Friday, Oct. 28, 2022
Did Arizona candidates Kari Lake and Mark Finchem sue to end voting by mail in Arizona?
Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake and Arizona Secretary of State hopeful Mark Finchem sued to prohibit the use of electronic voting machines in Arizona’s upcoming midterm elections, not to end voting by mail.
In the lawsuit, Lake and Finchem falsely claimed electronic voting machines are not “reliably secure” and argued their use “violates the rights of Plaintiffs and their fellow voters and office seekers.” Lake and Finchem requested that Arizona officials count ballots by hand in November instead.
A federal judge ultimately dismissed the lawsuit and rejected the hand-count request.
Although Finchem has voted by mail on multiple occasions, he has stated he "doesn't care" for the practice and previously co-sponsored legislation that would have limited which Arizonans could vote by mail.
While Lake hasn't explicitly endorsed restricting voting by mail, she has been critical of the practice, telling ABC News, "Our Constitution says Election Day. … It doesn't say election season, election month … And the longer you drag that out, the more fraught with problems there are."
This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
Sources
- United States District Court | District of Arizona Initial Complaint
- Court Listener Order – #100 in Lake v. Hobbs (D. Ariz., 2:22-cv-00677) – CourtListener.com
- PolitiFact Arizona Republican said he doesn’t ‘care for’ mail voting. He used it 28 times
- Cronkite News Fact-check: Republican Arizona secretary of state candidate aims to end mail-in voting option for millions
- ABC News Kari Lake suggests early voting be restricted in Arizona as she repeats election lies
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Fact briefs are bite-sized, well-sourced explanations that offer clear "yes" or "no" answers to questions, confusions, and unsupported claims circulating online. They rely on publicly available data and documents, often from the original source. Fact briefs are written and published by Gigafact contributor publications.
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