Arizona certifies Biden’s tight win
Trump’s attorneys still claim fraud over count
PHOENIX – Arizona officials certified the state’s election results Monday, formalizing Democrat Joe Biden’s narrow victory over Donald Trump even as the president’s attorneys continued to claim fraud in the state’s vote count.
Democratic Secretary of State Katie Hobbs certified the election results alongside Gov. Doug Ducey, Attorney General Mark Brnovich, both Republicans, and State Supreme Court Chief Justice Robert Brutinel.
Biden is only the second Democrat in 70 years to win Arizona. He won by 10,457 votes, 0.3% of the nearly 3.4 million ballots cast. Eleven Democratic electors will meet Dec. 14 to formally pledge Arizona’s electoral votes to Biden.
Elections challenges brought by the Trump campaign or his backers in battleground states have largely been unsuccessful as Trump continues to allege voter fraud while refusing to concede.
Election officials from both political parties said the election went well and international observers confirmed there were no serious irregularities.
Last week, a judge in Phoenix rejected the Arizona Republican Party’s bid to postpone the certification of election results in Maricopa County and dismissed the party’s legal challenge that sought a new audit of a sampling of ballots.
Lawyers for the state GOP were scheduled to be in court again Monday to argue for a fresh challenge of the verification process for mail ballots.
Even as state officials certified the results, Trump lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Jenna Ellis held a meeting at a Phoenix hotel to lay out claims of irregularities in Arizona’s vote count. But they did not provide evidence of widespread fraud.
Nine Republican lawmakers attended the hearing, which was expected to last for several hours. They had requested permission to hold a formal legislative hearing at the Capitol but were denied by the House speaker and Senate president.
The certification also paves the way for Democrat Mark Kelly to take his seat in the U.S. Senate, formalizing his victory in a special election to finish the last two years of the term of John Mccain, who died in 2018. Kelly is scheduled to be sworn in on Wednesday in Washington.