Posted on 12/24/2022 12:34:42 PM PST by TigerClaws
PHOENIX - A judge has thrown out Republican Kari Lake’s challenge of her defeat in the Arizona governor’s race to Democrat Katie Hobbs, rejecting her claim that problems with ballot printers at some polling places on Election Day were the result of intentional misconduct.
In a decision Saturday, Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Peter Thompson, who was appointed by then-Republican Gov. Jan Brewer, found that the court did not find clear and convincing evidence of the widespread misconduct that Lake had alleged had affected the result of the 2022 general election.
Buy Lottery Tickets From Home Slips | Download on the App Store | Sponsored Lake, who lost to Hobbs by just over 17,000 votes, was among the most vocal 2022 Republicans promoting former President Donald Trump’s election lies, which she made the centerpiece of her campaign. While most of the other election deniers around the country conceded after losing their races in November, Lake has not. Instead, she asked the judge to either declare her the winner or order a revote in Maricopa County.
Lawyers for Lake focused on problems with ballot printers at some polling places in Maricopa County, home to more than 60% of Arizona’s voters. The defective printers produced ballots that were too light to be read by the on-site tabulators at polling places. Lines backed up in some areas amid the confusion.
Kari Lake's team will have until 5 p.m. on Dec. 26 to file a response, and any motion for sanctions will need to be submitted by 8 a.m. that morning.
Click to open this PDF in a new window. County officials say everyone had a chance to vote and all ballots were counted, since ballots affected by the printers were taken to more sophisticated counters at the elections department headquarters. They are in the process of investigating the root cause of the printer problems.
Lake’s attorneys also claimed the chain of custody for ballots was broken at an off-site facility, where a contractor scans mail ballots to prepare them for processing. They claim workers at the facility put their own mail ballots into the pile, rather than sending their ballots through normal channels, and also that paperwork documenting the transfer of ballots was missing. The county disputes the claim.
Lake faced extremely long odds in her challenge, needing to prove not only that misconduct occurred, but also that it was intended to deny her victory and did in fact result in the wrong woman being declared the winner.
Her attorneys pointed to a witness who examined ballots on behalf of her campaign and discovered 14 ballots that had 19-inch images of the ballot printed on 20-inch paper, meaning the ballots wouldn’t be read by a tabulator. The witness insisted someone changed those printer configurations, a claim disputed by elections officials.
County officials say the ballot images were slightly smaller as a result of a shrink-to-fit feature being selected on a printer by a tech employee who was looking for solutions to Election Day issues. They say about 1,200 ballots were affected by turning on the feature and that those ballots were duplicated so that they could be read by a tabulator. Ultimately, these ballots were counted, officials said.
A person who takes public-opinion polls testified on behalf of Lake, claiming technical problems at polling places had disenfranchised enough voters that it would have changed the outcome of the race in Lake’s favor. But an expert who was called to testify by election officials said there was no evidence to back up the pollster’s claim that 25,000 to 40,000 people who would normally have voted actually didn’t cast ballots as a result of Election Day problems.
Thompson had previously dismissed eight of the 10 claims Lake raised in her lawsuit. Among those were Lake’s allegation that Hobbs, in her capacity as secretary of state, and Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer engaged in censorship by flagging social media posts with election misinformation for possible removal by Twitter. He also dismissed her claims of discrimination against Republicans and that mail-in voting procedures are illegal.
Hobbs takes office as governor on Jan. 2.
Her campaign released the following statement:
"Last month, Arizonans made their voices heard at the ballot box. They chose sanity over chaos, and commonsense, bipartisan results over division. The voters of Arizona – not the conspiracy-riddled, dark corners of the Internet – are the ones who choose our leaders. We’re pleased that the courts have upheld the will of the voters, and Governor-Elect Hobbs is continuing the work of preparing to take office as Arizona’s next governor."
Earlier on Friday, another judge dismissed Republican Abraham Hamadeh’s challenge of results in his race against Democrat Kris Mayes for Arizona attorney general. The court concluded that Hamadeh, who finished 511 votes behind Mayes and hasn’t conceded the race, didn’t prove the errors in vote counting that he had alleged.
A court hearing is scheduled Thursday to present results of recounts in the races for attorney general, state superintendent and for a state legislative seat.
Not really there were duplicated ballots created but they failed to fix the original ballot to the copy so only the person marking the ballot voted.
Well this is all being done by design as they want to make voters so demoralized they stop voting..Also when you hear the word “Voting Reforms” you should run...that is a term to nationalize the voting system, like letting the Foxes guard the hen house..
You are probably correct but many of over the hill guys were young enough 20 years ago but we had no leader now at 84 all I can say is, Oh Well.
Re: 160 - Thanks for posting this.
Disappointing that the thread is filled with lazy posters who would rather get spoon fed what the ruling says by others, vs. going to the primary source document.
The shitty candidates we're forced to accept are doing that all on their own.
turtle up
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Excellent metaphor. Better than “head in the sand”!
We have a system in MC whereby hundreds of thousands of ED ballots are shipped off for signature verification without being counted first! That’s ripe for chicanery.
In the 2022 election, approximately 20% of all MC ballots were flagged as being invalid because of mismatched or no signatures. They were sent for review to the higher ups and an overwhelming majority were put through as adequate and then counted. We’re talking unsigned ballots here, folks.
If that isn’t the textbook definition of a banana republic, I don’t know what is.
It’s hard to imagine that the same folks that would go to any length to destroy Trump would also steal an election(s).
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Why is it hard to imagine, or are you /s?
And they wouldn’t go through all that trouble if they didn’t know they’d get away with it.
These are pros who know what they are doing. They are all about power, and they mean it! The sooner people wake up to this fact the sooner we can make some headway.
One person decided she failed. He’s an Obama appointee. I’m sure a jury of her peers here in AZ would have a much different opinion of this case than you or the biased judge.
Let’s hear your strategy, General.
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He doesn’t need to have a “strategy” for his opinion to be an accurate assessment of the situation he’s referring to.
Actually that is not sure. The judge was appointed by Jan brewer. A stanch conservative.
Hobbs LOST. They massively cheated her in. I don’t think there was much hope that any judge installed in that county would be anything but massively corrupt and now we know for sure he is.
Like Bush?
Hope those McCain RINOs in Maricopa County are happy with themselves.
I’m sure they’re feeling just peachy.
Money statement:
“The
margin of victory as reported by the official canvass is 17,117 votes – beyond the scope of a
statutorily required recount”
That’s an old trick. Using an absolute value vs a relative value.
The percentile margin is 0.6%, exactly 0.1% above the mandatory recount threshold.
So that gives away the rest of the Mormon conniver’s screed masquerading as a judgement. It’s carefully written to amplify the irrelevant and minimize the actual damages.
He claims in his basic ruling that Arizona law has long held a high standard:
“It is the object of elections to
ascertain a free expression of the will of the voters, and no mere irregularity can be considered,
unless it be shown that the result has been affected by such irregularity.”
42.5% of the votes in one county being tainted is a “mere irregularity”?
Guess that makes a gunshot wound a minor abrasion.
The opinion is a joke. It’s an intentional sandbag. He probably wrote it a week before the trial. No way he wrote this on Friday.
The only thing that matters to Mitch is, whether you will support him and his agenda, nothing else. There is one reason and only one that Mitch can stay in power and he provides the corrupt options to his supporters. Same with McCarthy and only bought and paid for politicians could possibly keep pretending he is in the slightest a conservative.
Problem is we the people have only to voting options, vote democrat or vote for a democrat pretending to be a conservative republican. I eel that even if the new conservative who wins election soon discovers he cannot stay there unless he joins in the corruption, sort of like bent cops require the new guy to join or die in an alley.
In face of all the perversion we see in our leadership I don't doubt Pizza Gate as much as I once did.
F___ him, his candidates suck worse.
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