Kari Lake has asserted for weeks that her loss in the Arizona governor’s race was illegitimate, and she will finally have the chance to present her case to a judge this week during a two-day trial planned to begin on Wednesday.
She will have the opportunity to inspect ballots, summon witnesses, and present evidence in an effort to prove she was the true winner of the contest, which was won by Democrat Katie Hobbs by a margin of just 17,000 votes.
She faces insurmountable odds. Peter Thompson, judge of the Maricopa County Superior Court, stated that she must demonstrate not only that wrongdoing occurred, but also that it was meant to deny her victory and did result in the wrong lady being named the winner.
At a Tuesday gathering for the conservative youth group Turning Point USA, Lake said, “We have a chance to show the world that our elections are actually corrupt and that we will no longer accept it.”
There is no jury present. Thompson will provide a decision based on the presented facts, and the losing party will likely appeal to the Arizona Supreme Court. Lake is requesting that the judge either declare her the victor in Maricopa County or order a new election. The new governor begins his term on January 2.
Hobbs’s attorneys assert that the trial will be a spectacle and a chance for Lake to promote implausible notions regarding electoral fraud.
Abha Khanna, an attorney for Hobbs, urged the judge on Monday to dismiss the lawsuit in its entirety before to trial, stating that the court should not allow plaintiffs to put on such a show. The courtroom is not a stage.
Monday, Thompson dismissed eight of Lake’s ten claims, including her assertion that Hobbs and Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer engaged in censorship by flagging social media posts containing election misinformation for probable removal by Twitter. In addition, he refuted her charges of discrimination against Republicans and the illegality of mail-in voting processes.
Thompson, who was chosen to the bench by former Republican Governor Jan Brewer, took no view on the merits of Lake’s two remaining claims, but he stated that the statute permits her to present her case.
Lake was one of the most outspoken 2022 Republicans in support of former President Donald Trump’s election lying, which she made the core of her campaign. While the majority of other election deniers across the nation have recognized defeat, Lake has not.
She has honed in on issues with ballot printers at some polling locations in Maricopa County, home to more over 60 percent of registered voters. The malfunctioning printers created ballots that were too light for the tabulators at the polling locations to read. In several instances, lines backed up due to the confusion.
Affected votes were transferred to the more advanced counters at the elections department’s downtown Phoenix headquarters. According to county officials, everyone had the opportunity to vote and all ballots were counted. Officials are investigating why some Oki printers failed when used with the same settings as in previous elections, although it appears to have been a problem with the fuser, which warms the toner to imprint it into the paper.
The second allegation of Lake is that the chain of custody for ballots was breached at an off-site facility where a contractor scans postal ballots in preparation for processing. She asserts that personnel at the facility placed their own mail-in ballots in the pile, rather than returning them through proper means, and that there is no documentation of the ballot transfer.
The county contests the assertion.
Lake must demonstrate, for both the printer and chain of custody arguments, that her election was stolen purposefully and successfully. The Arizona Supreme Court declared almost a century ago that mistakes by election officials, even significant ones, are insufficient to reverse an election; the losing candidate must demonstrate that the errors affected the outcome.
In the meantime, a judge in conservative Mohave County ruled on Tuesday that Republican Abraham Hamadeh may continue with his lawsuit disputing the results of the attorney general election, which he lost to Democrat Kris Mayes by a margin of 514 votes. Hamadeh’s claim concerns the same printing difficulties as Lake’s, and also says that his race was harmed by inappropriate treatment of ballots that were duplicated or judged by humans because they were unreadable by tabulators.
Hamadeh is permitted to view votes in Maricopa, Pima, and Navajo counties before to his Friday trial, according to Judge Lee Jantzen. Originally planned for distribution on Thursday, the results of an automatic recount of the election will now be withheld until Hamadeh’s complaint is completed.
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