Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes has asked Attorney General Kris Mayes to investigate and consider taking enforcement action against gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake for a potential felony offense after her Twitter account shared a graphic containing images of voter signatures on ballots she identified as having been “illegally counted.”
Fontes asked the attorney general in a Jan. 30 letter to “investigate and take appropriate enforcement action against Kari Lake for potential violations of Arizona law committed under her Twitter handle, @KariLake.”
The secretary of state’s request to probe Lake references a Jan. 23 post on Twitter in which she shared 16 images of early ballot affidavits compared with signatures from voter registration records. She claimed that this is proof that nearly 40,000 ballots cast in the November gubernatorial election didn’t match voter signatures on record and so were “illegally counted.”
“I think all the ‘Election Deniers’ out there deserve an apology,” Lake said in the post.
State election data show that Lake lost to Democrat Gov. Katie Hobbs by just 17,000 votes.
Fontes said in the letter to Mayes that by sharing the ballot images on Twitter, Lak violated Ariz. Rev. Stat. 16-168(F), which prohibits the unauthorized disclosure of voter registration information.
Violations are a class 6 felony, which is punishable by up to nearly six years in prison, according to AZ-Defenders.
The law cited in Fontes’s letter indicates that there are circumstances under which voter information can legally be released.
“Nothing in this section shall preclude public inspection of voter registration records at the office of the county recorder for the purposes prescribed by this section, except that … records containing a voter’s signature and a voter’s e-mail address shall not be accessible or reproduced by any person other than the voter,” the statute states.
Lake has not addressed Fontes’s referral on her personal account but the Kari Lake War Room account on Twitter put out a statement in response.
“Adrian Fontes wants Kris Mayes to investigate & potentially imprison @KariLake for the ‘crime’ of … sharing signature verification evidence that was presented before the @AZSenateGOP & is currently in her lawsuit.”
“Welcome to the Banana Republic of Arizona,” the account added.
In a follow-on post, the Kari Lake War Room account claimed that Fontes and others don’t want Lake to raise the issue of signature verification “because they’ve been pushing through bunk signatures for years.”
The Epoch Times reached out to Fontes’s office with a request for comment but no response was received by publication.
Fontes took to Twitter to share an interview of him on MSNBC, in which he commented on Lake’s referral and decried what he said was election denialism on the part of the “MAGA fascists” in Arizona.
“We’re not going to tolerate this nonsense under any circumstances and this is one of the reasons why we made the referral,” Fontes told the outlet.
“Vigor and strength. That’s the only way we protect our election workers and fight back against disinformation,” he said in the post on Twitter.
Lake has repeatedly insisted that she won the gubernatorial election and has filed several lawsuits challenging the results.
I’m getting pretty sick of the Dems and their “criminal referrals”..political persecution/prosecution. Civil War,anyone?..I’m DONE with this shit.
#1 Is not a referral, only a weak accusation.
#2 What is shown is NOT in any way construed as protected voter registration information.
This IS in fact public information required to be available during and after every election. What the laws pertain to is the original documents, with key personal information. Information that should be validated, but has not been validated.
Primary proof that a large number of likely completely fraudulent ballots were inserted into the processing, and are included unlawfully in election results.