The state’s chief elections officer said the protests and lawsuits that marred the 2020 and 2022 votes are a thing of the past.

But two other Democratic state elected officials aren’t quite convinced.

Adrian Fontes pointed out Monday that this year’s election was run by the same people who ran the prior contests. And the secretary of state said that the rules are essentially the same.

Yet, to date, there have been no protests and no threats of litigation.

“We seem to have done a pretty dog-gone good job this time around,” Fontes said. “I think the age of election denialism is, for all intents and purposes dead.”

That statement came as a surprise to Kris Mayes. In fact, the attorney general pointed out she still is fighting one remaining lawsuit over her 2022 election by Abe Hamadeh, who is trying to convince a court that she is holding office illegally.

And even Gov. Katie Hobbs acknowledged that there may be a simple reason there are not the protests and legal claims of the past: a different outcome.

“The people that were making all the noise about potential fraud, potential whatever, the people that instigated the insurrection in 2020, they got quiet when they got the result they wanted,” she said.

All this comes as the three of them – along with Supreme Court Chief Justice Ann Scott Timmer – formally certified the results of the Nov. 5 election.

There were no surprises.

Fontes reported there were 3.4 million ballots cast, a 78.49% turnout rate of eligible voters. And the results confirmed that Donald Trump outpolled Kamala Harris 1.8 million to 1.6 million.

That, in turn, led to the signing of separate documents spelling out that Arizona recognizes the 11 individuals pledged to Trump as the official state electors, entitling them to cast their votes for the Republican candidate when the Electoral College meets on Dec. 17.

And that, in turn, paves the way for the joint session of Congress on Jan. 6 to count the votes – an event virtually certain to be different than four years ago when protestors stormed the Capitol in an attempt to prevent that from happening.

Mayes, for her part, said she’s not ready to believe that the calm around this year’s election means that things will go back to the way they were before 2020. And for her, Exhibit One is the fact she’s still in court over her 2022 victory.

In that case, an attorney for Hamadeh contends that Maricopa County improperly included some early ballots in its final tally.

Ryan Heath argued that once those early ballots are excluded from the count, the 280-vote lead racked up by Mayes in the 2022 race more than disappears. And he asked the appellate court to then apply a little-used legal principle known as “quo warranto” to declare that Mayes is holding office illegally and Hamadeh is the rightful office holder.

Last month the judges rejected the claim for a simple reason: The lawsuit was filed too late.

Heath has not said whether he will seek Supreme Court review.

One issue is that Hamadeh was just elected to Congress, filling the seat being vacated by Debbie Lesko. In fact, Monday’s canvass formalized his victory.

But Hamadeh has not responded to multiple inquiries about whether he will now drop any claim to the attorney general’s office.

That, said Mayes on Monday, convinces her Arizona has a long way to go to make election results routine again.

“Obviously, we are all aiming to a return to normalcy,” Mayes said Monday. “But I’m not convinced that we’re there yet.”

Mayes said what has to happen now is that elected officials need to “continue to drive home the message that Arizona has safe and secure and accurate elections and that our elections officials at every level throughout the state of Arizona are doing a fantastic job.”

All that may come down to, as Hobbs pointed out, the folks who were protesting in 2020 and 2022 got election returns that were more to their liking. Even Kari Lake, the Republican contender for U.S. Senate who lost by more than 80,000 votes to Democrat Ruben Gallego, has not mounted the same kind of challenge she did in 2020 when she was defeated in the governor’s race by Hobbs.

That, however, raises the question of whether the state will once again see more active protests in 2026 by those who are on the losing end of some races that year.

“I’m not going to speculate on what they will or won’t do,” the governor said.

“What I can say is what we saw in this election: The folks that were the loudest in trying to overturn the results, they didn’t do that because they got the result they wanted,” Hobbs said. And she said this year’s elections were largely run in the same manner and under the same rules as the ones they didn’t like in prior years.

And Mayes?

“I think the proof is in the pudding,” she said.

“We’ll see over the next couple of election cycles what happens,” the attorney general continued. “But I don’t think that we’re there yet.”

It’s not just Hamadeh’s lawsuit that remains unresolved from prior elections.

Mayes’ office indicated 11 “fake electors” who are charged with submitting documents to Congress and the National Archive saying that Trump won the popular vote in Arizona and that the state’s 11 electoral votes should be cast for him. They face conspiracy and forgery charges along with other Republicans who are accused of helping hatch the scheme.

A trial is set for next year.