Kari Lake votes in liberal area to ensure working voting machine

Arizona Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake Tuesday told reporters she had to travel to a liberal area in Phoenix to vote so she could be assured she would have a working voting machine. 

Frustration among Arizona voters had been growing throughout the day as it became known that 20% of voting machines in Maricopa County were malfunctioning. 

In response to a question from a PBS News Hour reporter asking Lake if she thought the technical difficulties were normal or something nefarious, Lake suggested it certainly was not normal. 

“Do you think this is normal, guys? My question is, do you think what’s happening here in Maricopa County is normal?” 

“We have had problems after problems,” she continued. “And there’s a reason we decided to change locations. We were going to go to a pretty Republican area.  

“But I woke up this morning and within minutes of the polls opening up I started getting people calling. Voters in tears, calling my personal number, saying ‘What’s going on? The tabulators aren’t working. They told me to put my ballot in a box and they would drive it downtown to county,'” she said. 

Lake then said she voted in a liberal area so she could be guaranteed a functioning machine. 

“This is not normal stuff. We don’t have to have elections run this way. We switched from a Republican area to vote, we came down right to the heart of liberal Phoenix because we wanted to make sure that we had good machines. And guess what? They’ve had zero problems with their machines today. Not one machine spit out a ballot here today. Not one. In a very liberal area. So we were right to come and vote in a liberal area.  

“They’ve got to fix this problem. This is incompetency, I hope it’s not malice, but we’re going to fix it. We’re going to win.” 

Lake also slammed her Democratic opponent, Katie Hobbs, who as Arizona Secretary of State also oversees the state’s elections. 

“I think she should have recused herself. She’s unethical, she’s incompetent,” Lake said. “We’ve been asking her to do that since July of last year. She hasn’t done so.”