was, there were still some incidents of note in some rather familial locales.
Take Maricopa County, Arizona, for example, where this week a political protest is now delaying the certification the the election’s results.
The Board of Supervisors in Mohave County, Arizona moved to delay certification of the midterm election results on Monday in protest of voting issues in Maricopa County, becoming the second county to do so.
Advertisement - story continues belowIn a split vote, board members decided to wait until the Nov. 28 deadline to certify the election results as a “political statement” of “solidarity” with those upset with the voting machine issues that plagued Maricopa County, the state’s most populous county. The move comes as Assistant Attorney General Jennifer Wright sent a letter Saturday to the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office demanding explanations for issues with ballot-on-demand printers in at least 60 voting locations.
The election had been a hotly-debated one already.
Democratic Secretary of State Katie Hobbs was elected governor and Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., was re-elected to a full six-year term in office in the midterm election, when nearly 2.6 million Arizonans voted. However, Hobbs’ Republican opponent, Kari Lake, has refused to concede the race, claiming her supporters were disenfranchised by the Election Day issues.
Maricopa County reported problems at about 30% of its vote centers on Nov. 8, when tabulators were unable to read some ballots.
County officials had previously stated that no voters were prevented from casting their ballots, and that every legal vote was indeed counted, but those explanations have done little to quell the fury of the Lake campaign.