Republican officials refuse to certify midterm elections results in Arizona, Pennsylvania counties

Republican officials in two counties of the United States’ Arizona and Pennsylvania have refused to certify the results of the midterm elections, on Monday. This comes after the Republicans on the election boards of Cochise County in Arizona and Luzerne County in Pennsylvania have voted against the motion in their respective counties.

The two GOP county supervisors on the three-person Cochise County election board have postponed the certification of the county's results and seemingly embraced voter fraud theories. Reportedly, they have raised concerns about the certification of the county’s voting machines, without evidence, while they have been repeatedly assured that the equipment is approved.

Meanwhile, on Monday, secretary of state and Democrat, Katie Hobbs who had previously threatened to sue the county for not certifying the elections, filed a lawsuit. She has reportedly asked the judge to order Cochise County to canvass (the official tally of votes) the election which she said was an obligation under state law.

On the other hand, Luzerne County, Pennsylvania faced a deadlock as two Democratic members in the election board moved to certify the results and two Republicans voted “no”, while the tie-breaker Democrat Daniel Schramm, abstained from voting. This comes after the county faced paper shortages on Election Day as voting centres ran out of ballots early in the day.

However, Schramm, in a phone interview with Associated Press said that after the meeting on Monday, he was reassured that only a few, if any, voters could not cast their ballots because of the shortage. Additionally, he was told that all provisional ballots were accounted for previously. Therefore, Schramm said that he will move to vote in favour of certifying the results in the next meeting on Wednesday.

“I wanted to research to see exactly how many people were just not allowed to vote. I couldn’t find any,” said the Democrat Schramm after election officials reportedly contacted 125 judges of elections from the county’s 187 precincts and said, “nobody being turned away.” Furthermore, the judge had extended the voting time in the Pennsylvania county by two hours on November 8 following the paper shortage.

(With inputs from agencies)

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