Democrat Katie Hobbs was sworn in as governor of Arizona in January 2023, but her opponent Kari Lake and other right-wing figures claim officials in the US state's largest county swung the vote by "illegally breaking into sealed election machines" during the 2022 midterms. This is false; authorities say the video shared as purported evidence shows routine election preparation, and allegations of meddling failed in court.
"New *video evidence* of Maricopa election officials illegally breaking into sealed election machines after they were tested, reprogramming memory cards, and reinstalling them," says Rogan O'Handley, a conservative commentator and influencer, in a May 28, 2023 tweet.
"Fifty-nine percent of these machines would shut down on election day in GOP areas. They've been CAUGHT."
Lake, who lost to Hobbs in the November 2022 gubernatorial contest, promoted the claims on a May 30 episode of "War Room," a web show hosted by former Donald Trump adviser Steve Bannon.
"They're breaking into the machines, reprogramming them so that they would fail on Election Day," she said of the clip shared online.
Similar allegations accumulated thousands of interactions on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, according to CrowdTangle, a social media insights tool.
"This is a smoking gun in Kari Lake's stolen election contest," says a May 28 article from the Gateway Pundit, a website that AFP has repeatedly fact-checked for spreading misinformation.
The claims come after an Arizona court ...
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