Lake contests her loss in Arizona
What happened
Kari Lake, a 2020 election denier, denied this week that she lost the race to be Arizona’s next governor. The Donald Trump– endorsed Republican is suing Maricopa County, alleging voter fraud after Secretary of State Katie Hobbs beat her by 17,000 votes. In swing states, almost every election denier who lost a prominent midterm race has accepted defeat. Lake, however, maintains that vote tabulation issues disenfranchised her supporters. Maricopa, which includes Phoenix and is the country’s fourth most populous county, experienced some technical problems that caused long lines, but officials said everyone was able to vote. At a contentious public hearing this week, Lake supporters demanded that the county’s Board of Supervisors nullify the election. “This is a war between good and evil, and you all represent evil,” one speaker said. The GOP-controlled board still unanimously voted to certify the election. Trump, who recently hosted Lake at Mar-aLago, protested, saying she should be “installed” as governor.
In rural Cochise County, where Lake beat Hobbs by more than 17 points, the board of supervisors voted to delay certification as an act of protest. Hobbs is suing the county for missing the certification deadline. Outgoing Republican Gov. Doug Ducey said he’s committed to a smooth transition. “All of us have waited patiently for the democratic process to play out,” said Ducey, cochair of the Republican Governors Association, which spent over $10 million attacking Hobbs during the election. “The people of Arizona have spoken, their votes have been counted, and we respect their decision.”
What the columnists said
Is anyone surprised? said Gregory Wallance in The Hill. Lake’s campaign slogan should have been “Heads I win, tails the election was rigged.” After losing, she started playing Tom Petty’s “I Won’t Back Down” on social media. “To paraphrase a well-known saying, ‘Election denial history repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.’”
Lake has a goal in denying her election loss, said Dennis Aftergut in The Bulwark, and it’s not to be Arizona’s governor. She’s been running a “sub rosa vice-presidential campaign” and printing “Trump-Lake 2024” bumper stickers “in her mind.” Denying her own defeat and embracing victimhood status will further endear her to Trump, and could even land her on a presidential ticket with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis if he wants to court Trumpists. That’s her endgame, “damage to democracy be damned.”
Lake’s “shenanigans” show why election reform is so crucial, said Greg Sargent in The Washington Post. Lake only lost by 0.6 percent of the vote. Had she become governor, she would have been positioned to “steal a future election” for the GOP presidential candidate. The lame-duck Congress must embrace its opportunity to reform the Electoral Count Act of 1887, to make it harder for states to negate election results and to clarify the vice president’s role in certifying elections as purely ceremonial. Thanks to Trump’s “brazen effort” to overturn the 2020 election, there’s “unusual bipartisan urgency” to fix the ECA. Letting this moment pass “would be the height of folly.”