Posted on 12/31/2022 10:10:48 PM PST by McGruff
Arizona Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake on Wednesday appealed a Maricopa County judge’s ruling against her election challenge of Democrat Katie Hobbs’ win.
Lake has pledged on multiple occasions that she will take her case all the way to the Arizona Supreme Court, if necessary.
It would not be unprecedented if the high court decided in her favor overturning the election, even after the trial court ruled the other way.
There is also precedent for an election being overturned even after a “winner” of the governor’s race was sworn in and began to serve.
In November 1916, when “State 48” was young, its very first governor, Democrat George Wylie Paul Hunt, was running for a third two-year term, Phoenix Magazine reported.
(Excerpt) Read more at westernjournal.com ...
Hunt appealed the case the next month. Finally, in December, the Arizona Supreme Court ruled in Hunt's favor, concluding that the ballots that were double-marked were invalid and should be thrown out.
Hunt won by 43 votes and was sworn in as governor on Christmas Day 1917. Campbell had served nearly a year in the office.
It’s important to remember this case.
The “move on” crowd has been depending on the impulse to just leave it all behind.
We shouldn’t.
Nope. That century old case is irrelevant to today’s courts. In the 1916 election the Republican was the certified winner and the Dim was the challenger. Courts don’t look at it the same way when a Republican challenges.
Arizona was only five years old in 1917.
The corrupt political machines (R & D) were still serving their apprenticeships. It took a bit longer to get them down pat.
It should be pretty obvious at this point in time that the courts across the country are going to “respect” the circumstances and conditions under which local elections are permitted by the citizens to proceed.
The processes need to be fixed proactively and legislatively-and ahead of time. Not retroactively and judicially after the fact.
Perhaps criminal interference with the legislative process might get you some time in front of a judge and jury-but they’re not gonna overturn an election.
I’ve been curious as to why the focus is on an election redo instead of the lower bar of ordering a manual recount in Maricopa. Has the 25,000 vote discrepancy between Maricopa and the SoS been resolved (if so, how?)? What about the large numbers of votes thrown into Box 3, and others supposedly counted without witnesses. The 4,000 uncounted provisional ballots? A recount in Maricopa would likely put the Republican into the AG’s office easily. If the Gov and other offices aren’t reversed, the AG can investigate malfeasance.
GWP Hunt was basically Arizona’s Governor from 1912 to the mid 30s. He was a typical Southern-style Democrat ( which is what political persuasion ran the state until the 1950s)
That would take intelligence, honesty and patriotism. Unfortunately, these are qualities that preclude an individual from holding an office where the required changes can be produced. It would also require a desire to toss the status quo...to actually craft unbiased and verifiable elections. Again, not a politician's strong suit.
That’s a generalization that certainly did not used to apply to Arizona up until maybe just recently and maybe not even now.
The judge in Lake’s case was a Mormon ex-Army officer appointed by Jan Brewer originally. Since the state has been run by Republicans since the ersatz reign of error under Janet Napolitano, most judges there now fit a more “conservative” mold.
But Thompson really isn’t “conservative” in the sense that most think of; he’s a Mormon. How that is different could take me a book to explain, but having grown up in NON-Mormon Arizona and lived in Utah for almost a decade, I can safely tell you it’s nothing you’ve experienced in Deep South Alabama.
There are plenty of straight forward judges in Arizona. This guy isn’t one of them, but for reasons different from what you might think.
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