Judge Dismisses Kari Lake Lawsuit Over Arizona Governor Election
Republican governor candidate Kari Lake speaks to supporters at a campaign event in Queen Creek, Ariz., Oct. 5, 2022.
Some candidates who lost in the US midterm elections are challenging the results in court. Kari Lake, the GOP candidate in Arizona, is one of them. But her attempt seems to have been unsuccessful.A court has ruled that losing Republican governor candidate for Arizona, Kari Lake, did not provide convincing evidence sufficient to warrant a re-vote.Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Peter Thompson’s ruling followed a two day trial which culminated on Saturday.
"The Court cannot accept speculation or conjecture in place of clear and convincing evidence," the judge said, adding that setting aside the results of an election "has never been done in the history of the United States."
After the decision was announced, Lake tweeted: “My election case provided the world with evidence that proves our elections are run outside of the law. This Judge did not rule in our favor. However, for the sake of restoring faith and honesty in our elections, I will appeal his ruling.”
2022 US MidtermsArizona Judge Rules Two of Kari Lake’s Claims Challenging Governor Election Results Can Go to Trial20 December, 15:49 GMTLake had argued that there had been printer malfunctions and violations of the chain of custody procedures on election day, evidence which the court admitted. Another eight pieces of evidence presented by Lake’s team were not admitted by the court.She went on to argue that Republican supporters were more likely to vote at polling stations than via postal vote, thus, the malfunctions were more detrimental to her than her rival.
Lake’s Witnesses
One of Lake’s witnesses, Clay Parikh, claimed that there were printing malfunctions, stating that she found 14 ballots that printed a 19-inch image on 20-inch paper, potentially causing tabulation issues and requiring intentional printer setting changes.Another witness testified that procedures for storing ballots were violated. Heather Honey stated that in response to her public request, Maricopa County did not provide documents describing the procedures for storing early voting ballots dropped off directly on voting day.The witness also indicated that an employee of Runbeck Election Services, a third-party that scanned images of ballot signatures so the county could verify them, told her that employees of that service could bring their relatives’ ballots directly to the center for counting. She heard that about 50 ballots were brought in this way, but was unable to provide further evidence.
Maricopa County’s Responses
Maricopa officials had previously acknowledged several problems with printers, however, they claimed that voters had the opportunity to use other means to cast their vote.During the hearings, Maricopa County Co-Elections Director Scott Jarrett said that these problems may have been caused by heat settings in the printers, but the county continues to analyze the problem. He also said about 1,300 ballots were printed with a scaled-down image in an effort to fix the problem, but they were eventually accounted for.Joe Larue, an attorney for Maricopa County, stated that Heather Honey misunderstood the differences between the various types of custody procedures and all procedures were regulated.
