Kari Lake wins lawsuit over alleged election misconduct, other claims dismissed

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PHOENIX Losing Hope Governor Kari Lake has the right to try to prove in court that someone in Maricopa County illegally tinkered with ballot printers, which caused her to lose votes, says a judge on Monday evening.

In a 13-page ruling, Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Peter Thompson said he would not rule on the merits of Lake’s allegation of willful misconduct, one of the legal grounds in Arizona to contest an election.

That, he said, will come after a two-day trial due to begin on Wednesday.

The root of this complaint is that printers at many of the county’s 223 polling centers malfunctioned, producing ballots that could not be scanned by on-site tabulators. This, in turn, caused long queues as some people refused the alternative option of depositing their ballots in a sealed box to be counted later.

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Lake also maintains that an unknown number of people simply gave up without voting. Specifically, she said the fact that Republicans are more likely to vote on Election Day than Democrats means those are votes that would have gone to her.

But while allowing Lake to make those points, Thompson said she will have to show more to prevail and to get her to overturn the election results which showed her losing to Democrat Katie Hobbs. by more than 17,000 votes.

“The plaintiff must show at trial that the malfunctions of the on-demand voting printer were intentional and intended to affect the outcome of the election, and that such actions did in fact affect the outcome,” the judge wrote.

In fact, Thompson said he is required by law to assess evidence in a way that, when in doubt, confirms the validity of the election. But he said that, at least for now, he should consider Lake’s complaint valid.

“The Court will sift in vain”

Lake will struggle to prove that the election results were affected, said Abha Khanna, representing the governor-elect in a personal capacity.

“The court will sift through page after page of statements in vain for evidence that votes were counted illegally or voters we wrongfully rejected,” she told Thompson during the interview. a hearing earlier Monday. Virtually all of those statements were made by people who complained about Election Day problems but actually voted, she said.

“At most, these statements say that a handful of voters chose not to vote using the means available to them on Election Day,” Khanna said.

This refers to the fact that any voter who could not get their ballot instantly had the option of depositing it in a sealed box to be counted later at a central location.

And Assistant County Attorney Tom Liddy pointed out that many counties in Arizona do not provide for on-site tabulation because it is not required by state law.

Thompson also said he would allow Lake to present any evidence she has that someone in Runbeck Election Services, which handles the ballots for the county, deliberately added “an undetermined number of votes…to the official results.” .

This goes to his claim that the county failed to maintain a “chain of custody” of approximately 300,000 ballots, making those votes unreliable. And Lake also claims that more than 25,000 ballots were added to the total after Election Day.

Liddy said there was no violation of the law. And he said that 25,000 figure simply reflects the difference between estimates the county released Nov. 8 of the number of ballots received and more accurate totals two days later, after counting all the first. ballot papers deposited in the polling stations.

Lake: ‘it’s far from over’

A trial is the place to determine whether the county complied not only with state custody document laws but also with its own playbook, Thompson said.

But the judge also said that while Lake may show some non-compliance, she will also have to prove that “it was both intentional and in fact caused the outcome to change.”

The decision to allow a trial on those issues comes despite efforts by Hobbs, represented by separate attorneys in her capacity as secretary of state and governor-elect who defeated Lake, to have the entire case dismissed.

Lake, in a post on Twitter, welcomed the decision.

“Katie Hobbs’ attempt to have our case dismissed FAILED,” she wrote.

“She will have to speak up and testify,” Lake continued. “Buckle up, America. It’s far from over.

This claim that Hobbs must go to court stems from the fact that Thompson, in a separate decision, refused an offer from Hobbs’ lawyers to rescind a subpoena to have her appear in court and testify. The judge said there was reason to believe that Hobbs, as secretary of state, might have knowledge of some of the issues he resolved for the trial.

Several requests rejected

But Monday’s decision was far from a clear victory for Lake.

The judge dismissed various other allegations, including Olson’s clams that Hobbs was involved in “a covert censorship operation set up by the government that would make Orwell blush.”

This was based on an aide to Hobbs, as Secretary of State, sending information to a central reporting portal he claims is operated by the federal government about a Twitter post she wanted removed because it indicated that the state voter rolls were in the hands of a foreign company. Twitter later complied.

Olson, however, said it really empowers election officials “to immediately flag and take down information, censor people, that they find objectionable.” Thompson didn’t believe it.

“Not only does the verified statement not state an unconstitutional violation of the plaintiff’s (or anyone else’s) speech, but even if it did, it would not constitute misconduct under the election laws. “Thompson wrote.

The judge also denied two separate but related claims regarding early polls.

Lake argued that the only allowed method of determining the validity of signatures on advance ballots is to see if it matches what the county has on the person’s voter registration record. But county officials admitted they were also using other documents on file, such as advance requests for early voting.

The result, according to Olson, was that “tens of thousands of illegal votes were fed into the system”.

Postal vote challenge rejected

Thompson did not address whether the county’s signature-matching procedure was legal.

Instead, he pointed out, Lake has known since at least April, when Attorney General Mark Brnovich publicly raised concerns that the county may not be following the law. But Thompson said after waiting, she could no longer use that to try to overturn the election.

Likewise, Thompson dismissed Lake’s claim that the mail-in ballot process is unconstitutional because there is no way to guarantee that a person’s vote remains secret.

The only thing is, the judge said, it’s not a new problem: Current Arizona laws allowing anyone to apply for early voting were approved in 1991.

“Lake could have taken on this challenge any time in the past 30 years,” Thompson wrote. “To do so now is to invite confusion and prejudice when absolutely no explanation has been given for the unreasonable delay.”

Lake isn’t the first to raise the issue.

Earlier this year, Mohave County Superior Court Judge Lee Jantzen dismissed claims by the Arizona Republican Party that lawmakers violated the Arizona Constitution when they approved the law of 1991. The state GOP appeals this decision.

Howard Fischer is a veteran journalist who has reported since 1970 and has covered state politics and the Legislature since 1982. Follow him on Twitter at @azcapmedia [email protected].

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