Closing arguments by lawyers opposing Republican Kari Lake’s election challenge delved into the details of data and signature comparison procedures, but the bigger question is trust in the election and who is whittling that trust away. I also delved into whether there is.
During Friday’s 80-minute hearing, lawyers sparred, with Lake’s team claiming Maricopa County’s failure was a “fraud” and distrust, while the other side accused Lake of misinformation. accused of failing to concede the election campaign.
“Kali Lake lost this election, and she’s clearly upset about it,” said an attorney at Elias Law Group, which represents Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs in the lawsuit. Elena Rodriguez Armenta said.
“To continue this campaign without real evidence every second is an attack on Arizona’s strong public policies that stand for electoral integrity, democracy, and the stability and certainty of election results.”
Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Peter Thompson began reviewing the evidence Lake sought to dismiss the case against Hobbes after arguments capping the three-day trial.
Thompson did not immediately issue a judgment, but a written judgment is likely in the coming days.
how a judge decides a case
An important question for the court to determine is whether Maricopa County verified in accordance with state law that the voter’s signature on the ballot affidavit envelope matches the signature on the voter record.
The relevant state law states that the county registrar “must compare his signature with the elector’s signature on the electoral registration record.” If the signature is “inconsistent,” the law directs the county to contact the voter and attempt to correct the signature, a process known as “correction.”
Lake, a Republican gubernatorial candidate and former TV news anchor, claimed the county was not obeying the law. She attended part of the third day of the trial on Friday, but declined to comment when she left the Mesa Justice Center.
Her case, filed by attorneys Kurt Olsen and Brian Brem, relies on testimony and data analysis that some signatures were compared in just a few seconds and that the speedy review did not meet legal standards. It was based primarily on the county’s objections. Law for comparison.
Mr. Olsen told the judge whether he considered the 70,000 signatures compared within two seconds, or the 274,000 signatures compared within three seconds, whichever the outcome of the election would be. It should be set aside because it would change the
“Too many early votes that have to be verified in too short a time frame leaves the system vulnerable to mistakes, fraud and oversights,” Olsen said.
These figures are based on analysis by hired signature verification inspector Eric Spekin. He used key-in data provided by the county in response to a public records request to the We the People Arizona Alliance, a political action committee, to calculate how long signature verification would take. He had the worker confirm his signature.
The county asked the judge to discredit Mr. Spekin’s calculations on those numbers, but Tom Liddy, civil affairs director for the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office, said they were irrelevant.
Liddy said it was sufficient for the judge to find that verification had taken place, arguing that Lake’s own witnesses made the county’s claims.
Two of the witnesses, Jacqueline Onigkate and Andrew Myers, said they worked on signature verification as part of the 2022 general election. So did Ray Valenzuela, the Maricopa County elections official and the county’s chief witness, who said he personally examined 1,600 ballot envelopes last year.
Liddy also made an exception, which Olsen repeated at least three times in his allegations: Maricopa County did not call its own expert witnesses to challenge Spekin’s testimony or data analysis. . The county objected to including Spekin’s research, and Liddy said the court ruled that Spekin’s analysis could not be considered evidence in the case.
Liddy declined to comment after the trial when asked if he was laying the legal groundwork to seek sanctions for Mr. Olsen’s remarks.
Olsen and Brem have already been fined by the Arizona Supreme Court for similar past statements in the Lake case. The court imposed a $2,000 fine for repeatedly arguing that the 35,000 votes added to the November tally were “incontrovertible facts.” These allegations were repeated even after the state Supreme Court rejected them.
Closing arguments go beyond the courtroom
Lake filed a lawsuit in December, complaining of losing to Hobbes by about 17,000 votes. Her team presented evidence at a two-day trial in December, but Thompson found no basis to declare Lake the winner.
A state appeals court upheld his decision, and the Arizona Supreme Court ruled in much the same way, citing Thompson’s use of faulty legal reasoning to dismiss the count, a single signature verification issue. was returned to Thompson for reconsideration. That led to a trial that began on Wednesday and concluded on Friday.
After three days of sometimes heated exchanges and a flurry of legal objections, Lake, Hobbes, the Maricopa County attorney and the Arizona Secretary of State took turns delivering closing arguments. It was not without tension, especially over issues that cast doubt on the election.
“Election officials wield enormous power,” Olsen said. “With that power comes responsibility, and with it comes responsibility to follow the laws, because if those laws are not followed, we will lose public confidence. It is well known that the main reason for this is the failure of election officials to comply with the law.”
But Liddy refuted the allegations, saying Maricopa County verified the signatures and did the right thing.
“Reasonable people can disagree, and irrational people can disagree and spew garbage on the internet,” Liddy said. “Misinformation, lies and filth being circulated” is the cause of the collapse, he added. trust in elections.
“The fact that some people in Arizona and some people in the United States are not confident in our election means that, as Mr. Lake’s team suggests, many counties on this bountiful plain have It’s not proof that you’re not doing your part,” Liddy said. , “But it could just be people reading what they wrote.”
Please contact reporter Stacy Berchanger. stacey.barchenger@arizonarepublic.com or 480-416-5669.please follow her twitter @sbarchenger.
