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AZ’s Kari Lake declares election loss to Dem opponent will be ‘turned around’: ‘I WILL become governor!’

November 20, 2022 | | Print Article

Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, a Republican, refuses to go out in defeat and has pledged that she WILL be the governor.

The pledge came after the Election Integrity Unit of the Arizona Attorney General’s Office submitted a letter to Maricopa County officials on Saturday demanding a full, in-depth report regarding all the documented Election Day issues that occurred.

“The Elections Integrity Unit of the Arizona Attorney General’s Office has received hundreds of complaints since Election Day pertaining to issues related to the administration of the 2022 General Election in Maricopa County. These complaints go beyond pure speculation, but include first-hand witness accounts that raise concerns regarding Maricopa’s lawful compliance with Arizona election law,” the letter reads.

“Furthermore, statements made by both Chairman Gates and Recorder Richer, along with information Maricopa County released through official modes of communication appear to confirm potential statutory violations of title 16,” it continues.

Lake believes that the final report will clear the way for her victory.

“I believe at the end of the day that this will be turned around, and I don’t know what the solution will be, but I still believe I will become governor, and we are going to restore honesty to our elections,” she told the Daily Mail.

“The way they run elections in Maricopa County is worse than in banana republics around this world,” she added.

Lake and her supporters have been raising concerns about how the election played out in Maricopa County ever since Election Day.

As previously reported, a stunning number of polling sites experienced issues with their tabulation machines reading ballots, which in turn resulted in voters being forced to wait in line for lengthy periods of time or return to vote later.

However, ever since Election Day, the establishment press has been seeking to downplay concerns about what happened.

Indeed, to hear the press tell it, anyone raising concerns about the tabulation problems is just a conspiracy theorist.

“Problems With Some Arizona Voting Machines Are Stoking Right-Wing Conspiracy Theories,” a headline at Time magazine reads.

“Arizona’s Maricopa County says it’s identified a solution for voting equipment issues,” a headline at NPR likewise reads.

Similar headlines can be found all over the Internet.

Never mind that the Election Day problems were so severe that Maricopa County Supervisor Bill Gates issued an apology on the day after.

“During a … news conference, Gates said that of the approximately 250,000 in-person votes that were cast on Election Day, ‘the lion’s share’ have been counted and reported, but 7% — or about 17,000 ballots — were placed in a drop box and had still not been counted due to the printing errors,” as reported by Fox News.

“Apologized yesterday. I will do it again today. What happened yesterday we cannot have a repeat of. We are already looking very closely at what happened. Obviously, our team was able to come up with a fix yesterday for what happened,” Gates said.

“So that allowed those votes centers to get back online. But again, we are going to do a deep dive on this. This board will get to the bottom of exactly what happened, and we will do what needs to be done,” he added.

And never mind also that the Election Day problems were serious enough that Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich’s office is now investigating them.

Speaking of Brnovich, the letter from his office draws attention to several key Election Day discrepancies, including printer configuration settings.

“According to Maricopa County, at least 60 voting locations had issues related to some ballot-on-demand (BOD) printers having printer configuration settings that were non-uniform, which appeared to have resulted in ballots that were unable to be read by on site ballot tabulators,” the letter reads.

“Based on sworn complaints submitted by election workers employed by Maricopa County, the BOD printers were tested on Monday, November 7 without any apparent problems. Many of those election workers report that despite the successful testing the night before, the tabulators began experiencing problems reading ballots printed by the BOD printers within the first thirty minutes of voting on Tuesday, November 8, 2022,” it continues.

The letter also complains about “Election Day ‘Check-out’ Procedures.”

“Following widespread reports of problems at voting locations on Election Day, Chairman Gates publicly stated that voters who had already checked in to e-Pollbook, but were having difficulties voting could ‘check out’ of that voting location, and would be able to nonetheless vote in another voting location,” the letter reads.

“Based on sworn complaints received by the Unit, not only have poll workers reported that they were not trained and/or not provided with information on how to execute ‘check out’ procedures, but many voters have reported the second voting location required the voter to cast a provisional ballot as the e-Pollbooks maintained the voter had cast a ballot in the original voting location,” it continues.

Technically, the Arizona gubernatorial race has already been called against Lake, but the Republican nominee refuses to concede until all of the Election Day shenanigans are thoroughly investigated and adequately explained.

Vivek Saxena
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