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Republican candidate for governor Kari Lake plans to sue Arizona’s largest county next week to overturn her election loss, sources familiar with the matter tell TIME, as the state’s election system is beset by turmoil more than three weeks after Election Day.
Lake, who lost by less than one percentage point to Democrat Katie Hobbs and has refused to concede, cannot file her lawsuit under Arizona law until state officials certify the election results. That process will take place on Dec. 5, when Arizona’s governor, secretary of state, attorney general, and chief justice will validate the election outcome based on official results submitted by the state’s 15 counties.
In the meantime, Lake’s legal team has been collecting affidavits from voters who claim they were unable to vote on Election Day because of problems with tabulator machines in roughly 30% of Maricopa County’s vote centers, according to Lake campaign insiders.
The equipment problems led to long lines and voter confusion at those polling places. Maricopa County officials have stressed that no voters were denied the right to vote. Anyone who experienced issues with the machines, they said, was able to deposit their ballot in a secure box to be tabulated later. “People were still able to vote,” said Bill Gates, the chairman of the county’s board of supervisors. “It was just a matter of maybe not voting in the way they wanted to.”
Lake trails Hobbs by a little more than 17,000 votes. Lake’s lawsuit, sources say, is likely to claim that more than that many voters were disenfranchised by Maricopa’s tabulator snafus, which they argue had a disparate impact on Republicans, who were more likely to vote in person on Election Day, compared to Democrats, who in recent years have tended to vote early or by mail. It’s a trend that is due in large part to former…
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