News Reports Debunked That Former Cochise County Elections Official Received Death Threat

Lisa Marra

The media is hyping up complaints by election officials that they are receiving threats for refusing to address complaints about voter disenfranchisement. Arizona Public Media reported in March that controversial former Cochise County Elections Director Lisa Marra received a death threat several weeks before the 2022 election, but an investigation by the Arizona Daily Independent found that Arizona Media incorrectly assumed it was Marra.

The news went national, as Representative Jamie Raskin (D-MD-08) used Marra as a source for discussing those types of threats. Arizona Media quoted Marra telling him, “I believe that we should have some defined laws, we should have some penalties, we should have some things with teeth. It concerns me that the longer that we go on, the angrier people are getting, and at some point, there’s a tipping point.”

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Wisconsin Legislative Budget Committee Axes Controversial Plan for Office of Election Transparency and Compliance

The Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee this week rejected a plan by the Wisconsin Elections Commission (WEC) to create a $2 million Office of Election Transparency and Compliance. 

While the proposed bureaucracy’s name suggests election integrity, it would be built by WEC Administrator Meagan Wolfe, the same bureaucrat who has presided over an agency riddled with election integrity complaints and election law violations. 

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Arizona Supreme Court Declines to Sanction Kari Lake’s Attorneys, Issues Fine

The Arizona Supreme Court declined to award significant sanctions against Kari Lake’s attorneys for contesting the election results of the gubernatorial race. Instead, on Thursday the court ordered $2,000 in sanctions against her attorneys for asserting it was an “undisputed fact” that 35,563 ballots were inserted into the ballot counting process at Runbeck Election Systems. The court declined to award attorneys fees to her opponents.

The Arizona Supreme Court said in its opinion that Lake “repeatedly” asserted in pleadings that 35,563 ballots were “added” or “injected” at Runbeck. “Not only is that allegation strongly disputed by the other parties, this Court concluded and expressly stated that the assertion was unsupported by the record, and nothing in Lake’s Motion for Leave to file a motion for reconsideration provides reason to revisit that issue.”

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Elon Musk Sets Off Tweetstorm About Rejected Ballots in Abe Hamadeh’s Race

Twitter owner and CEO Elon Musk weighed in on Abe Hamadeh’s election challenge Monday. Hamadeh is challenging election anomalies in the closest statewide race in history, the Arizona Attorney General’s race which he lost to Democrat Kris Mayes by 280 votes. Musk was responding to a tweet from Hamadeh about the large numbers of people who voted on Election Day last fall whose votes were not counted, and his response generated a flood of responses.

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Camelback Strategy Group Email Promotes Save Democracy Arizona’s Effort to Push Ranked-Choice Voting with Ballot Initiative

Camelback Strategy Group (CSG), a consulting firm associated with the moderate and McCain wing of the Republican Party, appears to be aligning itself with an effort to institute ranked-choice voting in Arizona. Matt Kenney, a partner and vice president with the group and former associate of the late Sen. John McCain, sent an email from his CSG account on April 24 to undisclosed recipients stating that Save Democracy Arizona is looking for a political director to oversee a ballot initiative effort for ranked-choice voting. 

The Kari Lake War Room Twitter account tweeted a copy of the email, stating, “RINO Consulting firm Camelback Strategies goes all in for Ranked Choice Voting. They can’t get their establishment candidates elected anymore. So they’re just going to rig the primaries. This would be the death of free & fair elections in Arizona. And it must be stopped.”

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We the People AZ Alliance Sues Maricopa County for Failing to Provide Ballot Envelopes for Public Records Request

We the People AZ Alliance (WPAA) filed a lawsuit against Maricopa County on April 25 for refusing to fulfill their public records request for ballot envelopes containing signatures from the 2022 election. The Verified Complaint for Statutory Special Action to Secure Access to Public Records From Defendants stated that the public records request was submitted on April 5 and denied by the county on April 10. 

WPAA tweeted about the rejection on Wednesday, “A.R.S. 16-168(F) is not a catch to hide information from the public. Signatures are filed on deeds, court documents and licenses and made public. Ballot affidavit envelopes are not by design part of a voter record, we are committed to bringing the truth to light.”

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Judge Rules in Favor of Cochise County Supervisors Delegating Elections to Election Integrity Champion Recorder

Santa Cruz County Judge Thomas Fink denied a request from Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes to temporarily block the Cochise County Supervisors from delegating election responsibilities to Cochise County Recorder David Stevens. Mayes filed a lawsuit against the supervisors on March 7, alleging that they did not have the authority to make the agreement earlier this year. However, the Maricopa County Supervisors delegated those responsibilities to the Maricopa County Recorder for years until recently, and Yuma County still does. 

In turning down Mayes’ request for an injunction, Fink said the state had not met its burden of showing there was an “unqualified transfer of statutory power.” He said the agreement had provisions to serve as “safeguards that are, in the court’s opinion, sufficient to ensure the board meets authority over the conduct of elections in Cochise County.” 

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Maricopa County Loses First Amendment Lawsuit from The Gateway Pundit, Agrees to Pay $175,000 for Banning Reporter from Elections

Maricopa County agreed last week to pay The Gateway Pundit (TGP) and its reporter Jordan Conradson $175,000 to settle their lawsuit over refusing to provide Conradson with a press pass to cover elections. An Obama-appointed trial court judge sided with the county in November, but after an injunction from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals followed by oral arguments that revealed the three-judge panel was likely to fully reverse the lower court, the Maricopa County Supervisors voted to settle. 

The controversy began in September 2022, when the county implemented a press pass regulation blocking journalists from election press conferences if they showed “conflicts of interest” and were not “free of associations that would compromise journalistic integrity or damage credibility.” The county cited Conradson’s attendance at Republican events as a conflict of interest, and told him, “[Y]ou are not a bona fide correspondent of repute in your profession.” 

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Arizona House Expels Republican Legislator Liz Harris After She Presented Witness Who Alleged Crimes by Officials

The Arizona House voted 46-13 to expel State Rep. Liz Harris (R-Chandler) on Wednesday after conducting an investigation into her bringing a witness to testify to the Senate Elections Committee, who accused legislators and other public officials of committing crimes. Jacqueline Breger told the committee that Democratic Governor Katie Hobbs, State House Speaker Ben Toma (R-Peoria) and others executed fraudulent deeds as part of a bribery scheme involving the Sinaloa drug cartel, along with other accusations.

Various legislators say that Harris was not truthful when she said she did not know what Breger was going to say. But Harris told The Arizona Sun Times it wasn’t that she didn’t know about the criminal accusations – she had instructed Breger only to address election integrity.

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After Abe Hamadeh Files New Pleading in Request for Retrial Alleging Hobbs Withheld Evidence, Judge Grants Oral Arguments

Mohave County Superior Court Judge Lee Jantzen scheduled oral arguments for May 16 on whether Abe Hamadeh should get a new trial.

Jantzen dismissed his complaint challenging his loss to Kris Mayes for Arizona Attorney General in December. Jantzen’s ruling came shortly after Hamadeh filed an additional pleading to bolster his request, which accused then-Secretary of State Katie Hobbs of withholding evidence from him and cited new arguments due to the Arizona Supreme Court’s ruling in Kari Lake’s election contest.

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Former Arizona AG Attorney Denounces Maricopa County’s ‘Lackluster’ Investigation Dismissing the Printer Issues in the 2022 Election

Maricopa County officials tapped former Arizona Supreme Court Justice Ruth McGregor to investigate the printing problems in the 2022 election, and on Monday, the county released her report blaming the thickness of the ballot paper. Jennifer Wright, who was the Election Integrity Unit civil attorney for the Arizona Attorney General’s Office during the election and who performed her own investigation of Maricopa County’s election problems going back to the 2020 presidential election, told The Arizona Sun Times the report was “meaningless” since it did not include an analysis of the printer logs.

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Kari Lake Files New Motion, Claims Runbeck ‘Inserted’ Ballots

After the Arizona Supreme Court remanded Kari Lake’s election contest back to the trial court to reconsider the signature verification problems and began considering sanctions against her, Lake responded with a new pleading. Lake filed a Petitioner’s Opposition to Motion for Sanctions and Cross-Motion for a Procedural Order for Leave to File a Motion for Reconsideration of the Denial of her Petition for Review on Wednesday in the Arizona Supreme Court.

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Arizona Election Attorney Says Trial Court Judge in Kari Lake’s Case Should Consider Recusing Himself from Hearing Case Again

The Arizona Supreme Court rejected part of the lower two courts’ rulings throwing out Kari Lake’s election contest, remanding it back to Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Peter Thompson for a new trial, but there are concerns Thompson will not provide a fair trial. An election attorney in Phoenix who prefers not to be identified due to fear of retaliation, told The Arizona Sun Times that due to the perception that Thompson might be biased, he should consider recusing himself if he cannot otherwise overcome that perception of bias.

The attorney said, “The courts rarely rule in favor of these Republican election challenges, so the fact that both the Arizona Supreme Court and the Arizona Court of Appeals reversed some of Thompson’s opinion raises a concern that Thompson may have overreached, overstepped, and some may believe that’s a sign of bias. And unless he believes he can overcome that concern with not only assurances of fairness, but actual rulings guaranteeing fairness to Lake including access to ALL requested signature verification discovery, then he should seriously consider recusing himself; otherwise, it may hurt the chances of him providing a fair trial if he doesn’t and it turns out he’s biased. Remember, everyone across the country is watching this case. He should do the right thing either by guaranteeing fairness, or put everyone at ease by removing himself.” 

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Mark Finchem Adds New Exhibits in Election Contest, Including Expert’s Declaration That Printer Settings Were ‘Intentionally Changed’

Former Republican candidate for Arizona Secretary of State Mark Finchem, who is contesting his loss last fall to Democrat Adrian Fontes, filed a Notice of Supplemental Authority and Evidence in Support of Contestant’s Motion for Reconsideration last week. A Maricopa County judge dismissed his lawsuit in December. Finchem included 10 exhibits consisting of mostly declarations from observers, election workers, and experts, including one who believes the election printer settings in Maricopa County were deliberately modified to create misreads of the ballots. 

Exhibit K was a declaration from Bob Hughes, who has 50 years in the printing industry and 16 years printing ballots for the Maricopa County Elections Department. Last month, Hughes and a team examined the Logic & Accuracy tests that were performed immediately prior to the election, the ballots used for testing, the certification reports for each voting center, and the tabulator reports printed from the testing. He concluded, “An intentional change was made to the printers affecting the DAY OF Election ballots.”

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Kari Lake Submits Final Brief to Arizona Supreme Court Requesting Review

The Arizona Supreme Court is holding a private conference on Tuesday to discuss whether or not to accept Kari Lake’s appeal of lower courts dismissing her lawsuit contesting her loss of the gubernatorial race. In addition to her initial petition for review, Lake filed a reply to the defendants’ responses to her petition, and The Gavel Project’s Ryan Heath filed his own amicus curiae brief supporting her. 

The Arizona Sun Times spoke with Jennifer Wright, who served as the Arizona Attorney General’s Election Integrity Unit civil attorney under the previous Republican administration, but who joined Abe Hamadeh’s legal team in his election challenge in that race due to the current Democratic Attorney General Kris Mayes “targeting” her. Wright brought up one of the primary concerns Lake has pointed out about the lower courts’ dismissals; their reliance on a “clear and convincing” standard for evidence.

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Former Arizona AG Attorney Asks State Supreme Court to Investigate AG Kris Mayes for Ethics Violations

New Democratic Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes issued a press release last month criticizing her predecessor, Republican Mark Brnovich, for disagreeing with two of his employees on whether there was election fraud in the 2020 midterm election. As a result of her press release, 17 people filed bar complaints against him, including Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs. Jennifer Wright, who served as the Arizona Attorney General Office’s (AGO) Election Integrity Unit (EIU) civil attorney, denounced Mayes for the move, and is asking the Arizona Supreme Court to look into whether Mayes violated ethics rules by releasing attorney-client privileged work to the public.

In a March 13 letter addressed to Justice Bill Montgomery as the chair of the Arizona Supreme Court’s Task Force on Ethics Rules Governing the State Attorney General, County Attorneys, and Other Public Lawyers, Wright referenced Mayes’ position on the task force, and said, “I encourage the Task Force to inquire as to what Rule of Professional Conduct Ms. Mayes relied upon to justify waiving her predecessor’s attorney-client privilege and publicly releasing privileged materials.”

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New ‘Late Exit’ Poll Finds Eight Percent More Arizona Voters Said They Voted for Lake over Hobbs

Rasmussen Reports and College Republicans United issued the results of a type of “late exit” poll on Friday, revealing that likely Arizona voters said they voted for former Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake over Governor Katie Hobbs 51 percent to 43 percent.

Also, the poll found these likely Arizona voters voted for Abe Hamadeh and Mark Finchem over their Democratic opponents who won those respective state races. 

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Mark Finchem Responds to Sanctions for Bringing Election Challenge over Voter Disenfranchisement in His Race

Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Melissa Julian awarded sanctions last week against Mark Finchem and his attorney Tom McCauley over Finchem’s lawsuit challenging his election loss in the secretary of state’s race. Democrat Adrian Fontes, who won the race, asked the court for sanctions in December. Finchem and McCauley will be required to pay attorneys fees; the legal costs of Fontes’ and then-Secretary of State Katie Hobbs’ office defending against the lawsuit. 

Finchem issued a statement after the ruling. “The 6-page order by Judge Julian to award lawyer reimbursement to leftist litigators who represent the Sinaloa Cartel, now the installed Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, and Katie Hobbs, the installed Governor of Arizona, is contemptible judicial overreach beyond all statutory and Rules of Civil Procedure for the Superior Courts of Arizona,” he said. “This award is designed to quash any and all dissent where elections are in question. The Maricopa County 2022 election was the most embarrassing election in American history. As a result, 70% of Americans doubt the outcome of the 2022 elections in Arizona (Rasmussen Poll).” 

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Maricopa County Leadership Furious That Brnovich Didn’t Agree with Two Employees Who Denied There Was Voter Fraud, Eight Bar Complaints Filed

Democrat Attorney General Kris Mayes issued a press release Thursday criticizing her predecessor Mark Brnovich for not agreeing with two of his employees that there was no election fraud. Now, Maricopa County officials and others skeptical of election fraud are chiming in and agreeing with her.

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Arizona AG Kris Mayes Goes After Brnovich for Disagreeing with Two of His Staff on Voter Disenfranchisement

Democrat Attorney General Kris Mayes, who replaced Mark Brnovich in office last month, released documents showing that two employees disagreed with Brnovich on the credibility of some of the complaints the office received about voter disenfranchisement. Mayes issued a press release on Wednesday based on the opinions of two employees, Assistant Chief Special Agent Keith Thomas of the Criminal Division and Attorney General (AGO) Chief Special Agent Reginald “Reggie” Grigsby.

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Arizona Secretary of State Fontes Refuses to Accept HAVA Complaint About Election Discrepancies

Gail Golec, who unsuccessfully ran for Maricopa County Supervisor last year, and 10 other Arizonans filed a complaint with Arizona Secretary of State (AZSOS) Adrian Fontes last month alleging violations of the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) during last year’s midterm election, but the office rejected it. The complaint followed the procedures laid out in federal statutes, however the AZSOS responded and said the complaint didn’t establish any violations to investigate under HAVA.

Golec told The Arizona Sun Times that her team drafted the complaint based on the language in HAVA, so it didn’t make any sense that the AZSOS claimed the election discrepancies weren’t covered by HAVA. She said the problem is fundamentally how the AZSOS is viewing elections, which she believes is dismissive of real complaints. “It’s not ‘fair and equal’ elections, it’s ‘free and equal’ per Article II Section 1 of the Constitution,” she said. “We’re going to turn the lights on to stop the gaslighting and take this country back.”

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Kari Lake Denounces Maricopa County Leadership’s ‘Inappropriate’ Comments After Court Dismisses Case

The Arizona Court of Appeals dismissed Kari Lake’s appeal of her election lawsuit on Thursday, stating that voters were not disenfranchised. Lake said she intends to appeal to the Arizona Supreme Court, as her opponents and Maricopa County officials praised the dismissal. Maricopa County election officials have frequently criticized Lake, causing some to doubt their impartiality. The Maricopa County Supervisors are responsible for overseeing elections on Election Day, while Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer has oversight of early balloting.

Clint Hickman, chair of the Maricopa County Supervisors, issued a statement on Thursday referring to Lake’s legal arguments as “questionable mathematics.” He said, “When a candidate for office asks a court to throw out valid votes, you have to wonder how committed to election integrity they really are.” He said Lake has been rejected “at the polls, when Arizona voters rejected her bid to be governor…”

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Computer Programmer Testifies to Arizona Senate Election Committee About Voting Machine Manipulation

The Arizona Senate Election Committee heard testimony Monday from computer programmer Clinton Eugene Curtis about how susceptible voting machines are to manipulation. Curtis, a Democrat who previously worked as a programmer for NASA, DOD and other defense agencies, famously testified in 2007 to the U.S. House Judiciary Committee about how he programmed voting machines so he could manipulate them without being detected. 

His presentation began with a clip of his 2007 testimony to Congress, where he said it only took 100 lines of code to change the results of an election. He said county election officials would not be able to detect it, unless they had access to the source code or could compare the count to the paper ballot count. He showed a second video clip, which compiled statements by prominent Democrats expressing their concerns on how voting machines are hackable. 

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Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer and Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes Discuss Adding More Ballot Drop Boxes

Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, whose victory is being challenged by Republican candidate Mark Finchem, hosted a panel discussion with election fraud denier Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer this week.

ABC-15 Data Analyst Garrett Archer moderated the event at the Valley Bar in Phoenix, the bipartisan pair discussed the 2022 midterm election.

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Abe Hamadeh and RNC File Reply Supporting Motion for a New Trial in Election Contest, ‘Closest Statewide Race in History’ Requires ‘Exacting Review’

Abe Hamadeh’s election challenge for attorney general continues to wind its way through the court system, with his attorneys filing a reply in Mohave County Superior Court supporting their motion for a new trial on Monday. The Consolidated Reply in Support of Plaintiffs’ Motion for a New Trial addressed the claims brought up in the response from defendant Kris Mayes, who was declared the winner in the race. The lawsuit, which included the Republican National Committee and Republican Jeanne Kentch of Mohave County as plaintiffs, was also filed against Secretary of State Adrian Fontes.

Hamadeh’s reply brief, led by former Attorney General Election Integrity Unit civil attorney Jen Wright, emphasized the race’s closeness as a reason for a do-over.

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Simon Conway Guest Host Matt Kittle Talks to Kari Lake About Upcoming Event in Iowa and America First Policies

Live from Des Moines Tuesday morning on The Simon Conway Show with Matt Kittle – broadcast on Des Moines, Iowa’s, 1040 WHO (4p-7p weekdays) or in the Quad Cities on 1420 WOC (4p-6m weekdays) – host Kittle welcomed former Arizona Governor candidate Kari Lake to the show to promote her upcoming event in Iowa and America First policies.

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Kari Lake Attorney Tim LaSota on Adrian Fontes’s Investigation Request: ‘Another Attempt to Weaponize the Justice System’

Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes (D) sent a letter to Attorney General Kris Mayes (D) Monday, requesting she investigates Republican Kari Lake for allegedly violating state law by sharing images of voter signatures on social media. Tim LaSota, one of Lake’s attorneys, accused Fontes of selectively quoting the law to defame Lake.

“This is becoming all too common in politics – another attempt to weaponize the justice system with a phony allegation against a Republican. Adrian Fontes selectively quotes the statute in an attempt to distort the law and smear Kari Lake in the process. Kris Mayes should immediately say that she will have no part in this shameful, disgusting effort,” LaSota said in a statement emailed to The Arizona Sun Times.

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Testimony to Arizona Senate Election Committee Reveals Thousands of Misdemeanors Allegedly Committed by Maricopa County in 2022 Election

The Arizona Senate’s Election Committee continued the second part of a hearing on Monday that began last week, featuring testimony from election integrity proponents. Shelby Busch, the co-founder of We the People AZ, and Heather Honey of Verify Vote, went over five areas where their team found apparent law violations by Maricopa County in the 2022 election.

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Packed Crowd Attends Kari Lake Rally Exposing Voter Disenfranchisement in Maricopa County

At a standing-room-only event Sunday, Kari Lake signaled she is not giving up her legal battle to install her as the rightful Arizona governor instead of Democrat Katie Hobbs. Lake held a Save Arizona rally at Orange Tree Golf Club in Scottsdale with over a thousand in attendance, assuring her supporters she intended to fight until the “victorious end.” The mainstream media recently ran stories claiming Lake was switching her focus to running against Senator Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ).

Lake focused her entire speech on election fraud. “They thought they could steal it and we would just go away,” she said to thunderous applause. “We had the greatest candidates in the country here in Arizona. We were running against some of the worst candidates in the history of Arizona. It didn’t matter if they rolled out brain-dead candidates,” she said, alluding to election fraud ensuring the Democrats’ victories. “The fix was in. They knew they didn’t have to campaign.”

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Kari Lake Files Reply Brief with Arizona Court of Appeals in Election Contest Lawsuit

Kari Lake’s election lawsuit contesting her loss to Democrat Katie Hobbs in the gubernatorial race is at the Arizona Court of Appeals after being dismissed by the trial court judge. Lake filed a reply on Tuesday to the responses from defendants Maricopa County and then-Secretary of State Hobbs.

The reply brief began, “Defendants ignore the trial court’s holdings, misstate the law, misstate material facts, and — unable to get their stories straight — contradict each other.” 

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Testimony to Arizona Senate Election Committee Reveals Almost Half the Ballots Ran Through Maricopa County Tabulators Failed

The election committee of the Arizona Senate held a hearing on Monday featuring the results of an investigation into Maricopa County’s 2022 midterm election conducted by the election integrity group We the People AZ (WPAZ). Commissioned by outgoing Senate President Karen Fann (R-Prescott), the group submitted public records requests to Maricopa County Elections Department to obtain the data. The leader of WPAZ, Shelby Busch, testified to the committee chaired by State Senator Wendy Rogers (R-Flagstaff) that 464,926 ballots fed into tabulators on Election Day in Maricopa County, 217,305 were rejected, which is nearly a 50 percent failure rate.

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Former Arizona AG Attorney Joins Abe Hamadeh’s Election Challenge Team Due to New AG ‘Targeting’ Her

The former Election Integrity Unit civil attorney for the Arizona Attorney General’s Office is making it clear she does not believe the new Attorney General is rightfully in office. Jennifer Wright, who resigned before Democrat Kris Mayes took office — but who Mayes’ office claimed was fired to journalists, causing Wright to start the process for a libel lawsuit — has joined the legal team of Mayes’ opponent, Republican Abe Hamadeh, who is challenging the results of the extremely close election. 

Wright tweeted that she initially turned down Hamadeh’s offer, but changed her mind “after @krismayes targeted me by falsely and unlawfully planting a hit on me on @azcentral.” She said “it became clear that left unchecked, the new admin intended to abuse their power.” 

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Attorney Files Lawsuit Against Judge Who Dismissed Kari Lake’s Election Contest

Ryan Heath, an attorney who started The Gavel Project to engage in lawfare against woke ideology, has filed a lawsuit against the judge who dismissed Kari Lake’s election lawsuit. Submitted on Monday, the Writ of Mandamus demands that Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Peter Thompson vacate his ruling and award the election to Lake.

Heath told The Arizona Sun Times he doesn’t really know where Thompson came up with the really high bar he required Lake’s attorneys to prove in order to overturn the election. Thompson required showing by clear and convincing evidence that the misconduct was intentional and meant to change the election, was performed by one of the appropriate people in charge, and that it changed the election. Heath said this was the wrong standard, he should have relied on Reyes v. Cuming, a 1997 Arizona case involving similar circumstances, where signatures on the envelopes were not compared to the voter registration list, violating a non-technical statute.

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Arizona AG Election Integrity Unit Attorney Starts Process for Libel Lawsuit over Media Claims She Was Fired

Jennifer Wright, the Election Integrity Unit (EIU) civil attorney for Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich until his second term ended earlier this month, resigned before newly elected Democrat Kris Mayes took office, but there are reports in the media spreading that she was fired. Wright gave The Arizona Republic “notice and demand for a correction prior to filing legal action pursuant to A.R.S. 12-653.2.”

Wright believes the false statements were made in order to discredit the work she did investigating voter fraud.

Wright tangled with the Maricopa County Supervisors and Maricopa County Stephen Richer many times, pointing out problems with the elections and demanding evidence and documentation. She asked the county four times to turn over information related to the Arizona Senate’s independent ballot audit of the 2020 election, but all four letters were ignored. 

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Abe Hamadeh and RNC File Motion for New Trial Based on Additional Evidence of Voter Disenfranchisement

Republican Arizona Attorney General candidate Republican Abe Hamadeh is not giving up contesting the election which went to Democrat Kris Mayes by just 280 votes. His first lawsuit contesting the election results was dismissed as premature, his second was thrown out by Mohave County Superior Court Judge Lee Jantzen for not showing there were enough problematic votes to change the election, but on Tuesday Hamadeh and the RNC, along with two individuals, filed a motion for a new trial, based on additional evidence of voter disenfranchisement. Hundreds of uncounted ballots were recently found in Pinal County. 

Hamadeh said on the Charlie Kirk Show, “We didn’t have these facts. But you know who had these facts? It was Secretary of State @katiehobbs. She had all these facts and she withheld them from the court, she withheld them from me. We weren’t able to present any of this evidence.”

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Arizona Supreme Court May Accept Kari Lake’s Appeal, Bypassing Appeals Court

After Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Peter Thompson dismissed Kari Lake’s lawsuit challenging her loss in the anomaly-plagued Maricopa County midterm election, Lake filed a notice of appeal. She also requested that the Arizona Supreme Court immediately take her case, bypassing the Arizona Court of Appeals for several reasons.

“We’re going to appeal this,” Lake told Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast Tuesday. “We think we have absolute merit with this lawsuit, and we’re going to appeal it and take it even higher.”

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In Similar Cases to Lake’s and Finchem’s Lawsuit over Electronic Voting Machine Readers, Judges Did Not Order Sanctions Against Attorneys

The judge in Kari Lake’s election challenge lawsuit declined to award sanctions against her attorneys, although he did order her team to pay the costs of the government defendants. However, in a lawsuit Lake filed earlier this year with Mark Finchem contesting the use of electronic voting machine readers, U.S District Judge John Tuchi, who was appointed to the bench by President Barack Obama, sanctioned her attorneys. 

That lawsuit was filed in April and Tuchi dismissed it in August. Maricopa County asked for sanctions on the grounds that attorneys brought claims to court that were “demonstrably false,” citing “vague” allegations that machine counting can produce inaccurate results. Tuchi said the attorneys acted “recklessly” and in “bad faith.” He ordered Lake and Finchem’s lawyers to pay Maricopa County’s attorneys fees. He warned others considering similar lawsuits, “It is to penalize specific attorney conduct with the broader goal of deterring similarly baseless filings initiated by anyone, whether an attorney or not.”

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Legal Experts Weigh In on the Merits of Kari Lake’s Election Lawsuit

As the second day of Kari Lake’s trial contesting Arizona’s gubernatorial election wrapped up Thursday, various election law attorneys provided their analysis on social media and videos. Some were optimistic that Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Peter Thompson would grant Lake relief, declaring her the winner or calling for a new election, but some were not as optimistic.

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Leahy to Bannon: If Maricopa Fails to Document Chain of Custody, Lake Lawyers Must Prove It Altered Outcome of Election to Win Trial

Host Stephen K. Bannon welcomed The Star News Network’s CEO and Editor-in-Chief of The Arizona Sun-Times, Michael Patrick Leahy, on Thursday’s WarRoom: Battleground to highlight aspects of the ongoing election integrity lawsuit put forth by gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake and the alleged Maricopa County ballot harvesting.

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Kari Lake Files Lawsuit Loaded with Evidence Contesting Election Results

Two weeks after filing a complaint requesting data from the 2022 midterm election in Maricopa County, gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake has filed another lawsuit against election officials contesting the election results, alleging voter disenfranchisement and suppression. Lake called for a forensic audit of the printer-tabulator problems, an inspection of ballots and voter registration records, including signatures, disqualification of illegal votes, and redoing the election as well as other relief.

Kurt Olsen, one of the attorneys who filed the lawsuit, told The Arizona Sun Times he believes the election anomalies were “intentional since they didn’t test all of their equipment and follow the appropriate processes when problems arose.” He asked, “Why haven’t they done their own forensic audit 30 days later?” He said Maricopa County officials’ cavalier attitude about the problems and their lack of trying to find out what happened is telling. “Does anybody believe this widespread failure, oh shucks, just happened?” he wondered.

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Arizona Faced a Similar Contentious Gubernatorial Race in 1916 That Dragged Out with Accusations of Voter Fraud

As the protests and litigation continue in Arizona, challenging the results of the 2022 midterm election where four Trump-endorsed candidates lost, some are looking at history to understand how the litigation may end. In 1916, a contentious gubernatorial race in Arizona, also fraught with accusations of voter fraud, resulted in a clear winner not being established until the next year, when the Arizona Supreme Court declared the Democrat, the winner.

Arizona historian and writer Donna Reiner relayed the story of that election for Arizona Agenda this fall, revealing how due to the feuding over who won, there were two governors both claiming to hold office for several months. It was Arizona’s third statewide election, after becoming a state in 1912, and incumbent Gov. George Wiley Paul Hunt, a Democrat and Arizona’s first governor, faced Republican challenger Thomas E. Campbell of Yavapai County.

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Data Analysts Question How 14 Percent of Arizona Voters Flipped to Oppose Trump Candidates Despite GOP Voter Registration Advantage

Investigations are continuing into the election anomalies in Arizona, where Republicans performed fairly well except for in the top four Trump-endorsed races. Since there are 4 percent more Republicans than Democrats in the state (as well as in Maricopa County), and most of the Republicans were easily beating their Democratic opponents in mainstream polls, data analysts are looking closely at the numbers. Analytics 805 examined the numbers of who voted in most of the races, and discovered that Republican candidates outside of the four races performed incredibly well in contrast, as much as 30 percent better.

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Candidates Hopeful for Election Challenges After Certification, Since Early Lawsuits Had Less Statutory Backing

The Trump-endorsed slate of candidates in Arizona’s top races who allegedly lost their races have started pursuing legal challenges over what they believe was an election rampant with voter disenfranchisement and suppression. One of the first challenges was turned away on Tuesday as premature, a lawsuit by Attorney General candidate Abe Hamadeh and the Republican National Committee (RNC), but election law attorneys say this should not be taken as a sign that there are no valid grounds to overturn the election. 

Bob Brickman, an election and regulatory attorney in Phoenix, told The Arizona Sun Times while he “understands the strategy of suing now, since fraud really should be challengeable any time, Arizona law is clear that election challenges cannot be brought until five days after after the state has certified the results, which is scheduled for Dec. 5.” 

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VoterGA Reports Proof of Herschel Walker’s 20,000 Vote Loss in the General Election

VoterGA reported further evidence Friday that the organization said substantiates the more than 20,000-vote decline in Herschel Walker’s U.S. Senate election vote count at 10 p.m. on the night of Election Day last month.

According to a press release from the nonprofit coalition of citizens working to restore election integrity in Georgia, “before and after” screenshots of interim election results reported by Georgia Public Broadcasting (GPB) for the 2022 General Election “show the inexplicable decrease for Herschel Walker.”

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