Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake called on her Democratic opponent, Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, to recuse herself from election duties. Hobbs declined, and as the Arizona Republic reported, to step aside would be atypical.
Now, however, some of Lake’s supporters are sharing an image from a video feed of a woman walking through a tabulation room in Maricopa County, claiming the woman is Hobbs.
“LOOK WHO WAS INSIDE THE BALLOT ROOMS,” reads the description of the image of a woman with glasses and her arms crossed. “KATIE HOBBS. Time stamped too.”
The image has a time stamp of 10:07 a.m. on Nov. 9, the morning after Election Day.
“Rigged election!!!!” said another Instagram post sharing the image.
“How is @katie4az allowed in the ballot counting area the day after elections (time stamped)?” said yet another post. “@karilake and the state of Arizona are prob gettin robbed?”
An Instagram post sharing the image was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)
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We reached out to Hobbs’ campaign about the tweet and didn’t immediately hear back. The Associated Press reported that a campaign spokesperson said the image doesn’t show Hobbs.
Maricopa County also responded to a tweet sharing the image and said it’s not her.
“Not every woman with glasses is Katie Hobbs,” the county tweeted. “We can confirm this was a party observer. Please refrain from making assumptions about workers who happen to wear glasses.”
The tweet claiming the photo shows Hobbs was removed the evening of Nov. 10 for violating Twitter rules.
Political party representatives are allowed to observe at voting locations and central counting places for partisan elections in Arizona, according to the Arizona secretary of state website. Candidates appearing on the ballot — such as Hobbs — or official write-in candidates can’t be party observers.
We rate claims that this image shows Hobbs False.
