Former GOP Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake announced an upcoming trial date in a lawsuit to obtain mail-in ballot signatures.
“We are scheduled for a 2-day trial set for September 21 & 25th,” Lake wrote on X, the platform previously called Twitter. “I will never stop fighting for Honest & Transparent Elections.”
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Cochise County Supervisor Tom Crosby, who attempted to conduct a hand count of ballots during the 2022 election and delayed the certification of election results, filed a lawsuit with another Arizonan, David Mast, against numerous Arizona officials challenging the results of the election. The lawsuit cited lawbreaking regarding signature verification on mail-in ballots, asserting that the violations resulted in “hundreds of thousands of illegal votes in all statewide results for the 2022 General Election.”
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The Arizona Free Enterprise Club (AFEC) warned Secretary of State Adrian Fontes (D) it will bring a federal lawsuit against him over his alleged failure to maintain accurate voter lists in Arizona. AFEC gave the state until November 6 to rectify these issues, or else the non-profit will launch a federal lawsuit against Fontes.
In a report stating there are more registered voters than residents, or an “abnormally high” number of registered voters, in 14 of Arizona’s 15 counties, AFEC said it sent its letter to Fontes on August 8, urging him to “take his job as Secretary of State seriously” or face legal action.
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Kari Lake and Abe Hamadeh continue to contest their election losses in the 2022 election for governor and attorney general respectively, producing ongoing new evidence of irregularities and possible wrongdoing in the election. Much of the evidence has taken months to come out, including evidence related to the problematic 2020 presidential election, due to stonewalling by Maricopa County and other government agencies at turning it over. Maricopa County mostly ignored four repeat requests for data and equipment regarding the 2020 election from Jennifer Wright, the Election Integrity Unit civil attorney for the Attorney General’s Office, who resigned at the end of 2022 and now represents Hamadeh in his election contest.
Much of the evidence appears to show violations of the state’s Election Procedures Manual, which are Class 2 misdemeanors. While not all of the alleged violations can be described as fraud, many of them can be characterized as alleged criminal activity. Here is a look back at some of the most serious complaints regarding alleged wrongdoing during Arizona’s 2020 and 2022 elections.
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Podcaster Joe Rogan asserted that “real fraud” happened in Arizona’s 2022 elections, calling the breakdown of election equipment on that day “shenanigans” that impacted the outcome of the race.
Rogan made his remarks about the Arizona election during an interview with Valuetainment founder Patrick Bet-David on “The Joe Rogan Experience,” asking the entrepreneur, “How much election fraud do you think is real,” before adding, “because I don’t think it’s zero.”
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Every few years, the Arizona Legislature works out legislation to extend the Prop. 400 public transportation tax. The half-cent tax, which started in 1985 to pay for roads but now also includes public transit and light rail in Maricopa County, faces strong opposition every time it comes up for renewal. Although the legislature mostly ended its 2023 session on June 30 after finalizing the budget, it is reconvening briefly next week to consider the extension.
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Maricopa County failed to maintain chain-of-custody records for hundreds of thousands of early ballots dropped off at third-party contractor Runbeck Election Services, and a new report is out analyzing the extent of the illegal behavior, which is a class 2 misdemeanor. Election integrity organization Verity Vote issued its analysis last week.
The report observed that then-Secretary of State Katie Hobbs admonished Cochise County prior to the 2022 election about deviating from the state’s Election Procedures Manual. Yet “just one month later, Hobbs chose to disregard Maricopa County’s admitted deviations from the EPM and violations of law as she oversaw and certified her own election.” Verity Vote asserted that documents “long withheld” were finally produced revealing the lack of chain of custody, and “Maricopa officials misled the court about the process and the records.”
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Recent voter registration numbers from the Arizona Secretary of State’s Office show an increasing number of voters in Maricopa County registering as Republican rather than Democrat. Between last fall’s election and April, Republican voter registration in the county increased by 9,905 to 851,047. Democratic voter registration increased by only 2,791, less than a third as much. Republicans maintained their registration advantage at 34.39 percent, while Democrats dipped below 30 percent to 29.69 percent.
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Kari Lake filed a Notice of Appeal in May with the Arizona Court of Appeals after a trial court judge ruled against her election challenge in a remanded trial. However, due to new circumstances, she is now asking the Arizona Supreme Court to bypass the appeals court and take the case instead.
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A report from the America First Policy Institute (AFPI) found that there may be an 8,241-vote discrepancy between those who cast votes in Maricopa County’s 2022 election and the number of ballots that were counted. This is “about 29.4 times” the difference between the contested attorney general’s race, the report stated, which Democrat Kris Mayes won by 280 votes.
On Friday, Mohave County Judge Lee F. Jantzen denied Abe Hamadeh’s request for a new hearing in his election challenge.
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Melissa White, who has been investigating election anomalies in the Maricopa County 2022 election with a team of researchers, submitted around 35 public records requests to Maricopa County since the election asking for documents, but has received very little back. Many of the responses from the county said there were “no responsive records.” She has encountered similar stonewalling from the Arizona Secretary of State’s Office (AZSOS).
Frustrated, White finally began working with the Arizona Ombudsman (AO) to assist her with the requests. She told the AO, “There is a reason people are bringing lawsuits against them and it is unacceptable to withhold public records from we the people. I have repeatedly had to show them their own employees’ public media statements claiming they had records yet when I submitted a PRR they told me no responsive records exist and when questioned they claim they do not have to answer questions.”
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A large majority of Republican Party officials in a Maricopa County-area legislative district voted to declare the month of July “Pride in America Month.” The June 29th move comes at the close of a contentious “Pride Month” recognizing the LGBTQ+ community.
In all, two-thirds of the precinct committeemen (PCs) in Arizona’s Republican Legislative District 3 (LD3) voted to pass the resolution.
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A Superior Court judge in Maricopa County ruled earlier this week not to dismiss former Arizona GOP gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake’s request for access to ballot affidavit envelopes.
Maricopa County argued the ballot affidavit signatures are part of the voter registration record and are deemed confidential by state law with some exceptions, which Lake doesn’t meet, according to county attorneys.
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Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer sued Kari Lake for defamation on June 22 over her statements alleging election fraud, but Merissa Hamilton, founder of EZAZ who is managing an effort to chase early ballots for Lake, pointed out that Richer has made similar allegations himself previously. The Maricopa County Recorder’s lawsuit is being paid for by the Protect Democracy Project, which is described by InfluenceWatch as “a left-of-center litigation organization created to oppose the policies of President Donald Trump.”
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Kari Lake’s appeal of the trial court judge’s ruling against her after two trials is pending at the Arizona Court of Appeals, and her attorney Bryan Blehm has taken to Twitter to continue providing updates as more information comes in about Maricopa County’s election problems. Blehm represented the Cyber Ninjas in cases related to its audit of Arizona’s problematic 2020 presidential election. He previously served as pro tem judge for Maricopa County.
On Wednesday, Blehm tweeted, “Did Maricopa County intentionally misrepresent user 134-speed clicker when they argued to the Court that he was reassigned from level-1 signature verification?” He included a tweet from We the People AZ Alliance (WPAA), which has been helping the Lake team investigate the 2022 the election. “One of many lies told by County Attorney Liddy during the @KariLakeWarRoom @KariLake trial,” WPAA said. “Rey exercises great Kamala word salad.”
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A printer company says a report by Arizona’s Maricopa County on errors at voting centers on Election Day 2022 is “factually inaccurate” and is seeking a correction from the county attorney’s office.
Ballot printer issues at more than 70 vote centers in the county on Election Day last year resulted in long lines because tabulator machines could not read some of the voters’ ballots.
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Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell, a Republican, is in hot water with Republicans after representing the Maricopa County Supervisors (MCBOS) twice asking for sanctions against Kari Lake over her election lawsuits. A judge derisively dismissed the second request a couple of weeks ago, prompting the Maricopa County Republican Committee (MCRC) to censure Mitchell on June 6.
Brian Ference, member at large with the MCRC and behind many of the group’s recent censures, told The Arizona Sun Times, “The recent censures show an unprecedented level of unity of Republicans holding their elected officials accountable. Just like with Rusty Bowers, the critical part is to take them as a call to action to door knock and inform the voters and then primary them.”
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After serving on the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors since 2016, Bill Gates announced on June 1 he would not run for reelection in 2024.
Gates released a statement on Twitter saying he planned to “pursue other interests and opportunities.” His announcement comes after the Board of Supervisors faced many false allegations of election fraud following the 2020 and 2022 elections.
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Former Arizona Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake announced this week that her legal team had filed a notice of appeal, beginning the first steps toward challenging her defeat in a suit against Maricopa County and Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs.
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Republican-run Texas and Georgia have given state officials oversight of some local elections following issues in Democratic counties, while Arizona didn’t do so there was a Republican administration.
Last week, the Texas House passed two pieces of election integrity legislation that were previously passed by the state Senate.
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Arizona’s Maricopa County accepted 4,484 federal-only ballots for the November 2020 presidential election that didn’t require the voters who cast them to provide proof of U.S. citizenship, according to documents provided by the county.
The request for the information was made by Tristan Manos, a Maricopa County Republican Committee precinct committeeman.
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For the second time, Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell is representing Maricopa County officials asking for sanctions against Kari Lake and her attorneys related to the 2022 election. The first request was over Lake and Mark Finchem’s lawsuit last year which sought to stop the use of electronic voting machine tabulators in the election. The second request was filed on Tuesday after Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Peter Thompson ruled a second time against Lake’s election lawsuit, following a second trial that he conducted after being remanded back from the Arizona Supreme Court.
Mitchell was not required to represent the county officials in the lawsuit; if she had disagreed with it, she could have asked outside counsel or another county attorney to replace her. Mitchell ran for office last year with a barrage of campaign literature labeling herself the “conservative” candidate.
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Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Peter Thompson has dismissed Kari Lake’s election contest a second time. His first dismissal was reversed by the Arizona Supreme Court in March, and he was ordered to reconsider the signature verification issue. Thompson issued an opinion merely six pages long on Monday, just one business day after the trial ended Friday afternoon.
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Tens of thousands of non-citizens have tried or made it onto voter rolls across the U.S. over recent years, according to an election watchdog’s analysis of data from several states.
Non-citizen voters have been found on voter rolls in North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Texas and Maricopa County, Ariz. In Georgia, there were non-citizens who attempted to register to vote but were placed in a pending status because there wasn’t evidence of their citizenship, so they didn’t make it onto the voter rolls.
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As the residents of the unincorporated Rio Verde Foothills (RVF) area have gone over five months without steady access to water, House Bill (HB) 2441 could provide a solution and arrived at Governor Katie Hobbs’s (D) desk Tuesday and is awaiting a final decision.
This bill, sponsored by State Representative Gail Griffin (R-Hereford), is an emergency measure that states if a city provides water service within a county with a population greater than 1.5 million that city must execute an agreement with “one or more third parties for at least three years, treat and transport water to a standpipe and allow use of the standpipe for water to be hauled to residences that are outside the city’s or town’s water service area[.]”
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The second of three days scheduled for Kari Lake’s second election contest trial, which focused only on signature verification problems, wrapped up on Thursday, with Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Peter Thompson declining to grant the defendant’s motion for a directed verdict. Witness testimony focused on the speed that signature reviewers went over voters’ signatures on mail-in ballots, with many reviewers taking less than two seconds to compare signatures to see if they matched.
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After being ordered by the Arizona Supreme Court to reconsider the issue of signature verification in Kari Lake’s election contest, Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Peter Thompson decided after a hearing that he would allow a full trial. He declined to allow reconsideration of the faulty ballot-on-demand printer configurations, however, which resulted in mostly Republicans having problems casting ballots on Election Day. The trial began on Wednesday, with Lake’s attorneys emphasizing how the signature verification of voters’ signatures on mail-in ballot envelopes was conducted so quickly it was impossible to adequately verify them.
Lake’s attorney Kurt Olsen accused the county of falsely verifying signatures. “Maricopa’s log file data shows that 11 of these signature verification workers approved 170,000 signatures at a rate of between 0 and 2.99 seconds with a 99.97 percent approval rating,” he said. “That’s not signature review, your Honor.” Olsen said due to this, at least 334,000 mail-in ballots were not verified.
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The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors (MCBOS) voted unanimously Wednesday to ban the popular social media app TikTok from being used by government-owned and leased devices, citing cyber security concerns as the driving reason.
“We know social media companies gather loads of personal information on users to better customize the content they serve. And we know TikTok is not alone in doing this. But there are national security and privacy concerns when TikTok’s interests interfere with the best interests of Maricopa County’s residents,” said MCBOS Member Thomas Galvin in a statement to reporters.
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As Kari Lake’s lawsuit returns to the trial court for consideration of alleged violations of Maricopa County’s signature verification rules in the Arizona 2022 general election, a retired FBI counterintelligence agent with longtime expertise in signature analysis says that matching ballot signatures with little time to review is “almost illegal.”
If election workers have a limited amount of time to review signatures on early ballots to ensure they match with voters’ files, it’s “almost illegal to have it work that way,” said retired FBI Special Agent Wayne A. Barnes, adding, “almost pathetic.”
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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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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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Maricopa County, Arizona, a lightning rod during recent elections, has removed 222 foreign nationals from the voter registration rolls over the past seven years, according to a new report from the Public Interest Legal Foundation, an election watchdog group.
Nine of those 222 noncitizens cast 12 ballots across a total of four federal elections, the legal foundation says.
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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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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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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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Since the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic, Arizona’s most-populous county has added tens of thousands more residents than any other county in America.
U.S. Census data released Thursday shows the county population increased by an estimated 130,950 since the April 1, 2020, decennial Census count. It was the only county to have added more than 100,000 people in that time.
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With Kari Lake’s legal complaint alleging systematic signature verification failures in Maricopa County remanded by the Arizona Supreme Court to trial court, closer examination of the signature verification software used by the county reveals a strikingly low threshold for signatures to qualify as “high-confidence” matches.
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The Arizona Supreme Court ruled Wednesday to send a piece of former GOP gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake’s election lawsuit back to trial court to examine whether or not Maricopa County followed signature verification policies in 2022.
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Hundreds of new affordable housing units are slated to be built in Glendale as part of a $120 million project.
Maricopa County officials announced that the project would break ground on Friday and be completed in two phases.
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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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Overall median property values increased in Maricopa County, with manufactured homes particularly seeing an uptick in worth.
A swath of property owners in the county were mailed their Notices of Value for the 2024 tax year at the end of February. These assessments help determine the taxable Limited Property Value.
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Arizona Free Enterprise Club released a new report criticizing the Maricopa Association of Governments (MAG) proposed plan for the Prop. 400 half-cent tax.
The Prop. 400 half-cent tax, which started in 1985 to pay for public transit and then light rail in Maricopa County, faces strong opposition every time it comes up for renewal.
The report said the MAG’s proposal fails to consider the permanent transformation of society due to COVID-19, which significantly reduced the number of workers using public transit as people shifted to working from home and remained there.
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Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes filed a lawsuit on Tuesday against the Cochise County Supervisors for delegating election duties to Cochise County Recorder David Stevens, an election integrity proponent. However, from the 1950s to 2019, Maricopa County had an agreement with its county recorder to oversee elections. Three other counties delegate those responsibilities to their recorders as well.
Jennifer Wright, who served as the Election Integrity Unit’s civil attorney under previous Attorney General Mark Brnovich, tweeted, “So, will @krismayes also be suing @maricopacounty for their MOU delegating BOS responsibilities to the CR? Anyone remember when Fontes was stripped of BOS delegated responsibilities, the press lamented how elections were 100% the CR’s job? Oh, the hypocrisy. #AbuseOfPower”
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Kari Lake filed her Petition for Review of a Special Action Decision of the Court of Appeals on Wednesday with the Arizona Supreme Court. The petition contended that the Arizona Court of Appeals panel ignored Arizona election laws, including previous court precedent, to dismiss her appeal.
Lake’s petition stated, “The Opinion directly contradicts this Court’s admonition that “election statutes are mandatory, not ‘advisory,’ or else they would not be law at all,” citing the Arizona Supreme Court’s 1994 decision in Miller v. Picacho Elementary School District No. 33.
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Registered Republicans in Arizona increased their lead over Democrats from about three percent to over four percent over the past year. This is the biggest gap since 2018.
Similarly, in Maricopa County, Republicans increased their lead from about four percent more than Democrats to almost 4.5 percent more, according to the latest numbers from the Arizona Secretary of State.
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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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Arizona State Rep. David Cook (R-Globe) announced Tuesday that his letter asking Attorney General Kris Mayes (D) for her legal opinion on the Rio Verde Foothills (RVF) area water situation.
“I’m grateful to the Attorney General for this informative response clarifying a county board’s legal authority in this matter,” said Cook in an update emailed to the press. “I believe this could be immensely helpful in the effort to provide relief for Rio Verde residents who continue to struggle without a reliable point of access to water for their homes and families. I will continue working with the residents and other parties until a comprehensive solution is in place.”
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An audit of the 2020 election found a discrepancy of nearly 600 absentee votes in a Texas county, while a hand recount in a Pennsylvania county found a far smaller disparity, as more states seek to implement election reviews.
In Smith County, Texas, an audit of the 2020 election showed 584 more absentee voters than absentee ballots, according to KLTV, a local ABC News affiliate. Seven county races were within the 584-vote margin of error, including council races and propositional elections. The audit also found five different totals for absentee ballots.
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Republican Abe Hamadeh shared Thursday that Maricopa County had allegedly delayed his team’s efforts to inspect the County’s adjudication log from the 2022 election following a public records request.
“Maricopa County told my team that they were available for inspections this week. After we arrived yesterday morning the County kicked us out after just one hour. Maricopa County continues to obstruct and conceal – my team is prepared for litigation,” tweeted Hamadeh.
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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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