Legal Insurrection by William A. Jacobson 12/25/2022
Court Dismisses Kari Lake Election Challenge, Cites Lack Of Evidence As To Intentional Misconduct Affecting The Outcome
This demonstrates the problem with election challenges that are outside the normal recount process. You are asking a judge to overturn the certified election result – that’s a lot to ask. You need to prove to a high degree of evidentiary proof that a fraud took place and that it affected the outcome. That almost never is provable.As previously posted, Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, who was widely predicted to win based on polling, filed legal challenges after she lost, focusing on pervasive problems on Election Day, particularly in Maricopa County. Among other things, an absurdly high number of voting locations experiences problems with ballot printing and processing, causing long waiting lines and many voters turned away and told to come back later.
Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Peter Thompson permitted two of Lake’s 10 challenges to go to trial:
The two counts that Judge Thompson ruled can go to trial involve printers malfunctioning on Election Day and ballot chain of custody. Lake claimed printers that malfunctioned were not certified and had “vulnerabilities” that made them “susceptible to hacking.” She also claimed the printers malfunctioned because of “intentional action.”
Judge Thompson said Lake must prove at trial that someone interfered with the printers in violation of Arizona law, that the interference caused her to lose votes and that those lost votes affected the outcome of the election.
As for the chain of custody issue, Lake claimed employees of the county’s ballot contractor violated the “County Election Manual” when they added ballots of family members and also failed to secure an “Inbound Receipt of Delivery.” Judge Thompson said whether the county complied with its own manual and applicable statutes is a dispute of fact rather than one of law.
Here is an account of some of the hearing testimony via The Hill:
Election officials acknowledged that some of the county’s Election Day vote centers experienced printer malfunctions that prevented tabulators from reading ballots, but they insisted voters could utilize backup options to ultimately have their ballot counted.
Lake’s campaign noted that Election Day voters tend to support Republicans, leveraging witness testimony and affidavits to argue the issues were intentionally aimed at making Hobbs the winner and disenfranchised enough Lake supporters to cause the Republican’s defeat.
When asked during the trial if he intentionally sabotaged the printers or was aware of anyone who did, Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer (R) responded, “absolutely not.”
Lake then called a witness, Clay Parikh, who examined ballots on behalf of her campaign and said he inspected 14 ballots that printed a 19-inch image on 20-inch paper. Parikh suggested the discrepancy would cause the tabulation issues and required intentional printer setting changes.
Maricopa County Co-Elections Director Scott Jarrett testified that the county’s root cause analysis remains ongoing, but officials identified that printer heat settings contributed to the problem.
More:
https://legalinsurrection.com/2022/12/court-dismisses-kari-lake-election-challenge-cites-lack-of-evidence-as-to-intentional-misconduct-affecting-the-outcome/
