(LifeSiteNews) — Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake and attorney general candidate Abe Hamadeh, both Republicans, filed two lawsuits against the state’s scandal-plagued Maricopa County last week alleging violations of election law in the hotly debated November 8 election.
Both lawsuits contend that officials in Maricopa County, where at least 70 out of 223 voting locations reportedly saw vote tabulators malfunction on Election Day, violated election laws in their handling of the contest. Lake and Hamadeh want officials to produce records pertaining to the election, which Lake called “the shoddiest election ever, in history.”
‘They’re Trying to Run Out the Clock’: Kari Lake Files 1st Lawsuit After Election https://t.co/Opfdno6dTm
— Lara Logan (@laralogan) November 26, 2022
Lake announced her Wednesday lawsuit against Maricopa County on Steve Bannon’s War Room, saying her team is on “a very strict timeline when it comes to fighting this botched election.”
The Trump-backed candidate said on Twitter her team “cannot allow an election like this to stand,” and argued that “[w]hat they did on Election Day to punish election day voters is outrageous.”
READ: Voting machine breakdowns cause early Election Day anxieties, flashbacks to 2020
According to Lake, the pervasive voting machine malfunctions across the state’s most populous county resulted in the disenfranchisement of Arizonans who came to cast their ballots on Election Day.
She told Just the News her team is “asking the county to cough up some of the public documentation we need for our bigger lawsuit.”
“Many people are saying they want a redo of Maricopa County. I’ve heard people say throw it out. We have not determined what the remedy is,” the Republican said, adding, “I don’t think you can fix what happened.”
We cannot allow an election like this to stand. What they did on Election Day to punish election day voters is outrageous pic.twitter.com/WkO1xAEqRt
— Kari Lake (@KariLake) November 24, 2022
Lake, who made election integrity and border security key planks of her campaign, has refused to concede to Democratic challenger Katie Hobbs after media outlets projected that Hobbs had scored victory in the narrow governor’s race following days of ballot-counting.
Promising that she is “still in this fight,” Lake has subsequently gathered a barrage of firsthand accounts in a bid to prove that Arizonans were disenfranchised when they went to cast their ballots on November 8.
Lake’s Wednesday lawsuit isn’t the only legal challenge against Maricopa County over its handling of the 2022 election.
Hamedah’s 25-page lawsuit, filed in Maricopa County’s State Superior Court, also alleges that county officials violated election laws and disenfranchised voters, The Daily Wire reported.
“Pervasive errors by our election officials resulted in the disenfranchisement of countless Arizonans who had their voices silenced,” Hamadeh said in a statement. “Arizonans deserve to have an election system that is transparent and fair and right now we have neither.”
According to Hamadeh, the lawsuit will be “the only way to provide accountability and restore confidence in our broken election system.”
The attorney general candidate also said the legal challenge “details a host of errors surrounding the administration of the November 2022 General Election concerning alleged election board misconduct, the tallying of unlawful ballots, and the erroneous counting of votes,” according to a Tuesday night press release.
Moves by Lake and Hamedah to seek transparency in the controversial Arizona election come just days after the Grand Canyon State’s outgoing attorney general Mark Brnovich’s office sent a letter ordering Maricopa County officials to submit a report regarding how they handled the election by November 28.
In the letter, addressed to Civil Division Chief Thomas Liddy with Maricopa County Attorney’s Office, the office of the attorney general said it “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 firsthand witness accounts that raise concerns regarding Maricopa’s lawful compliance with Arizona election law,” the letter read.