The Board of Supervisors of Cochise County, Ariz., has certified the vote tallies from Election Day, following a court order.
Two Republican supervisors on the board, Tom Crosby and Peggy Judd, had previously refused to certify the vote after raising doubts over issues with vote-tabulation machines in Arizona. Since the midterm election on November 8, the pair have fought a series of losing legal battles forstalling the inevitable.
Pima County superior court judge Casey McGinley ordered Crosby and Judd to communicate the election results to Arizona’s secretary of state, Democrat Katie Hobbs, by 5 p.m. local time, the Arizona Republic reported Thursday morning.
Judd, however, did not go quietly. Before officially certifying the county’s vote total, Judd stated, “I don’t like to be threatened. . . . I’m not done fighting,” according to the Arizona Republic.
The move culminates a weeks-long drama and means that all Arizona counties have agreed to send in their final vote tallies, removing any lingering doubts over the results of the election.
Hobbs also happens to be the state’s incoming governor, having beaten out the Republican challenger, Trump-backed election denier Kari Lake.
“Today’s court decision was a win for Arizona’s democracy and ensures that all Arizonans will have their votes counted,” Hobbs wrote in a statement released on Twitter Thursday afternoon.
Lake had been vocal since Election Day about her suspicions that fraud had played a role in her defeat.
“Arizonans know BS when they see it,” Lake tweeted on November 14 after several media outlets projected Hobbs to be the winner. Roughly 17,000 votes separated Lake and Hobbs among nearly 2.5 million ballots casts.
Hobbs sued Cochise County on Monday for refusing to certify the vote totals.
“The Cochise County Board of Supervisors . . . has, without justification, failed to fulfill its mandatory duty to meet and approve its canvass of the results of the 2022 General Election by the statutory deadline of November 28, 2022,” Hobbs’s lawsuit alleged.