Arizona Senate candidate Kari Lake said she’s not “all that confident” that the 2024 election will be fair, again dipping her toes into election denial conspiracies that put her 2022 gubernatorial race in legal trouble.
Lake said in a Fox News “Sunday Morning Futures” interview with Maria Bartiromo that she strongly opposed efforts to encourage voter registration when people sign up for Medicare and Medicaid, claiming the process could be part of a conspiracy to generate fraudulent votes.
“What they want is to have a line in the voter rolls so that somebody can vote for that person,” she said of the concept. “And that’s why they’re asking them to register to vote when they get set up for Medicare and Medicaid, because they’re giving them all of these services. They’re asking them to sign up to vote. Then they have a line in the voter roll, and somebody will vote under that name.”
Lake added that she’s “absolutely, one thousand percent” sure the idea is intended to let noncitizens illegally living in the country vote in the 2024 election. Alleged schemes of noncitizens voting have consistently been tied to the “great replacement theory,” a white supremacist conspiracy theory. There are no records of noncitizens voting in any significant quantity in recent elections.
When asked how she felt about the 2024 election, she said she “wouldn’t be all that confident” in a fair outcome.
The rhetoric hearkens back to her failed 2022 Arizona gubernatorial campaign, in which she consistently repeated false claims that the 2020 election was stolen. She also denied her own election loss after she was defeated by Gov. Katie Hobbs (D).
The comments have repeatedly put Lake and her campaign under legal scrutiny. Her attorneys have been forced to pay thousands in sanctions for bringing fraudulent legal cases, and she forfeited her defense in a defamation suit brought by a state elections official this year over fraud conspiracies.
Lake faces Arizona Rep. Ruben Gallego (D) in what is expected to be one of the country’s tightest Senate races, with the body’s majority hanging in the balance. Gallego has slightly led Lake in fundraising and polling in the early parts of the campaign. The congressman has a 4.1 percent lead over Lake in The Hill/Decision Desk HQ average of polls.