PHOENIX — The state’s chief elections officer, Adrian Fontes, says protests and lawsuits over election results appear to be a thing of the past.
But two of his fellow Democratic state elected officials aren’t quite convinced.
Fontes, the secretary of state, pointed out Monday that this year’s election was run by the same people who ran the 2020 and 2022 contests in which losing candidates challenged the results. And the rules were essentially the same, he said.
Yet, to date, there have been no protests and no threats of litigation over the Nov. 5 results.
“We seem to have done a pretty dog-gone good job this time around,’’ Fontes said. “I think the age of election denialism is, for all intents and purposes, dead.’’
That statement came as a surprise to Attorney General Kris Mayes. She pointed out she still is fighting one remaining lawsuit over her election in 2022, filed by losing Republican candidate Abe Hamadeh, who is trying to convince a court she is holding office illegally.
And Gov. Katie Hobbs acknowledged there may be a simple reason there aren’t the protests and court challenges of the past: Republican candidates did better this year this voters.
“The people that were making all the noise about potential fraud, potential whatever, the people that instigated the insurrection in 2020, they got quiet when they got the result they wanted,’’ Hobbs said.
The comments came Monday as Fontes, Mayes and Hobbs, along with Arizona Supreme Court Chief Justice Ann Scott Timmer, formally certified the results of the Nov. 5 election in Arizona.
Secretary of State Adrian Fontes and Gov. Katie Hobbs certified Arizona’s 2024 election results during a signing ceremony Monday.
Fontes reported there were nearly 3.43 million ballots cast, a 78.5% turnout rate of eligible voters. Republican Donald Trump outpolled Democrat Kamala Harris for president, 1.77 million to 1.56 million.
The officials signed documents spelling out that Arizona recognizes the 11 individuals pledged to Trump as the official state electors, entitling them to cast their votes for him when the Electoral College meets on Dec. 17.
That paves the way for the joint session of Congress on Jan. 6 to count the electoral votes — an event virtually certain to be different than four years ago when protestors stormed the U.S. Capitol, trying to prevent Trump’s loss to Joe Biden from becoming official.
Mayes, for her part, said she’s not ready to believe that the calm around this year’s election means things will go back to the way they were before 2020. For her, Exhibit One is the fact she’s still in court over her 2022 victory.
In that case, an attorney for Hamadeh contends Maricopa County improperly included some early ballots in its tally. Mayes won by 280 votes statewide.
Hamadeh was just elected to Congress, meanwhile. In fact, Monday’s canvass formalized his victory.
But Hamadeh has not responded to multiple inquiries about whether he will now drop any claim he alleges he has to the attorney general’s office.
Mayes said that convinces her Arizona has a long way to go to make election results routine again.
“Obviously, we are all aiming to a return to normalcy,’’ she said. “But I’m not convinced that we’re there yet.’’
Mayes said elected officials now need to “continue to drive home the message that Arizona has safe and secure and accurate elections and that our elections officials at every level throughout the state of Arizona are doing a fantastic job.’’
Hobbs pointed out that may come down to the fact that people who protested in 2020 and 2022 got election results more to their liking this year.
“The folks that were the loudest in trying to overturn the results, they didn’t do that (this year) because they got the result the wanted,’’ Hobbs said. Like Fontes, she also said this year’s elections were largely run in the same manner and under the same rules as the ones they didn’t like in prior years.
Even Kari Lake, the Republican candidate for U.S. Senate who lost by more than 80,000 votes to Democrat Ruben Gallego on Nov. 5, has not mounted the kind of challenge she did in 2020 when she lost the governor’s race to Hobbs.
It’s not just Hamadeh’s lawsuit that remains unresolved from prior elections.
Mayes’ office indicated 11 “fake electors’’ who are charged with submitting documents to Congress and the National Archive saying that Trump won the 2020 popular vote in Arizona — he didn’t — and that the state’s 11 electoral votes should be cast for him. They face conspiracy and forgery charges along with other Republicans who are accused of helping hatch the scheme.
A trial is set for next year.
