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.
Nope. You’ll do. I love bashing communist liberals. They react childish.
https://search.brave.com/search?q=kari+lake+42.5%25&source=desktop
Dispute it all
Jump up and down
Go along with the Ratz
You be one of them
The key word in that paragraph is could. I suspect the majority of the ballots placed in door 3 Were unreadable by design and required an adjudicator to make a duplicate ballot but as testimony revealed the ballot that was duplicated was not attached to the new ballot. That was a direct violation of election law as were many other practices that this judge chose to ignore.
If you are trying to rationalize this Judge's opinion, sell it somewhere else.
Bash away rino scum. Bash away.
At least I’m not a socialist liberal communist. You do have the trifecta.
“I suspect.....”
Doesn’t cut it when it comes to overturning an election—according to AZ election law.
Thank you.
FR has been invaded by DU trolls.
Xiden IS NOT my president. Capiche?
#RESIST #NEVERBRANDON #NOTMYPRESIDENT
Xiden supporters aren’t Americans. Period.
Biden is as much your President as Reagan, Obama, Bush, Clinton, and Trump.
I know this may be a shock to you but Biden supporters are just as American and just as patriotic as you think you are. Democrats aren’t subversives, they just have different ideas about how to make and/or keep America as the ideal it was intended to be. Some of their ideas are cockamamie garbage, but Republicans have some of those also. There is also more common ground than you may want to admit. It is healthy to disagree and even to debate. When it gets to the point that the other side is no better than garbage and not fellow citizens, that is a slippery and dark path that no American should want to go down. Merry Christmas.
Look boy, you can keep lying through your teeth until the big cows come home but it won’t change the facts on the ground. You have unequivocally proven you are a lousy rino. That fact is in evidence.
There’s nothing to prove any lie you say about me so run along little pee-brain boy. Go pull on mommy’s skirt where you belong.
I see what you are saying. I will try to elaborate. The Office of the President, is the highest office and the elected leader. I respect the office enough for what it stands for and its ideals. Some come into the office and represent the best of us. Some occupants grow into the ideal. Some never make it. I think the past 2 did not make the ideal. It doesn’t make them bad Americans or traitors, just poor presidents. It doesn’t diminish what the office is and can be. And both sides can be accused of using force to control how you live and believe. Would banning abortion (which I would implement in a minute) not force a segment of the citizenry to abide by beliefs they don’t believe in? Are Republicans my friend that pick my pockets to fund a bloated military that is 5x larger than we need?
Maybe it’s time for Arizonans to practice “Irish Democracy,” in which they all do their own thing and pay no mind to whatever ridiculous laws or EOs “Governor” Hobbs puts her pen to.
As the vote rigging seems to be a national project — except for where they apparently gave up in Florida — it would not surprise me if this were true.
There are those who believe in burning hydrocarbons to continue to advance society and generate wealth and those who don’t.
Not much in common between those two groups.
1. Notice a disturbing trend of non-corrupt Republicans way ahead in the polls, way ahead in election day votes, losing days later to mail in ballots? To candidates that barely campaign and don’t debate, and can’t draw 20 people to a rally?
2. Are you brain dead?
It would if the rolls were reversed and you know it. Corrupt courts produce corrupt citizens and socialism.
You speak like the traitor Linda Graham. Demonrats are NOT Americans and seek to destroy the US.
Merry Christmas.
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