In a 13-page decision Friday, Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Melissa Iyer Julian dismissed with prejudice a lawsuit challenging the certified election outcome by former Republican secretary of state candidate Mark Finchem, KOLD News 13 reported.
Julian’s ruling rejected Finchem’s allegations of misconduct and election administration errors, goes on to forbid Finchem from refiling a future complaint on the same grounds. Judge Julian also and affirmed Democrat Adrian Fontes is the state’s Secretary of State-elect.
As previously reported by The Arizona Sun Times, Finchem’s complaint stated that Hobbs said after the 2021 Arizona Senate independent ballot audit that new voting machines were necessary, but she never replaced them. After some county officials called for a hand count of the election, Hobbs threatened them with felony criminal charges if they failed to certify the “defective election process.”
The lawsuit cited Hobbs’ interference with Twitter to get tweets removed. A representative from her office wanted the social media giant to take down tweets which stated that Arizona’s voter registration system was owned and operated by foreign actors.
The complaint accused Hobbs of misconduct by an election official, which is grounds to ask for a new election. It said Hobbs should have recused herself. “Secretary Hobbs’ actions to threaten arrest of the Mojave County Board of Supervisors, sue and threatened the Cochise County Board of Supervisors with a criminal investigation and prosecution, as a very senior representative of Arizona government, directed Twitter to censor Twitter posts made by her constituent, and failing to recuse herself from overseeing the gubernatorial election in which she herself was a candidate — was all self-dealing.”
The complaint criticized the tabulation machine failures on Election Day which disproportionately affected Republicans, citing problems with the certifications.
The lawsuit included testimony from Michael Schafer, an expert on the certification of voting labs by the Electoral Assistance Commission. Schafer highlighted problems with the certifications, such as the wrong person signing the accreditation certificate. The complaint asserted, “She negligently or intentionally failed in that duty by not properly investigating the re-certification of both the certifying labs and the lab’s certification of the computer automated voting systems.”
As the prevailing party in the lawsuit, News 13 reported, Hobbs and Fontes have 10 days to ask the court for sanctions against Finchem for the cost of court and lawyer fees.
Read the decision:
[wonderplugin_pdf src=”https://arizonasuntimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/finchem-lawsuit-ruling.pdf” width=”650px” height=”800px” style=”border:0;”]
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Christina Botteri is the Executive Editor of The Arizona Sun Times and The Star News Network. Rachel Alexander contributed to this report.
