A judge on Monday dismissed the only remaining legal claim in Republican Kari Lake’s challenge to her loss in last year’s Arizona gubernatorial race, allowing Democrat Katie Hobbs to win.

Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Peter A. Thompson said he could not prove Lake’s allegation that Maricopa County failed to verify signatures on vote-by-mail ballots as required by law.

Lake was one of last year’s most vocal Republican candidates to promote lies in former President Donald Trump’s election campaign, making it a centerpiece of his campaign. She has built a loyal following among Trump supporters and is openly considering running for the US Senate seat currently held by independent and former Democrat Kirsten Sinema. Lake is often mentioned as Trump’s running mate.

Most of the other election naysayers across the country conceded after losing the November campaign, but Mr. Lake did not. She has promoted her legal battle with fundraising appeals and speeches across the country.

Lake did not immediately comment on the ruling.

she then sued lost to Hobbes by about 17,000 votesasked the court to install her as governor or order new elections.Thompson dismissed the lawsuit, but the Arizona Supreme Court Allegations revived questioning how the signature verification procedure was used About early voting in Maricopa County, home to over 60% of state voters. County officials defended the signature verification effort, saying they had nothing to hide.

Mr. Lake’s signature verification claim was the subject of a three-day trial. Her lawyers argued that there was evidence that a lower-level inspector who discovered a signature discrepancy moved up the chain of command and was ignored by a higher-level inspector.

Mr. Lake’s lawyer also claimed that some 274,000 signatures were compared within two seconds of each, but Mr. Thompson ruled that timing was irrelevant.

“No such standard is set forth in Section 16-550,” Thompson wrote in the ruling obtained by a CBS affiliate. KPHO-TV. “Not one second, not three seconds, not six seconds. Standards do not appear in the plain text of a statute. Neither a statute nor an EPM requires a reviewer to spend a specific amount of time on a specific signature. ”

Thompson also said, “The court has determined that examining signatures that are generally consistent in character requires only cursory inspection and therefore takes little time.”

“At any level of review, there is no legal or regulatory requirement to apply a specific time for reviewing a particular signature,” he added.

Mr. Lake did not contest whether the voter’s signature on the ballot envelope matched the signature on the ballot record.

The former TV anchor faced the high hurdle of proving not only her claims about the signature verification effort, but that it influenced the outcome of her election.

Thompson, who was appointed to the bench by former Republican Governor Jan Brewer, said he had not reached that lofty hurdle.

“The evidence received by the court does not support plaintiff’s remaining claims,” ​​he wrote.

At the beginning of the lawsuit, Mr. Lake focused on problems with ballot machines at some polling places in Maricopa County. Ballots produced by faulty printers were too thin to be read by on-site counters at polling stations. Amidst the chaos, lines were jammed in some areas. Lake argued that the ballot problem was the result of deliberate fraud.

County officials said those affected by the press were taken to a more sophisticated counter at election headquarters so everyone had a chance to vote and all ballots were tallied.

In mid-February, the Arizona Court of Appeals dismissed Mr. Lake’s claims, concluding that he had not provided evidence that voters who could not read their ballots at polling place counters could not vote.

The next month, the state Supreme Court refused to hear nearly all of Lake’s appeals, saying there was no evidence to support her claim that more than 35,000 votes were added to the ballot total.

A court earlier this month fined Mr. Lake’s lawyer $2,000 for falsely stating that more than 35,000 ballots were improperly added to the tally.