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Kari Lake again asks AZ Supreme Court to overturn 2022 governor's election

Kari Lake
Gage Skidmore/CC BY 2.0
Kari Lake speaking with attendees at the 2022 AmericaFest at the Phoenix Convention Center in Phoenix in December 2022.

Kari Lake is launching her last-ditch legal effort in her bid to argue that she, not Katie Hobbs, was elected governor in 2022.

Lake is asking the Arizona Supreme Court to overturn prior court rulings rejecting her various claims that the election was improperly run in Maricopa County.

Her attorneys said the justices should give her the chance to present what she claims is “new evidence” about the extent of the failure of tabulators used on Election Day two years ago. The state Court of Appeals just rejected those claims less than a month ago.

Those claims cover everything from an alleged failure to conduct legally required "logic and accuracy'' testing on tabulating machines to allegations the county had advance notice that those tabulators at vote centers would reject ballots on Election Day.

That, in turn, goes to her arguments that would-be voters, frustrated by long lines, left without casting ballots. And Lake contends that a majority of those discouraged voters were Republicans, and would have voted for her.

In its ruling, the Court of Appeals acknowledged that there are legal procedures to resurrect a case — even after a judge has made a ruling. And that can be based on whether evidence was not available at the time. But the appellate judges said the claims that Lake was making just didn't fit any of the requirements.

Lake is also attempting to resurrect arguments that there is no way Maricopa County properly verified the signatures on all of the early ballots it had received. But even the trial judge ruled, and the appellate court agreed, that her arguments about how long it took to verify the average signature are legally irrelevant.

At the very least, Lake wants the high court to order a new election in Maricopa County.

And if the justices are unwilling to do that, she said they could strike 275,000 early ballots from the final total, the number she claims could not have had their signatures verified in the time allotted.

Lake figures that maneuver would be more than enough to erase Hobbs' 17,117-vote margin of victory statewide.

All this comes less than three weeks before Lake faces off against Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb in the bid to be the Republican nominee for Senate. And if she wins, Lake then has to defeat Democrat Ruben Gallego for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Kyrsten Sinema.

Even if the justices were to grant review and even if they ordered a new election, it is unlikely that could be completed before the Nov. 5 general election. And that raises the question of which office Lake actually wants.

Repeated messages to Lake and her campaign were not returned.

This is actually her second bid for Supreme Court review after Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Peter Thompson first threw out her claims after the official results showed her losing to Hobbs.

The first time, the justices at the high court rejected all of her claims except for one: questions about the signature verification process for early ballots used in Maricopa County, sending that back to the trial court.

She fared no better with those arguments at a second trial, however, a decision upheld by the Court of Appeals.

Now Lake is asking the high court to review that.

Central to the latest claim is that election logs showed county workers reviewed more than 275,000 early ballot signatures in less than three seconds each, comparing them to signatures on file using computer screen images of both. And 70,000 were reviewed in less than two seconds.

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