Republican Maricopa County Elections Official Fires Back at Kari Lake: Ballot Glitches Not ‘Incompetence or Corruption’
Maricopa County elections chair Bill Gates (no relation) rebuked Arizona’s Republican gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake for alleging nefarious reasons for ballot glitches in the county on Election Day.
Gates, a Republican on the majority-Republican board of supervisors, appeared on CNN where he was asked by CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer about Lake’s claims:
Your state’s Republican candidate for governor, Mister Chairman, we’re talking about Kari Lake, is already stoking some concerns over this election, suggesting that what she calls incompetency is at play and even comparing this to the 2020 presidential election, which she falsely claims, obviously, was stolen. How do you respond to that?
Gates first rejected Lake’s false claims the 2020 election was stolen, before rebuking her new unfounded claims about the issues in Maricopa:
Well first of all, yes, I would agree, 2020 was not stolen, was not rigged here in Maricopa County. Our election in that year was, as I have said, one of the most scrutinized in the history of the world.
But now let’s move forward to 2022. First of all, I do not believe that what happened yesterday can fairly be called incompetence or corruption in any way. Did we have some issues? Yes. We did have issues with people trying to put ballots into the tabulators yesterday in about 20 percent, at the high point about 20 percent, of our vote centers. But we were able to address that issue by the early afternoon. And here’s the key point for everyone to keep in mind: People who showed up yesterday, at the polling places, with a valid ID, we do require ID to vote in this state, if they showed up with that and they voted yesterday, that vote has already been counted or it is going to be counted. So that is the key issue.
The really — the question is where those votes are going to be tabulated. Either were they tabulated out at the vote center yesterday or will they be in our central count facility. So I want to underline that. And, again, if people have instances or proof of fraud, we want to hear that. But up to this point, we have not. And right now we are laser-focused on getting through this count and doing it in an accurate way. By the way, we anticipate 95 to 99 percent of the votes will be counted in Maricopa County by the end of the day this Friday.
The race between Lake and Democrat Katie Hobbs for Arizona governor remains too close to call.
Watch above via CNN.
