by Howard Fisher
capitol media services
PHOENIX– Kari Lake said on Tuesday that she plans to appeal Monday’s ruling confirming Katie Hobbs’ election as governor, arguing that key evidence was legally irrelevant for the judge to overturn the result. Ignored the fact that he said he was.
At a press conference in front of the company’s headquarters in Phoenix, Lake said he was denied the ability to file a lawsuit to prove he had actually won the race. She said it was because of decisions on state election law from Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Peter Thompson to the Arizona Supreme Court about what she needed to prove.
All of them were against her.
“Judges basically say anything goes, it doesn’t matter,” indicted unsuccessful Republican candidate
“The electoral law is just a proposal, so if something happens, anything is possible,” she continued.
Nonetheless, Lake said he would not violate election laws in the future and wondered what would happen to his 2024 presidential run if the appeal failed.
Thompson said in his ruling late Monday that Lake had failed to prove that Maricopa County had not scrutinized signatures on early ballots as required by law. In fact, she testified that two of her own witnesses had personally conducted such tests, she said.
Lake’s defense team also relied on the testimony of Erik Spekin, a purported signature verification expert.
He told the judge that about 274,000 early voting signatures were compared within three seconds, and about 70,000 signatures were compared within two seconds. And that really shows there was no verification, Lake’s attorney argued.
The only problem, Thompson said, is that state law says nothing about how long reviewers must spend comparing signatures.
“It’s not one second, it’s not three seconds, it’s not six seconds. There’s no standard in the plain text of the statute,” the judge said. It has not been done,” he said. No specific signature. ”
Mr. Thompson also dismissed a parallel argument that what reviewers were doing barely met the legal requirement to “compare” signatures, stating that the law would force verifiers to say “signatures are We are simply requiring some judgment to be made as to whether there is agreement or disagreement.” Voter record. ”
“The court has determined that examining signatures that are generally consistent in character requires only cursory inspection and therefore takes little time,” the judge said.
Judge Lake said Tuesday that the judge was wrong in dismissing Mr. Spekin’s findings as legally irrelevant.
“There is relevant evidence that approximately 300,000 votes were approved within three seconds,” she said.
“It’s impossible, and we’re showing it, we’re delivering it, and the whole world is watching what they’re doing,” Lake said.
Lake said an appeal, or perhaps multiple appeals, would be next.
“We are considering several paths, so I am not ready to tell you what our paths are at this time,” she said.
The most obvious would be to call for a review of Mr Thompson’s latest decisions.
But her lawyers also allege that there were violations of the U.S. Constitution, including alleging that the voting equipment issue on Election Day unfairly influenced Republicans and therefore amounted to willful discrimination. This could open the way for the matter to be taken to the Supreme Court, but whether a Supreme Court judge has the power to overturn Lake’s official defeat to Hobbes by 17,117 votes. I don’t know.
And something could be done in 2024.
“We haven’t decided on that yet,” said Mr. Lake, although he claimed to have won the gubernatorial race. “We won the majority.”
One possibility includes running for the Senate, a campaign that has drawn interest after incumbent Kirsten Sinema has to leave the Democratic Party and seek another six-year term as an independent. Collecting. But in that case, she’ll be in the Republican primary with Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb, who shares many of her positions.
Lake soon said she wanted to start a grassroots organization to help herself and other candidates like her, which she called “following the ballot.”
This includes not only registering voters, but also tracking what happened during early voting.
“You know how I feel about mail-in ballots,” Lake says, but that doesn’t change the fact that most votes are cast that way.
She wants to focus on those who receive their ballots in the mail.
Lake said about 218,000 Republicans are on the list for early voting in 2022, but simply didn’t return their ballots. Similarly, about 332,000 ballots sent to independent voters were never returned and “left on the kitchen table,” he said.
She denied chasing ballots or finding supporters who didn’t return their ballots was something campaign workers should have done last year but didn’t.
“We didn’t drop any balls,” Lake said.
“We trained hard and knocked on the door,” she said. But we’re taking it to the next level. ”
On the appeal, Lake’s allies have already argued that Thompson missed the point when he said he needed to prove that no signature verification had taken place to overturn the results. But the judge noted in his ruling that it was a hurdle Lake set for himself.
Thompson said he had the option of trying to call into question certain vote numbers, conceding that it would have been “a tremendous test of proof in these circumstances.”
Instead, Lake made a “deliberate concession” to try to show that Maricopa County’s entire signature review process was not in compliance with the law, he said.
“More importantly, she had an obligation to prove that the early ballot submission and processing process had not taken place,” the judge said, which she failed to do.
Mr. Thompson separately rejected Mr. Lake’s lawyers’ argument that signature verification was the only safeguard against fraudulent ballot counting.
He cited the testimony of Maricopa County Election Commissioner Ray Valenzuela about other security measures built into the system.
According to Valenzuela, the requirements include the requirement to show ID when registering to vote, the requirement to apply for early voting, and the post office if the person to whom the ballot is to be sent does not already live there. It is said that there are a wide variety of systems, including a system that notifies the post office.
He then told the judge that each returned envelope was encrypted not only with the voter’s name, but also with a unique barcode.
Maricopa County Supervisory Board Chairman Clint Hickman welcomed the ruling, saying Lake’s legal arguments never lived up to her rhetoric.
“If a ‘bombshell’ or a ‘smoke cannon’ is not backed up by facts, you lose in court. This is justice,” he said.
This is not the first time Lake has appealed the Thompson decision.
In December, Thompson entered judgment challenging other claims brought by Lake.
One involved her allegation that there was a problem with printers and tally machines at vote centers on Election Day, which was done intentionally and disenfranchised people who would otherwise have voted for her. . The judge said she had no evidence to support her allegations, which the Supreme Court confirmed.
Lake also accused the county of failing to maintain legally mandated ballot custody, even claiming at one point that more than 35,000 votes were illegally counted. Both Thompson and the High Court ruled that the allegations were without merit.
Thompson had previously dismissed Lake’s accusations of failing to review early voting, based on the belief that Lake challenged verification standards in state law and election procedure manuals. He said these issues need to be addressed before the election, not after.
But the Supreme Court told the judge that Mr. Lake was not challenging the standard, nor was he challenging whether the county complied with it, and would consider the issue again. I ordered you. Due to Monday’s ruling, Thompson said he was unable to make his case.
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