Top officials in Arizona on Monday signed to certify the midterm election result.

Usually, that is a routine task, but this time around, the process observed interruptions as Republican campaigners and candidates claimed that there was widespread fraud and that the results were tampered with.

According to CNN, some members of the Republican Party harped on alleged printer malfunctions that occurred on Election Day, but the Maricopa County Attorney issued a letter attesting that the technical failure did not prevent voters from casting ballots.

But some Republican officials continued alleging that the election officials were lying and called for the results to not be certified. In fact, two Republican-leaning counties in Arizona delayed certifying their results, with one of the counties complying only after an order from a judge, per The New York Times.

Arizona Election gets certified

The gubernatorial race was a high-profile one where Democrat Katie Hobbs defeated Republican Kari Lake.

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Hobbs signed the documents to certify the election on Monday, present alongside Republican Gov. Doug Ducey, Republican attorney general Mark Brnovich and Robert Brutinel, the chief justice of the State Supreme Court, per ABC affiliate KNXV.

“Arizona had a successful election,” Hobbs said, according to The Hill. “But too often throughout the process, powerful voices proliferated misinformation that threatened to disenfranchise voters. Democracy prevailed, but it’s not out of the woods. 2024 will bring a host of challenges from the election denial community that we must prepare for.”

What’s next?

After the certification begins the automatic recounts for any of the races where the vote difference between candidates is less than 0.5. In this case, it includes elections for the attorney general, state superintendent and a state House seat near Phoenix, per The Hill.

Meanwhile, Lake and Abraham Hamadeh, the Republican nominee for attorney general, have gestured toward seeking legal action to challenge the results.

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