Kari Lake: Election denier calls Arizona loss ‘unforgivable’ as she still refuses to concede race

Kari Lake told her supporters she is “still in this fight” and has refused to concede the race for Arizona governor after her projected loss to Katie Hobbs.

In a video posted on social media on Thursday morning, she claimed a “broken election system” has “disenfranchised” “tens of thousands” of voters in an election that also saw Republican incumbent victories and the GOP flipping two House seats. All were on the same ballot with her.

Voters did have to deal with ballot machine issues, but voters had several options to make sure their ballots were cast and counted. But Kari Lake’s allies and the chair of the Arizona Republican Party told voters not to use them.

Ms Lake essentially said she would not accept the results of an election she lost and suggested her opponents would have to “cheat even harder in order to win this”. Just as Trump spent months undermining the electoral process before his defeat and ongoing attempt to overturn the results, Ms Lake is now appropriating allegations of voter suppression to bolster conspiracy theories about her loss.

“We are exploring every avenue to correct the many wrongs that have been done this past week,” she said.

Arizona’s Republican Party chair Kelli Ward faces calls to step down after high-profile midterm election losses, including Senate candidate Blake Masters and gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake.

Democratic candidates saw historic success; the state will be represented by a Democratic governor and secretary of state, with two Democratic Senators in Congress, defeating far-right candidates who rejected the 2020 presidential election outcome and promoted baseless claims about the electoral process.

“Conservatism wins in Arizona. Crazy does not,” according to Chris Baker, a Republican political consultant who works on congressional and legislative races in Arizona and elsewhere.

“The Republican Party in Arizona is at a crossroads right now,” he told the Arizona Mirror. “Is this the direction we want to continue in?”

Donald Trump endorsed all three GOP candidates for Arizona’s top statewide offices.

On Tuesday night, as the former president was announcing his candidacy for 2024, those candidates all pledged their support in return.

The state was one of two during this year’s idterm elections where all three non-incumbent Republicans running for statewide offices – governor, secretary of state and attorney general – had rejected the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.

If those candidates entered office, they could upend election administration and challenge results in 2024, part of an effort backed by Mr Trump and his allies to install loyalists to ensure GOP victories in battleground states he lost.

Kari Lake has refused to concede in the race for Arizona governor and is intead assembling a legal team and launching a website to collect alleged evidence of voter suppression after her loss.

In a two-minute video posted on social media, the far-right candidate said she has “assembled the best and brightest legal team” to explore “every avenue to correct the many wrongs that have been done this past week.”

Over the last several days, her campaign has posted videos of people claiming that they experienced long lines and issues with ballot processing machines – problems that election officials have admitted were affecting roughly one-third of voting centres in Maricopa County, the largest county in the state.

In many of the videos, people admitted that they were ultimately able to cast their ballot.

But election officials have stressed that voters had several options to make sure their ballots were cast and counted, including voting at other polling places in the county – wait times were posted online – or submitting paper ballots in a secure box.

Kari Lake’s allies and the chair of the Arizona Republican Party, however, told voters not to use them. Republicans nationwide also have cast doubt on the legitimacy of early voting, mail-in voting and using ballot drop boxes, insisting that people only vote in person on Election Day.

Bill Gates, the Republican chair of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, blamed Ms Ward and other GOP officials for spreading baseless claims and exacerbating delays.

“This team, we have accepted our responsibility in this,” he said on Monday. “But I’m not willing to accept responsibility for issues that were caused by others. And it is clear to me that those lines were longer because leaders in one political party were spreading misinformation.”