It was far from clear who would run for the governorship in Arizona when Republican candidate Kari Lake was already preparing.

When she appeared in front of her supporters on election night in Scottsdale, Arizona, she expressed doubts about the legitimacy of the election results with the first few sentences.

The "great patriots" who voted that morning were forced to throw their ballots "into another ballot box."

The "fake media" would have wanted to prevent questions being asked about it.

"You know what?

We will win,” she promised her audience.

Arizona needs "honest elections" and they will deliver.

Sofia Dreisbach

North American political correspondent based in Washington.

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In fact, some voters in Arizona's most populous county, Maricopa County, had to cast their ballots in a special ballot box or at another polling station because counting machines in a quarter of the 223 polling stations couldn't read votes cast because the print was too light.

According to the district, this had no effect on the validity of the votes cast.

Lake had predicted her victory hours before her performance.

She told a journalist she would be governor for not just one term, but two.

“I will be your worst nightmare for eight years and we will reform the media too.

We'll make you journalists again.” With two-thirds of the votes counted, Lake in Arizona trailed by a tiny margin on Wednesday.

“Election deniers” move into Congress

Kari Lake is one of the figures that has made looking at state election results particularly important in this year's congressional elections -- even though gubernatorial elections have traditionally received less attention.

Here in the states, Republican forces have been trying for two years to iron out the "mistakes" of 2020 and to be better able to contest an unwelcome 2024 election victory.

If the decisive posts are occupied by election deniers, the certification of a future election would be in danger.

By the morning after the congressional election, more than 210 Republican candidates who doubted the outcome of the 2020 presidential election had been safely elected to Congress or to key posts in the states.

Most of them, and this is where they differ from Lake, do not specifically deny the result, but have repeatedly sowed doubts about its legitimacy during the election campaign.

That so many of these "election deniers" were able to prevail proves once again that questioning the electoral processes in the absence of evidence of voter fraud is not a fad but a Republican tactic.

But even though former President Donald Trump railed against alleged election fraud "like 2020" on Tuesday afternoon and Lake spoke of possible falsifications in the evening, there was no evidence of election fraud after the closure of almost all polling stations.

In a handful of counties across the country, polling stations were open longer to ensure all voters were able to cast their ballots despite previous delays.

This was the case in Bell County, Texas, after some voting machines stopped working due to synchronization problems after the changeover from daylight saving time to winter time.

In Pennsylvania, paper was missing in more than forty polling stations, which is why it was possible to vote longer in the evening.

In order to prevent allegations of electoral fraud in the "battlefield state", election workers had checked in an additional step that no voter had voted by letter and in person.

Lake's Arizona Democratic challenger, Katie Hobbs, said in a statement on election night that she had "great confidence" that a free and fair election took place "and that the results will be right."

Counting takes time.