The widespread voting machine issues that caused long lines and delays in Maricopa County on Election Day “definitely impacted the outcome” of Arizona’s gubernatorial midterm election and was “substantial enough” to change the result, pollster Richard Baris testified on day 2 of the Kari Lake trial.
Republican candidate Kari Lake and her legal team claim that she would have beaten Democrat Katie Hobbs had the voting equipment failures not disenfranchised her voters on Election Day.
Superior Court Judge Peter Thompson previously dismissed eight out of the ten claims Republican candidate Kari Lake made in her lawsuit, allowing only her claims that a Maricopa County employee interfered with ballot-on-demand printers, and the county didn’t follow proper chain-of-custody procedures, to go forward.
Thompson said that she would have to prove that “the printer malfunctions caused by this individual directly resulted in identifiable lost votes,” and that those lost votes impacted the results of the election.
On Wednesday, Lake’s lawyers revealed that a review of random ballots found that 48 out of 113 (42.5 percent) were “19-inch ballots produced on 20-inch paper,” causing them to be rejected.
Clay Parikh, a witness who examined the defective ballots on behalf of the Lake campaign, testified that the discrepancy looked deliberate because someone had to have changed the printer configurations.
Baris, the director of Big Data Poll, testified under oath on Thursday that the Election Day chaos caused by the tabulator issues, disproportionately affected Republican Voters and probably affected the outcome of the election.
The pollster said that people heard about the long lines in the news and on social media, and that deterred many of them from voting.
Baris explained that it may be hard for hardcore politicos to understand, but Average Joe voters have a life, and don’t have hours to spend waiting in line to vote.
“We can conclude with a degree of mathematical certainty that this affected this chunk of voters,” he said. “Is that enough to have changed the outcome? And I am offering the opinion that that range is enough to put the outcome in doubt.”
.@Peoples_Pundit: "We can conclude with a degree of mathematical certainty that this affected this chunk of voters. Is That enough to have changed the outcome? And I am offering the opinion that that range is enough to put the outcome in doubt." pic.twitter.com/OtWNfOWosG
— Kari Lake War Room (@KariLakeWarRoom) December 22, 2022
“In my professional opinion,” he added, “this definitely impacted the outcome. The only question for me is whether it had the potential to change the result, and in my professional opinion, it did—it was substantial enough change the leader board.”
KARI LAKE TRIAL: Richard Baris – Polling Expert & Director of Big Data Poll with 6+ years experience testifies under oath the Election Day chaos disproportionately effected Republican Voters and believes it possibly affected the outcome pic.twitter.com/2MC54biUaa
— Drew Hernandez (@DrewHLive) December 22, 2022