Kari Lake will get to make case for election misconduct
On Monday, a judge dismissed part of the lawsuit brought by Kari Lake (the defeated Republican candidate for Arizona governor), but she will let her call witnesses to show that she was not able to win because of election officials’ misconduct.
Eight of the 10 claims Lake made in her lawsuit against Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Peter Thompson were dismissed by Thompson. The judge was asked to declare Lake the winner or hold an appeal in the county. Thompson did not take a position on Lake’s two remaining claims. However, he stated that she is allowed to make her case under the law.
Lake was defeated by Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, by just 17,000 votes from the 2.6 million voters. In a two-day hearing, she will try to prove that Maricopa County’s ballot printers failed due to intentional interference from election officials. She also claims that the ballots were incorrectly added by a county contractor who handles returned mail ballots.
On Tuesday, a representative of Lake will have the right to examine 150 ballots.
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“Buckle up, America. “This is far from over,” Lake tweeted after the ruling.
The bar is very high. She must prove not only that misconduct took place but also that it had an impact on the outcome of her race. Thompson will issue a final ruling, likely to be appealed at the Arizona Supreme Court.
A variety of constitutional claims were dismissed by the judge, including Lake’s claim that Hobbs, as secretary of state, along with Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer, engaged in censorship in flagging social media posts containing election misinformation to be removed by Twitter.
Lake was one of the most vocal 2022 Republicans who endorsed former President Donald Trump’s election lies. She made them the central theme of her campaign. Lake is not like most other election deniers in the country who conceded after losing their races.
She has focused her attention on issues with the ballot printers at polling places in Maricopa County. This county is home to over 60% of Arizona’s voters. The ballots printed by the defective printers were too small to be read at polling stations by the tabulators on site. The confusion caused some lines to clog.
The more advanced counters at Phoenix’s elections department headquarters were able to take the affected ballots. Officials from the county claim that everyone was allowed to vote and that all ballots were counted.
“The judiciary has served a bulwark to these efforts to undo the democratic system from within,” Abha Khanna, a lawyer representing Hobbs as the governor-elect, stated in court Monday. She urged the judge to dismiss Lake’s entire lawsuit.
A conservative Mohave County judge said Tuesday that he would hear a separate challenge to Abraham Hamadeh’s election petition. This was filed by Abraham Hamadeh who was the Republican candidate for attorney General and lost 511 votes against Kris Mayes, Democrat Kris Mayes. Many of the same claims are raised in Hamadeh’s case as Lake’s. Mayes and Hobbs, in their official capacity of secretary of state, have asked Judge Lee Jantzen for dismissal.
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