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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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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Arizona GOP gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake’s team announced Monday that there’s more evidence to come regarding her election lawsuit soon after Democrat Gov. Katie Hobbs requested the case be thrown out.
“Yesterday @katiehobbs filed to get our lawsuit thrown out,” the Kari Lake War Room tweeted. “Today, records revealed nearly a quarter of a million ballots were rejected on Election Day in Maricopa County in a race that came down to just 17K votes. She’s illegitimate & she knows it. More evidence to come.”
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A group of Arizona citizens residing in the Rio Verde Foothills (RVF) area outside of Scottsdale sued the City Thursday for cutting off its water supply, which they claim is vital for their community.
“There are approximately 500 households in Rio Verde Foothills which rely upon hauled water obtained from the Scottsdale Standpipe to serve their daily needs for domestic water,” according to the complaint. “Plaintiffs rely solely upon a source of water owned and provided by the City of Scottdale. The City has provided water service to the RVF community for over 30 years.”
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As Republican Kari Lake appeals a legal defeat in her lawsuit challenging certification of her narrow loss in Arizona’s Nov. 8 gubernatorial election, she is alleging that ballot chain-of-custody issues occurred at Runbeck Election Services, a company that municipalities across the country use for outsourcing election operations.
Lake is appealing a ruling against her last month in her suit against former Secretary of State and current Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs and Maricopa County election officials demanding the election result be set aside due to alleged failures and misconduct by the county. Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Peter Thompson found that Lake failed to meet a legal standard of clear and convincing evidence that intentional misconduct changed the outcome of the election.
In her appeal, which challenges the legal standard applied by the trial court, Lake alleges that Maricopa County’s “massive violations of law and maladministration” included violating Arizona law’s chain-of-custody requirements by not having Election Day dropbox ballots counted at Maricopa County Tabulation and Election Center (MCTEC) before going to Runbeck.
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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 State Rep. David Cook (R-Globe) announced Monday that he is seeking to work with the City of Scottsdale to alleviate the water struggle members of the Rio Verde Foothills (RVF) Community are facing.
“It is beyond me how a group of Arizona citizens could be put in such a position. Arizonans’ livelihoods depend on having a reliable and long-term water supply,” wrote Cook in a letter to Mayor David Ortega.
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Former Arizona Supreme Court Chief Justice Ruth McGregor will lead an investigation into printer issues that plagued Maricopa County on Election Day, according to a joint statement from the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors (BOS) Chairman Bill Gates and Vice Chairman Clink Hickman.
“Justice McGregor will hire a team of independent experts to find out why the printers that read ballots well in the August Primary had trouble reading some ballots while using the same settings in the November General. Our voters deserve nothing less,” said the officials. “Maricopa County appreciates Justice McGregor’s willingness to serve in this role. We look forward to her findings.”
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Audit USA (AU), a nonpartisan organization based in Arizona focusing on election integrity, will have an opportunity to present arguments in the Arizona Court of Appeals Wednesday in a case involving Maricopa County and ballot images.
“I’m hopeful we will win this case because the facts are with us and transparency in our elections is vital for democracy,” said John Brakey, co-founder and director of AU. “Transparency is the currency of trust and without it, our democracy will die in darkness.”
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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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Arizona GOP gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake has filed a petition to transfer her appeal to the Arizona Supreme Court after her election fraud lawsuit was dismissed.
Lake filed the petition January 1.
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Kari Lake, the Arizona Republican nominee for governor, is appealing a Maricopa County judge’s dismissal of her lawsuit challenging her defeat to Democrat Katie Hobbs, who is currently serving as secretary of state.
In a notice of appeal filed Tuesday, Lake asked the Arizona Superior Court to reconsider all 10 counts that she brought up in her original lawsuit as well as the attorneys’ fees she was ordered to pay.
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Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Peter Thompson has officially ruled against the defendant’s motions for sanctions against Kari Lake in her election challenge, stating that her claims were not made in bad faith.
“Plaintiff failed to meet the burden of clear and convincing evidence required for each clement of AR.S. § 16-672 does not equate 10 a finding that her claims were, or were not, ‘groundless and presented in bad faith,” wrote Thompson.
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Following the dismissal of Kari Lake’s election challenge, Maricopa County, the Secretary of State’s Office (SOSO), and Democrat Governor-Elect Katie Hobbs all filed Motions for Sanctions and Applications for Attorney’s Fees Monday morning. Lake’s team responded, stating that sanctioning them in this trial would further erode trust in election systems.
“Trust in the election process is not furthered by punishing those who bring legitimate claims as Plaintiff did here. In fact, sanctioning Plaintiff would have the opposite effect,” according to a response from one of Lake’s attorneys, Bryan Blehm.
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The Maricopa County Superior Court reaffirmed Democrat Gov.-Elect Katie Hobbs’s gubernatorial election win in a Saturday ruling in Republican Kari Lake’s election lawsuit.
The ruling said that “the court DOES NOT find clear and convincing evidence” that “misconduct” altered the election results.
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Election modeling expert Richard Baris said Thursday in the Kari Lake election lawsuit that his projections showed as many as 40,000 voters were disenfranchised over Election Day chaos in Arizona’s Maricopa County, causing him to “have no doubt” that she would’ve won the gubernatorial election had there no problems at polling centers.
Baris is the final witness for Lake in the scheduled two-day trial for her election lawsuit.
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Watch day two of the Kari Lake election contest trial livestream.
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The first of two days of oral arguments from Arizona’s Republican gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake’s challenge of the 2022 general election outcome began Wednesday morning, overseen by Judge Peter Thompson in the Maricopa County Superior Court. Testimonies were heard from several officials and experts.
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Watch the Karil Lake election contest trial livestream.
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Turning Point USA’s annual AmericaFest continued its second day in Phoenix on Sunday, featuring a long lineup of well-known conservatives. Some of the standouts Sunday included Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, who is currently fighting the results of a botched election in Arizona which resulted in Democrat Katie Hobbs being named the winner, co-founder of PragerU and talk show host Dennis Prager, and Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO).
The theme of many of the speakers was to stay positive and avoid the negativity and self-centeredness of the left, see the good in the country, and the values and institutions like marriage and children which formed it. Lake’s speech focused on voter disenfranchisement that occurred in her race, declaring, “My pronouns are ‘I won’” and “election integrity is the single most important issue of our lifetime.”
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Recently disclosed internal communications between top election officials in Arizona’s Maricopa County in the immediate aftermath of Election Day reveal that they struggled to reconcile a discrepancy of almost 16,000 in outstanding ballot totals.
The governor’s race in Arizona was decided by a margin of just over 17,000 votes.
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Friday on WarRoom Battleground, Host Bannon welcomed well-known Attorney and Litigation Specialist Christina Bobb to the show to comment upon the recent ruling in Maricopa County, Arizona allowing GOP gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake to proceed with ballot sampling.
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Maricopa County, Ariz., uses in-person voter turnout data from prior elections for planning where to place vote centers for future elections, but the county also categorizes the data by political party, raising election integrity concerns that voters of different parties could possibly have different Election Day experiences based on their location.
On Monday, a picture of a Republican in-person Election Day and early voting turnout heat map at Maricopa County Tabulation and Election Center (MCTEC) was tweeted by Kari Lake’s campaign Twitter account, linking to an UncoverDC article.
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Candidates and other interested parties have started filing lawsuits contesting the election results in Arizona, particularly in Maricopa County, where 59 percent of the vote centers were plagued with ballot tabulation problems, causing long lines in heavily Republican areas forcing some voters to leave without voting. One of those lawsuits was filed on Monday by State Senator Sonny Borrelli (R-Lake Havasu), challenging the use of AI to verify signatures, which Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich has stated is illegal.
Attorneys for the election integrity organization True the Vote drafted the complaint. It asserted, “Maricopa County ran 1.3 million images, on monitors, past the eyes of a few dozen of its Signature Verifiers at such a rapid clip that it was physically impossible for them to verify the Delegated Software’s adjudications about those images reliably.” True the Vote founder Catherine Engelbrecht told The Arizona Sun Times, “Many voters in Mohave County reported concern that their votes were being diluted by events in Maricopa County. We listened, retained counsel, and got to work. This litigation seeks to uncover the source of their concerns. We look forward to seeing it tried in court.”
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Correspondence from Arizona’s Office of the Attorney General months before the November 2022 general election warned of issues with Maricopa County’s signature verification of mail-in ballots.
The first letter came from Attorney General Mark Brnovich on April 16, 2022, and was directed to Senate President Karen Fann as an interim report of the Maricopa County November 3, 2020, general election.
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Former Kansas Attorney General Phillip Kline (R) shared his thoughts on Republican Kari Lake’s lawsuit contesting the 2022 General Election, saying the allegations shed light on severe issues in Maricopa County’s handling of the election.
“Despite media claims, Lake’s lawsuit reveals serious flaws in Maricopa’s handling of mail-in ballots-violations of procedures and possibly law. If the suit is dismissed it is due to gaps in AZ law, not lack of substance,” Kline tweeted in response to a New York Times article covering Lake’s lawsuit.
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Complaints are circulating that the number of voters on inactive status in Maricopa County greatly and abnormally increased between April and the general election this year. One of the Republican candidates who believed this may have influenced his race is Christian Lamar, who lost by 1,990 votes in the State House race in Phoenix-area LD 2.
Lamar told The Arizona Sun Times, “So far, a majority of 7,400 ‘newly found’ voters in my district still have a status of deactivated or removed. Also, they are mostly party not determined (unaffiliated) and more Democrats than Republicans in ‘newly found’ voters. From mostly blue precincts too.” He asked the Maricopa County Recorder for more information about the high numbers of inactive voters and was told there are currently 29,765 in his district of 161,134 registered voters, a number he finds “strangely high” considering about 82,000 voted.
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The State of Arizona Elections Procedures Manual (EPM) for 2019 that prescribes the Secretary of State’s rules for running an election has no provision for qualifying or certifying the equipment a third-party vendor uses for ballot signature verification in Maricopa County.
According to state law A.R.S. 16-452, the secretary of state is responsible for prescribing in an official instructions and procedures manual the rules to achieve and maintain the maximum degree of correctness, impartiality, uniformity and efficiency on the procedures for early voting and voting as well as producing, distributing, collecting, county, tabulating and storing ballots.
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A lawsuit filed Friday by Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake contesting the results in the November 8, 2022, election in Maricopa County exposes, among other things, the complexities of the process for mail-in and drop-box ballots and the county’s reliance on a third-party vendor for essential election functions.
The 70-page complaint filed by Lake named Democratic gubernatorial opponent Katie Hobbs who is the Secretary of State of Arizona who certified the election in her favor on December 5, as well as Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer as an officer in charge of elections, Maricopa County Director of Elections for Election Day and Emergency Voting Scott Jarrett and the five members of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors.
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Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer, who started a PAC to support anti-Trump Republican candidates, sought support from the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) — including funding, intelligence, and collaboration with social media — in election officials’ often controversial efforts to combat purported election misinformation, according to a newly released internal agency report.
On Wednesday, Christina Bobb, attorney for Donald Trump for President 2024, posted a CISA report on Twitter recapping Richer’s March appearance before the DHS agency’s Protecting Critical Infrastructure from Misinformation and Disinformation Subcommittee to brief the members on combating election misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation.
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News outlet the Gateway Pundit (TGP) and one of its reporters, Jordan Conradson, filed a lawsuit against Maricopa County in November for being denied a press pass. On Monday, the Ninth Circuit Court ruled in favor of Conradson and TGP’s emergency motion for an injunction.
“HUGE WIN! The 9th circuit court of appeals has ruled on the side of our First Amendment in [TGP]’s lawsuit against [Maricopa County]’s totalitarian attempts to control the narrative,” tweeted Conradson.
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Arizona’s Republican gubernatorial nominee, Kari Lake, and Secretary of State nominee Mark Finchem have been sanctioned by an Obama-appointed U.S. District Judge, John Tuchi, in a lawsuit they filed to prevent the use of electronic voting machines in the Arizona election. The Lake Campaign said this is a message to those who lose an election not to take their case to court.
“This case is not about money or gain. It was essentially a public interest lawsuit seeking electoral integrity. It is very very rare to sanction a party in public interest suits,” said the Lake Campaign in a statement shared with the Arizona Sun Times. “All in all this reads like an angry Obama appointee who wants to send a message. The message is if you lose shut up and don’t come to court. The message is not that you lost a case or acted in bad faith.”
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As the 2022 midterm election is nearing certification in Arizona, lawsuits and court rulings are piling up amid continuing revelations of myriad failures in the administration of the election in Maricopa County.
After Maricopa experienced a host of problems on Election Day at many of its vote centers, one county subsequently chose not to certify its election by the Monday deadline, while another county certified “under duress,” according to two supervisors on the county board.
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The Election Integrity Network (EIN) has compiled a list of reports from election workers, poll watchers, and volunteer attorneys about questionable things they observed during Maricopa County’s midterm election, which experienced rampant tabulation machine and printer problems. EIN Chairman and election integrity attorney Cleta Mitchell denounced Maricopa County officials for “misinformation” regarding how bad the problems really were.
Cleta said, “Maricopa County Board of Supervisors Chairman Bill Gates, Director of Elections Scott Jarrett, and County Recorder Steven Richer presided over a wholly mismanaged and disgraceful election on November 8 that has robbed countless voters of their political voices. Since the polls opened on Election Day, they have misled and misinformed the public about what really happened. But thanks to engaged citizens, we know the truth.”
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As voters, poll workers, and observers have voiced their concerns about issues they witnessed on Election Day in Maricopa County, Ariz., a review of the county’s history shows 10 years of election issues under various election officials.
Numerous issues occurred at vote centers on Election Day in Maricopa County earlier this month, from election machine problems to hours-long lines, according to widespread reports. However, election issues are not unique to the 2022 midterms in Maricopa, as some began a decade ago.
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Arizona Attorney Tim La Sota has filed an Election Contest lawsuit against Secretary of State Katie Hobbs and Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer, alleging some votes cast in the State Senate race for Legislative District (LD) 22 were “overvoted.”
“The votes must be properly tabulated, and that may result in a different eligible candidate receiving the highest number of lawful votes. Immediate judicial intervention is necessary to secure the accuracy of the results of the November 8, 2022 general election, and to ensure that candidate who received the highest number of lawful votes is declared the next State Senator from legislative district 22,” according to the lawsuit.
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Arizona’s Republican gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake released an update Monday telling her followers that she is not backing away from her fight for the governor’s office and election reform in the state.
“While we come together on this unifying issue of restoring honesty to our elections, rest assured, Arizona, nothing will stop me from putting everything I have into reforming elections here in Arizona and in America,” Lake said.
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As the deadline for Arizona counties to certify the 2022 midterm election passed on Monday, Maricopa County certified while residents urged them not to, one county chose not to certify despite the threat of a lawsuit, and another certified with two supervisors voting “under duress.”
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Maricopa County Board of Supervisors (BOS) Chairman Bill Gates released his response to a subpoena submitted by State Sen. Kelly Townsend (R-Mesa) Sunday, which demanded information about the 2022 General Election. Gates insisted that the subpoena was not enforceable but is still allegedly committed to providing the requested information.
“To reiterate, although the Document does not meet the legal requirements of an enforceable legislative subpoena, the Board is committed to transparency in this election. We are reviewing your requests and collecting information which we will promptly provide to you,” said Gates.
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Election results are being challenged in Maricopa County, but the results have been certified.
The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors met on Monday to certify the Canvass of the 2022 November General Election.
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While Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer is coming under increased scrutiny for his founding and operation of a political action committee (PAC), the next required opportunity for the public’s visibility on his PAC’s activity is mid-January nearly two months after he sought to influence the November 8 general election.
According to the Arizona Secretary of State website regarding campaign finance reporting dates, filings for the post-general election period of October 23 to December 31, 2022, are not due until the earliest date of January 1 and not later than January 17, 2023.
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Arizona GOP gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake said Wednesday that she sued Maricopa County to force it to release documents about voting irregularities in the midterms, a prelude to a larger legal challenge where she’s planning to challenge the election results.
“Every single rule was pretty much broken when it came to Election Day voting where they punish the people who chose to show up on Election Day,” Lake said on the Wednesday edition of the “Just the News, No Noise” TV show. “So we filed this lawsuit in court today asking the county to cough up some of the public documentation we need for our bigger lawsuit.”
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Republican Attorney General nominee Abe Hamadeh, along with the Republican National Committee, filed a lawsuit Tuesday against his Democrat opponent Kris Mayes and the counties of Arizona, alleging that errors in the 2022 General Election should prevent a winner from being named in this race.
“Arizonans demand answers and deserve transparency about the gross incompetence and mismanagement of the General Election by certain election officials. I will not stop fighting until ALL voters receive justice. See you in court,” Hamadeh tweeted when announcing the suit.
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As many vote centers in Maricopa County experienced issues with election equipment on Election Day 2022, many ballots were rejected by tabulators and spoiled, but not always properly, according to a report filed with the Arizona attorney general’s office.
The affidavit was compiled by Mark Sonnenklar, a roving attorney with the Republican National Committee’s Election Integrity program in Arizona, from observations he and 10 other roving attorneys made as GOP election observers at Maricopa County vote centers. The 11 observers visited a combined 115 of the 223 vote centers in Maricopa County on Election Day.
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Arizona Republican Party (AZGOP) Chairwoman Dr. Kelli Ward sent a letter to Maricopa County Tuesday demanding answers to several issues and shortcomings seen on Election Day.
“Given the systemic election failures experienced by voters in Maricopa County on Election Day, it is of paramount that a full accounting of every reconciled ballot and checked-in voter be done to assure the public that every vote was properly counted,” wrote Ward.
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The Arizona Freedom Caucus (AFC) blasted Maricopa County Election Officials for allegedly breaking the law during this election cycle and demanded that the officials involved resign from their positions.
“After taking an absurd and unnecessary amount of time to count ballots, we are now finding Maricopa County election officials may not merely be incompetent but may also be criminals,” said AFC Chairman, State Rep. Jack Hoffman (R-Maricopa).
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Numerous issues plagued vote centers in Arizona’s Maricopa County on Election Day 2022, from ballots rejected by tabulators to hours-long lines for voting, according to affidavits filed with the Arizona attorney general’s office.
According to an affidavit report by Mark Sonnenklar, a roving attorney with the Republican National Committee’s Election Integrity program in Arizona, he and 10 other RNC roving attorneys reported their observations and those of Republican observers at vote centers on Election Day.
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Voters encountered problems casting their ballots at 70 of the 223 vote centers in Maricopa County on Election Day, November 8, 2022, resulting in long lines and concerns that ballots ended up not tabulated or “misread,” and commingled with ballots that had already been tabulated. Averaged together, the problems occurred in areas where Election Day voting was more than 300 percent Republican versus Democrat. Of those 70 precincts affected, 59 were in heavily Republican-voting areas, and two were Republican-leaning but not heavily, with only nine from Democrat-leaning or solidly Democrat areas.
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Amid widespread reports of Election Day irregularities suppressing Republican votes in Maricopa County, Ariz., Republican elected officials in the county have been brushing off concerns of their fellow party members with a mixture of anger and condescension.
Marred by hundreds of complaints, including malfunctioning machines and prohibitively long lines to vote, the county’s handling of the 2022 midterm elections is now under investigation by the Arizona attorney general’s election integrity unit for possible “statutory violations” of state election law.
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Following the apparent losses of major races to Democrats in the state, Arizona Republican Party (AZGOP) Chairwoman Dr. Kelli Ward has faced calls to resign from her position, with significant backlash coming from former Republican gubernatorial candidate Karrin Taylor Robson. However, Tyler Bowyer from Turning Point USA said this backlash is unnecessary because Ward will not be seeking reelection as party chair.
“Karrin has been a no-show, never helped GOP only herself, did zero after she lost & only helped Dems turnout for prop 308 to help illegals. If she was semi-involved she’d already know Ward isn’t even running,” tweeted Bowyer.
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