Arizona voters contradict Kari Lake and state AG's allegations of voter fraud

Arizona Assistant Attorney General Jennifer Wright on Saturday sent a letter to Maricopa County revealing that it is investigating "hundreds of complaints" about the 2022 election.

The letter says the AG's Elections Integrity Unit "hereby requests Maricopa formally respond to and address the following concerns that have been raised."

KPNX correspondent Brahm Resnik noted that Wright is a "True the Vote alum," as first reported by Jeremy Duda in the Arizona Mirror.

The letter says, "as the canvass is looming, and these issues relate to Maricopa County’s ability to lawfully certify election results – the Unit requests a response to the aforementioned issues on or before Maricopa County submits its official canvass to the Secretary of State, which must occur on or before November 28, 2022."

Also on Saturday, The New York Times examined the issues raised by GOP nominee for governor Kari Lake, who lost to Democratic Katie Hobbs, the current secretary of state.

"Ms. Lake has claimed her defeat was the result of the 'disenfranchisement' of her supporters in Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix and where technical problems on Election Day introduced delays, confusion and conspiracy theories," The Timesreported. "On Twitter, Ms. Lake’s campaign has claimed that the election was compromised and said that 'the appropriate thing to do would be to let Maricopa County cast their votes again.' But a crucial element has been missing so far in all of these accounts: clear claims that any eligible voters in Maricopa County were actually denied the chance to vote."

With Lake posting videos of disgruntled voters on Twitter, the newspaper reviewed 45 different first person complaints.

"In 34 of the 45 accounts, voters acknowledged that, while inconvenienced, they had ultimately been able to cast their ballots," the newspaper reported. "Three other people described having run into possible issues with their voter registrations. Only one voter, who did not give her full name, claimed to have actually been denied the opportunity to cast a ballot outright, in a brief video that Ms. Lake posted to Twitter. That voter noted, however, that she had arrived at the polling place at the time it closed, suggesting that her late arrival, rather than any disenfranchisement, might have been the reason she was unable to vote."

In the additional seven cases, the voter was unclear whether they had successfully cast a ballot.

"That Ms. Lake and her supporters would dispute a losing result in the race for governor was in some ways preordained. Ms. Lake, a former TV news anchor endorsed by Donald Trump, embraced his false claims of a stolen 2020 election, and during the campaign she refused to say whether she would accept the result if she lost," the newspaper reported. "The drama in recent days has carried echoes of the post-2020 election period, when Maricopa County was the subject of a raft of conspiracy theories and a partisan audit that became a rallying point for the movement pushing the false claims that the last presidential election had been stolen from Mr. Trump. Ms. Lake’s public denunciations about the election results have likely made Maricopa County the final battleground this year for 2020 election deniers who were involved in midterm races."

Lake is currently trailing Hobbs by 17,428 votes.