The certification opens a five-day window for formal election challenges. Republican Carrie Lake, who lost the governor’s race, is expected to file a lawsuit in the coming days after spending weeks criticizing the election administration. Election results have been largely certified uneventful across the country, but Arizona was an exception. Several Republican-controlled counties delayed their certification despite there being no evidence of vote-counting problems. Cochise County in southeastern Arizona missed the deadline last week, forcing a judge to step in Thursday and order county supervisors to certify the election by the end of the day. “Arizona had a successful election,” said Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, a Democrat who beat Lake in the governor’s race, before signing the certification. “But too often throughout the process, powerful voices propagated misinformation that threatened to disenfranchise voters.” The statewide certification, known as a canvass, was signed by Hobbs, Republican Gov. Doug Ducey, Republican Attorney General Mark Brnovich and Chief Judge Robert Brutinel, a Ducey appointee. When the same group endorsed the 2020 election, Ducey muted the call of then-President Donald Trump, who at the time was in a frantic push to get Republican allies behind his efforts to overturn the election he lost. “That’s a responsibility I don’t take lightly,” Ducey said. “It’s something that recognizes the votes of the citizens of our great state.” Republicans have complained for weeks about Hobbs’ role in certifying her own victory, though it’s typical for election officials to keep their posts while running for higher office. Lake and her allies have focused on problems with ballot printers that produced about 17,000 ballots that could not be recorded on the spot and had to be counted at the polls headquarters. The lines are being supported at some polling places, fueling Republican suspicions that some supporters were unable to vote, although there is no evidence it affected the outcome. County officials say everyone was able to vote and all legal ballots were counted. Hobbs immediately asked the Maricopa County Superior Court to initiate an automatic statewide recount required by law in three races decided by less than half a percentage point. The attorney general race was one of the closest contests in state history, with Democrat Chris Mayes leading Republican Abe Hamadeh by just 510 votes out of 2.5 million delegates. The races for superintendent of public education and a state legislative seat in suburban Phoenix will also be reruns, but the margins are much wider. Once a Republican stronghold, Arizona’s top races went resoundingly for Democrats after Republicans proposed a slate of candidates backed by Trump, who focused on supporting his false claims for the 2020 election. In addition to Hobbs and Mayes, Democrat Sen. Mark Kelly was re-elected, and Democrat Adrian Fontes won the race for Secretary of State.
This story has been corrected to show that Fontes ran for secretary of state, not attorney general, and that Arizona was once a Republican stronghold, not a Democratic one.
