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.
Republicans should never ever again make their claim to vote on election day, because it clearly telegraphed how the Democrats could target and defeat them.
You have to play by the lowest common denominator of the rules in the game or you lose.
That said, how Hobbs did what she did and gathered no formal rebuke will have a long and damaging legacy in AZ and America.
No, the undersized ballots contain timing marks that need to be reprinted. But they were recorded on 19" paper and trying to print on 20" paper moves them proportionally, thus printing them in a wrong location for the paper. This triggered the error. The judge did not explain why 19" ballot images in a 20" election was lawful. The election can only have 1 paper size, by law.
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5by5
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It is Western Civilization that confers privilege, not whiteness. Ask Carson, MLK, Sowell.
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Loose lips sink ships.
In the News/Activism forum, on a thread titled Kari Lake loses 2022 election lawsuit against Katie Hobbs, 5by5 wrote:
It was over when they limited her case to intentional interference.
........
You are correct. Where is law or precedent that supports the Judge’s decision to limit her case like that? NYONE?
Just dumb shxtery and mistakes that could have swung the election should be cause for a new elect4 I think.
I hope her lawyers objected to the judge’s limiting her case like that and preserved a basis for appeal.
And this is surprising how?
The Red counties should have refused to certify the election, and the responsible county board members needed to have left the country. That was the best chance to fix this because it would have required that the legislature address the issue.
Under Arizona law the proof had to be that there was intentional misconduct to deny her votes.
Kari Lake fatally wounded her campaign in the final week doing an appearance with Steve Bannon and telling McCain supporters to "get the hell out!" at a campaign rally.
This was stupid.
She already had the MAGA vote in her back pocket. She needed the independents and McCain voters to come along. Instead, in doing this, she just reminded them that she's too "Trumpy" and lost enough of their support to earn her defeat.
As long as people hinge their hopes on court cases, it keeps hope going, and it just delays what needs to be done. Stop hoping! Hope is not a strategy!
“Under Arizona law the proof had to be that there was intentional misconduct to deny her votes.”
Manipulating a printer to reduce or enlarge an image so that it cannot possibly be read by tabulators programmed for a specific size is intentional. If a judge doesn’t understand that, then he’s a stupid person.
Well it is afternoon on a holiday weekend so being as drunk as you both are right now isn’t the worst thing in the world.
FWIW Kari won when all legal votes were counted along with the hundreds of thousands of suppressed votes.
Even a rino/dem/mccain cuck can see that a mile away.
Or…maybe Lake simply didn’t get enough votes to win.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Of course she didn’t. That’s was the whole point of the fraudulent voting process.
….know what time it is….
Yeah! Time to make signs and yell louder! /s
I don't know if we will make it to 2024 before the end of America comes. I think it's already done. Stick a fork in it done.
It's corrupted by rino/dem/globalists from top to bottom. The infestation of this plague happened right under our noses for many decades and now it's too late to stop it. Not even a rise up of the people could stop it now. It would take an act of God at this point and I mean every single corrupt asshat drop dead in their tracks kind of Act of God. I mean it would be great if that happened but I doubt it.
I understand why the puritans burned people at the stake now. They were the progressive communists of their time who deserved something more intense than a mere hanging or bullet to the head.
i’m surprised the dem judge allowed it to proceed as far as it did.
when you’re committing election fraud, controlling the local courts is a requirement
You obviously didn’t follow a single detail of this trial or you are just a rat troll. Lake’s team presented an overwhelming case and don’t bother with the
“Well if that’s true than Lake would have won the suit”
No surprise, this.
The retaliation of the lefturds, though, also now includes the claim for sanctions against the pubbies...you know, just to teach them a lesson about unfounded, nuisance suits...
The left is clearly, irredeemably evil.
You must be too in the tank to recognize vote fraud. Do you also think Fetterman won legitimately? Or how about Biden in 2020?
That is an odd law. If machines are failing widespread, why would “intent’ factor in? What if the majority of the machines failed statewide and only 30% of the vote came in? I would assume that whoever is leading at that time wins if the law doesn’t allow a revote?
The judge told them they had to prove any "errors" were intentional when he allowed it to be heard.
I think Jussie Smollet’s trial was longer than this trial..What a sad joke.
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