Judge forces GOP officials in Arizona's Cochise County to certify midterm results, ending a high-stakes confrontation

• Officials in Cochise County, Arizona, voted 2-0 to accept the results of the midterms on Thursday.
• Their vote came shortly after a judge ordered them to certify the vote.

A judge forced officials in Cochise County, Arizona, to certify the November 8 midterm results on Thursday, after they had repeatedly refused to do so.

In a hearing on Thursday morning, Superior Court Judge Casey McGinley ruled that two Republicans on the three-member supervisor board broke the law when they refused to sign off on the vote count by the November 28 deadline.

McGinley then ordered the board to sign off on the vote by that afternoon.

Ann English, the only Democrat on the board, and Vice Chair Peggy Judd, who is a Republican, voted in favor of certifying the election. The third member, Tom Crosby — also a Republican — was absent from the vote.

"I am not ashamed of anything I did," Judd, who initially voted to delay the certification, said, according to the Associated Press.

"And today I feel I must, because of a court ruling and because of my own health and situations that are going on in our life, I feel like I must follow what the judge did today," she added.

Both Judd and Crosby previously voted to further delay certifying the election results on the basis of unproven claims that the machines used to count the ballots were not properly certified for use in the elections.

State and federal election officials have said the machines were indeed certified.

On Monday, Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs sued the county, saying that she is required to hold the statewide certification on December 5 and by law can delay it only until December 8, AP reported.

Hobbs defeated Trump-backed Kari Lake in an incredibly tight governor's race last month. But Hobbs has refused to concede.

The board of supervisors in another country — Mohave County in northwest Arizona — also delayed certifying the midterm vote, but pledged to do so by the November 28 deadline.

Mohave County certified the vote earlier this week, local media reported.

It was suggested that Cochise County's refusal to certify its results could cost Republicans a seat in the US House of Representatives.

A representative for Hobbs did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.