Arizona’s gubernatorial election is one of the most-watched races in the country this year.
Polls show Trump-backed Kari Lake is now leading Democrat Katie Hobbs.
But Kari Lake was stunned by this unexpected ruling the Supreme Court just handed down.
The incompetence of Democrat Katie Hobbs to perform her duties as Secretary of State has become a major issue in the race.
First, Republican strongholds ran out of ballots on Election Day during the Primary.
And just recently, 6,000 ballots with only Senate and House races listed were sent to voters by the Secretary of State’s office.
But now the Arizona State Supreme Court just handed down a scathing ruling highlighting another failure by Hobbs to perform her duties as Secretary of State.
In the ruling, Chief Justice Robert Brutinel rebuked Hobbs after her office failed to properly set up a petition circulator in the online portal for ballot initiatives.
Because of Hobbs’ error, individuals circulating petitions failed to submit proper affidavits to register.
“By also refusing to accept manual submission of a hard copy affidavit… the SOS rendered it impossible for circulators to successfully submit a registration application… if they had already registered to circulate other petitions,” Brutinel wrote.
“We have every expectation that the SOS will remedy deficiencies in the submission of information through the Circulator Portal and accommodate the manual submission of required information in the interim,” Brutinel added.
Kari Lake’s campaign ripped Hobbs for failing to perform her basic duties as Secretary of State.
“Katie Hobbs’ incompetence in running Arizona’s elections is so obvious that even the Arizona Supreme Court had to take the unprecedented move to call her out for her errors,” a statement from Lake’s campaign read.
“Given that Hobbs hasn’t even shown up to work for months, and that just last week thousands of voters were mailed faulty ballots, why should any Arizonan trust her to successfully administer this election? This is why Kari Lake continues to call for Hobbs to recuse herself from overseeing the 2022 elections – no Secretary of State should be in charge of the same election that he or she is running in,” the campaign statement continued.
Katie Hobbs’ performance as Secretary of State will play a major role in how voters feel about her becoming the next Governor.
And as Kari Lake is pointing out, Hobbs has been a failure.
Political Animal News will keep you up-to-date on any new developments in this ongoing story.
