Many of the candidates who endorsed Trump’s lies that the U.S. 2020 Presidential election was “rigged” and “stolen” have been defeated by Democrats in the November midterm elections. Democrat leaders are already signaling the changes that will shape the 2024 presidential elections – which has led the former president to moderate his tone in his recent campaign for a third term.

Arizona remains the hotbed of election conspiracies that have been trying to cast doubt about how the 2022 election will be managed. Trump questioned Biden’s victory in Maricopa County, and the now-defunct firm Cyber Ninjas conducted a sham audit of Maricopa County results#Trump pic.twitter.com/x7E8LyZOJS

— News Live (@NewsLiveFree) November 26, 2022

Arizona, a hotbed of election conspiracies that spawned the now-defunct firm Cyber Ninjas conducting a sham audit of Maricopa County election results after Trump questioned Biden’s victory, remains engaged in efforts to cast doubts about the operation and management of the midterm election. Unfortunately, the attempt to undermine democracy will continue despite the defeat of the most prominent proponents of Trump’s election lies.

At the top of Arizona’s GOP ticket, Trump-backed Republican candidates, including defeated Secretary of State candidate Mark Finchem, defeated GOP Attorney General candidate Abe Hamadeh and defeated GOP gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake, have claimed that an issue with Maricopa County’s printers on the day of the election led him to exaggerate the outcome of the election. As a result, Kris Mayes trails his opponent by 510 votes as they move toward a recount.

Election Day Printer Malfunctions

Tabulator machines could not read some ballots at seventy polling places because of printer malfunctions on Election Day. Once the problems have been resolved, these ballots are placed in a secure ballot box and counted separately. It was unfortunate that long lines and inconveniences resulted from the election, which Bill Gates called “unfortunate” on Twitter, but he did emphasize that “every voter had a chance to cast their vote.”

The issue has spiraled into a swirl of conspiracy theories and misinformation within the hard-right bloc of Arizona’s GOP Party despite other Republican election officials taking great steps to suppress conspiracies and fact-check them in real-time. Among those officials signaling that it is time to move forward is Arizona Governor Doug Ducey, a GOP leader who rebuffed the former president’s efforts to reverse the 2020 election results in his state.

The Democratic Secretary of State, Katie Hobbs, remains in a close race in Lake’s race against her. According to Ducey, he posted pictures on Twitter of his meeting with Hobbs on Wednesday, congratulating the governor-elect on the victory in a challenging race and offering full cooperation in assisting her as she takes over the state’s leadership.”

The upcoming week could be critical for the issue at hand. A deadline of Monday has been set for the Grand Canyon State to certify its general election results. Throughout the state, certification will be conducted on December 5. Recounts can only be conducted once certification has been granted. (https://ausoma.org/) Lake posted videos and missives on Twitter before these events to assure the public that she was “still in the fight.”

Opponents Discriminated Against People

When she recently appeared on Steve Bannon’s “War Room” program, Lake said that her opponents “discriminated against people who tried to vote on Election Day due to long lines common in many states.” Rather than Trump’s 2020 buzzwords such as ‘rigged,’ Lake has tended to use more narrow language. During the campaign, she has described the election process as “botched” and “the worst ever,” and both Maricopa County and her campaign have accused each other of “dragging their feet” in providing information to her campaign.

Marc Elias noted on the Democracy Docket website that Lake’s complaints of voter suppression were ironic when one considers that he has played a key role in defending Republican efforts to restrict access to the ballot box in recent years. Many voters have posted videos to Lake’s Twitter account of their long lines waiting to vote, rejections of their provisional ballots for not registering in advance, and transfers between polling places due to overworked election officials.

If you did not know better, it would be straightforward to mistake Lake for one of the leading advocates for voting, funding for election officials, and same-day registration. But, in Elias’s words, she is neither of these things. During her presentation, Elias noted that long lines of voters caused by equipment failures are not uncommon. Generally, Black, brown, and young voters are forced to wait in long lines because of defective or malfunctioning voting equipment. For example, Maricopa County voters were standing in two-hour lines while University of Michigan students were waiting six hours in near-freezing temperatures to vote,” Elias explained.

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