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In early September, gubernatorial hopeful Kari Lake, a relentless election denier, argued that she’d seen evidence to substantiate her conspiracy theories, but she wouldn’t share it. “I’m not comfortable sharing it with the media,” the Arizona Republican said, adding, “Why would I hand anything over to the fake news?”
It was an odd position to take. Much of Lake’s rise to far-right prominence has been driven by her outlandish election claims, and if she had proof to support her conspiracy theories, it’d certainly be in her interests to present it to the public. Even if the GOP candidate doesn’t trust “the fake news,” Lake could simply publish her evidence online for everyone to see, or she could share it with one of the several outlets aligned with Republican politics.
The good news is, the Arizonan is no longer claiming to have secret evidence. The bad news is, Lake is instead sharing evidence that appears to be entirely made up. As a Washington Post analysis noted yesterday:
It’s telling that, in an interview with ABC News on Sunday, Arizona Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake invoked untrue “facts” in defense of her efforts to undermine confidence in her state’s elections.
As part of the ABC report, Lake peddled a series of lies, which she described as “facts,” to reporter Jonathan Karl, starting with a claim that “2,000 mail-in ballots were accepted by Maricopa County after Election Day in 2020 — after Election Day.” Karl, to his credit, told viewers that the claim is “just not true.”
But the Republican conspiracy theorist just kept going, pushing other bizarre assertions, none of which has been supported with any proof, and each of which Lake characterized as “facts.”
All things considered, the gubernatorial candidate probably should’ve stuck to the whole “secret evidence” posture.
But just hours after her interview with ABC aired, The Arizona Republic published a related report on its interview with Lake, in which she reflected on her confidence on her state’s electoral system.
“I wish I could sit here and say I have complete faith in the system, I don’t have faith in the system,” the Republican said. “And that’s why I’m going to work with lawmakers to come up with a way that we have secure elections.”
Part of the problem with this is that Lake’s rationale is built on a foundation of quicksand: The candidate doesn’t “have faith in the system” because she believes conspiracy theories she can’t substantiate.
But I’m also reminded of a good point the Washington Post’s Greg Sargent raised last week:
The state of Arizona recently passed a law requiring proof of citizenship to vote, which the Brennan Center for Justice called “one of the worst voter suppression laws in the nation.” That law was passed in the name of achieving “election integrity.” Mysteriously, however, Lake is still declaring with direct-to-camera sincerity that people continue to have good reason to doubt election outcomes, even to the point of justifying her refusal to commit to accepting a loss.
Quite right. When GOP legislators passed an “election integrity” bill, they said it was necessary to “restore confidence” in Arizona’s system of elections. Those wildly unnecessary restrictions are now in place.
And yet, there’s the Republicans’ gubernatorial nominee, disregarding her party’s “election integrity” measure, claiming that she still lacks confidence in the system for reasons she won’t explain, all while opening the door to even more onerous limits on voting.
It’s almost as if unneeded measures, ostensibly designed to “restore confidence,” are little more than partisan scams, and for Republican election deniers and conspiracy theorists, no voting restrictions will ever be good enough.