Former Arizona Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake’s ongoing legal battle to address what she perceives as numerous election issues stemming from the closely contested 2022 race is still in progress.
Lake, a former newscaster and a staunch ally of former President Donald Trump, has filed a comprehensive 74-page lawsuit against Democratic Governor Katie Hobbs and election officials in Maricopa County. Her lawsuit is based on what she claims to be newly discovered evidence that supports her allegations.
Previously, Lake’s legal efforts failed to persuade courts that election results were compromised due to a combination of misconduct, malfunctioning election systems, and improper signature verification of early voters’ ballots.
Now, Lake has initiated an appeal against a ruling that went against her back in May. This appeal, focusing on election-related issues in Maricopa, has been transferred to a state appeals court located in Tucson.
In her opening brief for the appeal, Lake asserts that newly uncovered evidence substantiates her claims regarding compromised election results.
“New evidence demonstrates that Maricopa falsely certified its 446 vote-center tabulators passed mandatory L&A certification testing prior to Election Day and strongly suggests Maricopa planned the Election Day debacle,” says the court brief; L&A stands for “logic and accuracy.”
This is significant, as the legal filing explains, because “improperly configured and faulty BOD-printed ballots led to the rejection of tens of thousands of ballots by Maricopa’s vote-center tabulators. This could have been avoided through adequate Logic and Accuracy (L&A) testing.”
BOD stands for “ballot on demand,” as mentioned by the Western Journal.
“The ensuing chaos led to massive lines and wait times, thereby impairing or depriving the right to vote of tens of thousands of predominately Republican voters” as a result, said the filing.
“Arizona elections are now in uncharted territory,” the filing continued.
“New evidence produced by Maricopa County (‘Maricopa’) strongly suggests that Maricopa officials intentionally sabotaged the 2022 General Election, then gave false testimony attempting to cover up their misconduct. Even viewed in the light most favorable to Maricopa, the evidence shows Maricopa intentionally failed to conduct logic and accuracy (‘L&A’) testing” required by law and “altered the election equipment thereby rendering the election irredeemably flawed.”
The filing also said that the October testing ahead of the November election was “simply kabuki theatre.”
“After Maricopa conducted its falsely ‘certified’ L&A testing on October 11, 2022, Maricopa conducted unannounced and unlawful testing on all 446 vote-center tabulators on October 14, 17, and 18. The tabulator system log files show that 260 of the vote-center tabulators rejected ballots with the same tabulator error codes that occurred on Election Day. In other words, this evidence supports a conclusion that Maricopa’s unannounced and unlawful testing was a dry run for the Election Day debacle,” the filing added.
Continuing, the filing said that “Maricopa officials admitted, seven months after the fact, that between October 14-18, 2022, they swapped out the memory cards and the election software installed on Maricopa’s 446 vote-center tabulators with “reformatted memory cards” that purportedly contained election software supposedly previously tested on other equipment. Maricopa did not perform L&A testing on these 446 tabulators after swapping out the elections software and memory cards as required.”
Supporters of the 2022 gubernatorial candidate are pointing to a recent court ruling to further support her legal action.
In a ruling earlier this month, Yavapai County Superior Court Judge John Napper expressed his view that the existing process for verifying voter signatures on early ballots does not align with state law.
Judge Napper, by refusing to dismiss a case against the state, emphasized that the law required a signature match with the registration records of Arizona voters. This stance contradicts the current practice of using alternative documents for signature verification.
According to Tucson.com, a supporter of Kari Lake named Ryan Heath is referencing this ruling in a new court filing, arguing that the election Lake lost should be redone.
“Maricopa County failed, in fact, to apply uniform signature verification standards for a material number of approximately 1.3 million votes cast through mail-in ballots,” Heath said in his filing. “As a result, every single one of those 1.3 million votes is tainted by the fatal stain of ‘uncertainty,’ requiring the setting aside of all ballots from Maricopa County for all statewide races for the 2022 General Election as a matter of law.”