Lake Questions Arizona Election System in New Video

U.S. Senate candidate Kari Lake (R) recently shared a video to her X account questioning Arizona's election system, and highlighting its shortcomings and tactics.

The video is just over an hour and 19 minutes long. It is a cinematic documentary that dives into the subject of election fraud. The video works to spell out Lake’s argument for how the 2022 Arizona gubernatorial election was fraudulent. Katie Hobbs (D) defeated Lake in the 2022 gubernatorial election by 17,117 votes. 

The documentary begins by giving an overview of the 2022 election, providing a video of long wait lines and dysfunctional voting machines. This is followed by highlighting personal testimony from Arizona voters. In one case, the documentary showcases a woman in Maricopa County casting her vote, however, the system claims that she’d already voted as a dead man from Utah.

Next, the documentary addresses Lake’s legal battle. According to Lake and her legal team, there were four main complaints that dealt with voter fraud– tabulator rejections, chain of custody violations, signature verification issues, and 1st Amendment issues. The documentary mentions that while the election commission limits misfeed issues to 1 in 500 ballots, Maricopa’s misfed issues were 1 in every 2 ballots. On top of this, tabulators rejected 7000 ballots every 30 minutes. Lake’s legal team believes that a big reason for this is due to 19-inch ballot images being printed on the ballot paper which was 20 inches.

The issue of signature verification was also heavily discussed. Many ballots, according to the documentary, had signatures that didn’t match up with the voter. With this being said, many of these ballots were still accepted. 

Kurt Olsen, one of Lake’s attorneys, said “We had whistleblowers who worked in the signature verification department at Maricopa that testified that anywhere from 15 to 40 percent of signatures did not match yet they were being passed through.”

The documentary provides surveillance footage from a Maricopa County signature verification worker accepting mail-in ballot signatures within a second. According to experts on Lake’s team, a thorough review of mail-in ballot signatures should take at least 30-45 seconds. The documentary provides a chart showing that 512,597 signatures were accepted in under 3 seconds of review.

Lake’s claims of election fraud were dismissed in her first trial. In a second trial, the court determined signature verification conducted in less than 3 seconds didn’t violate Arizona law.

At the end of the documentary, Kari Lake is seen sharing a special message. Lake condemns the current election system, saying “Our current system where we vote for a month and count ballots for days or weeks in back rooms invites fraud and distrust. This needs to change.” She urges viewers to call their state and local officials to push for reform regarding the current mail-in voting system. According to Lake, “We must return to mail voting being the exception and not the rule.”

Lake wraps up her message by highlighting that, “The 2024 election is just around the corner. We must build back trust in our elections before it is too late.”

As for Lake, she is currently focused on her upcoming 2024 senate campaign. Lake looks to take on progressive challenger Ruben Gallego (D), as Gallego tries to upset incumbent independent Senator Krysten Sinema.