Arizona Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake has not given up her legal fight to contest the chaotic and poorly-run midterm election that disenfranchised Republican voters in Maricopa County.
Late last week, Lake filed a petition to transfer her appeal to the Arizona Supreme Court after the “explosive findings” in her election fraud lawsuit was dismissed by a Maricopa County judge.
The filing cites “evidence put forward in this case, including the changing and conflicting testimony of Maricopa officials, and sworn testimony by whistleblowers employed by Maricopa,” to show that Maricopa County failed to verify mail-in ballot signatures, failed to keep chain of custody for 300,000 ballots, and caused massive “chaos” on election day causing tabulators to reject tens of thousands of ballots, disproportionally targeting Republican voters.
Superior Court Judge Peter Thompson previously dismissed eight out of the ten claims Lake made in her lawsuit, but allowed two of the counts to go forward involving Election Day ballot printing issues and procedural errors.
In his order, Thompson said that she would have to prove that misconduct occurred, and that it resulted in “identifiable lost votes” affecting the outcome of the election.
Despite Lake’s bombshell revelation that over 42 percent of the ballots on Election Day were the wrong size, causing them to be rejected, and according to an expert witness, it was highly unlikely that that happened accidentally, the judge did not rule in her favor.
On Day One of the trial, Maricopa County Elections Director Scott Jarrett testified that the 19-inch ballot images were not printed onto 20-inch ballots, and he had “no knowledge” of this occurring.
The next day, Jarrett changed his testimony to acknowledge that he had indeed learned of a “fit-to-paper” issue “a few days after Election Day” that printed “a slightly smaller image of a 20-inch image on a 20-inch paper ballot.”
The petition states, “Jarrett testified that Maricopa’s tabulators were configured to only read a 20 inch ballot image in the 2022 general election. Appx:148-51 (id., 51:13- 54:1-8). Any other sized ballot image could not be read by a tabulator and would be rejected. Appx:152 (id., 55:2-10). Jarrett testified at least four times that he did not know of, nor did he hear of, a 19 inch ballot image projected onto 20 inch paper in the 2022 general election.”
Scott Jarrett, Day 1: He doesn’t know how a 19” ballot image could be put on 20“ paper and he has “no knowledge” of that occurring
Day 2: 19” ballot image was “shrink to fit” setting he discovered a day after the election…but hid from the public until now
Story changes fast! pic.twitter.com/9YJxJtVq0s
— Liz Harrington (@realLizUSA) December 23, 2022
The petition also claims that Judge Thompson misrepresented expert witness testimony regarding the chain of custody failures that rendered nearly 300,000 ballots invalid.
The testimony of witness Heather Honey corroborated with that of a Runbeck Election Services Whistleblower, who testified that Runbeck received 298,942 ballots on Election Day, which included early voting ballots that did not have the required chain of custody.
“The trial court held that Plaintiff’s witness, Heather Honey, who testified for Plaintiff regarding Maricopa’s ballot CoC failures, ‘admit[ted] that Defendants did in fact generate the documents they were required to, and otherwise affirms the County’s compliance with election processes.’ December 24, 2022 Ruling at 5-6. Honey did no such thing. Further, the trial court ignored the admissions by Maricopa officials discussed in Statement of Facts, Section C, showing they clearly violated Arizona CoC laws set forth the EPM and A.R.S. §16-621(E). Honey never admitted that Maricopa officials generated required CoC documents for EDDB ballots delivered on Election Day. In fact, she testified Maricopa did not produce these forms (“Delivery Receipts”) for the nearly 300,000 EDDB ballots,” states the petition.
Lake and her legal team have made the argument that the widespread glitches in the state’s election system on Election Day contributed to her narrow loss.
Thompson also rejected a request by the newly installed governor Katie Hobbs to sanction Lake for the lawsuit. He did, however, order Laker to reimburse Hobbs for some of the trial costs, with interest.
Hobbs appeared to struggle as she took the oath of office Monday morning, stammering and bursting into giggles as she botched her way through it.
VIDEO:
Democrat @KatieHobbs was unable to take the oath of office this morning without stammering and laughing through it. She also banned reporters from attending. #AZGov
MORE ➡️ https://t.co/bPGxYMFoKI pic.twitter.com/6bTCZ9KQ70
— Brian Anderson (@AZBrianAnderson) January 2, 2023
“I am standing up for the people of this state,” Lake said on Steve Bannon’s “War Room” podcast on New Year’s Eve. “When the citizen steps forward and steps up, we are a danger to the tyrants,” she said. “And I had no idea that I would be the biggest threat ever to this machine.”
Lake said she had great hope for the country because people seem to be waking up. “All of the answers are right there in the U.S. Constitution,” she added.