Republican Arizona Gubernatorial Candidate Says She May Restrict Early Voting, Questions Election

Republican Kari Lake is in a toss-up election with her Democratic opponent Katie Hobbs. According to FiveThirtyEight, the two are separated by 1.1 points.

Republican Arizona Gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake suggests that she may restrict early voting in Arizona if elected this November.

Lake was speaking to ABC’s Chief Washington Correspondent Jonathan Karl on ABC’s This Week on Sunday when she also again refused to say if she would accept the election results.

“I will accept the results of this election if we have a fair, honest and transparent election. Absolutely, 100%,” Lake told Karl when asked about the issue. “As long as it's fair, honest and transparent.”

The comments come after a previous interview on CNN where Lake would only say if she would accept the results if she won and refused to say what would happen if she lost. “I'm going to win the election, and I will accept that result,” she said last week.

Lake has been a consistent critic of the 2020 presidential election, spreading false conspiracy theories about the election process in Arizona. She has alleged that 2,000 mail-in ballots were accepted in Maricopa County after Election Day. Election officials say no ballots were accepted after Election Day and that some ballots that were turned in on Election Day were scanned and counted the next morning, giving them a post-Election Day timestamp.

Biden won the state by 10,457 votes. The Republican candidate for Arizona Senate, Blake Masters, has accepted the 2020 Presidential election results, something Lake has not done.

When asked if she would restrict mail-in ballots or early voting, Lake was non-committal but said she would work to secure the election while casting doubt on the process.

"I don't know exactly how we'll do it, but we will secure our elections, restore faith in our elections, make sure our elections are honest and transparent," she said. “Going back to when I first started voting back in the '80s, we had Election Day. 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.”

Arizona has a long history of allowing voters to cast their ballot early by mail. In 1991, the Arizona legislature passed a law allowing voters to apply for absentee voting without an excuse. Then in 2007, Arizona allowed voters to vote permanently by mail, after an initial sign-up, without having to request a ballot before each election.

Even before the pandemic made voting by mail popular nationwide, it was the preferred way to vote in Arizona. According to the Copper Courier, 80% of Arizona voters cast their ballot by mail before the 2020 elections.

Lake’s opponent, Katie Hobbs, is currently the secretary of state for Arizona. Part of her role includes certifying the election results. Lake has called for Hobbs to recuse herself from that responsibility. So far, Hobbs has declined to do so, saying that she was “having these discussions right now.”