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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Despite his indictment, former President Donald Trump can continue his 2024 campaign for president and serve in office if he wins.
A Manhattan grand jury voted on Thursday to indict Trump. The Constitution does not contain any provision barring someone who has been indicted or even convicted from becoming president.
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Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy is strongly condemning a New York Grand Jury’s indictment of former President Donald Trump, calling it a “dark moment in American history.” Thursday’s indictment follows a years-long investigation of Trump in connection with a $130,000 hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels who claims to have had an affair with Trump years ago. The payment was made in advance of the 2016 presidential election. Trump has denied the affair.
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The Arizona State Senate passed more legislation Tuesday aimed at strengthening Arizona’s elections, starting with House Concurrent Resolution (HCR) 2033, sponsored by State Representative Austin Smith (R-Suprise).
“Thank you to the @AZSenateGOP for voting out HCR2033. A bigger thank you to all the grassroots activists who worked so hard to make this happen. Very grateful for you all,” Smith tweeted. “This constitutional referral to protect our party primaries and girding us against radical experimental election systems that disenfranchise voters such as ‘ranked choice voting.'”
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Former President Donald Trump on Monday asserted that Republicans must embrace ballot harvesting in the states that permit the practice in order to win the next election.
“So for 2024, should Republicans embrace early voting, voting by mail, and embrace the tactics of the Democrats and follow the ballot harvesting laws of their respective states?” Fox News’ Sean Hannity asked in an interview that premiered Monday.
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Two polls showing Florida Governor Ron DeSantis “running more competitively” against former President Donald Trump in first-in-the-nation nominating states Iowa and New Hampshire are missing some key data, raising questions about the validity of the surveys.
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As “Zuckerbucks” — the injection of private money into public election administration — make a comeback, states and municipalities are clashing over whether the funds should be accepted or banned.
While many states and counties across the country have either restricted or banned the use of private money to fund public elections offices, a nonprofit with progressive Democrat ties that served as the key link in the 2020 Zuckerbucks funding chain is still finding loopholes in some counties as states seek to tighten up their laws.
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Former President Donald Trump is decrying the relentless investigations launched against him and his supporters, saying they are a form of political cheating worse than ballot stuffing.
Trump assailed the chronic investigations he has faced for seven years during his first rally of the 2024 campaign season in Waco, Texas on Saturday night, and then in a subsequent post on his Truth Social platform.
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Former President Donald Trump leads Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for the 2024 GOP primary by a massive two-digit margin, doubling the support of DeSantis’ share, according to a poll released Friday.
Trump tops a crowded field of Republican presidential contenders at 50% – a 26-percentage point lead over the Florida governor – according to a Harvard CAPS/Harris poll. In a head-to-head matchup between the two frontrunners, the former president still wins against DeSantis, but by a slimmer margin of 56% to 44%.
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AmericaPack and EZAZ, two of the main conservative grassroots organizations in Arizona, are pairing up to “flip Arizona solid red.” EZAZ’s Merissa Hamilton spoke to a large group of AmericaPack supporters Friday evening about the “Arizona Rescue Mission” the groups have crafted to get more voters voting Republican and running for office. State Rep. Alex Kolodin (R-Scottsdale) and State Rep. Joseph Chaplik (R-Scottsdale) provided updates on the Arizona Legislature, and a Phoenix Police Department (PPD) sergeant talked about the lack of patrol officers within the PPD.
Hamilton told the attendees about the new grassroots project, “[This is] so that we have the infrastructure built so that when the election cycle comes around next time, not only will this room be filled, but it will be filled with new faces with people that have not been as involved … and it will be because of us.”
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After deliberating on whether to accept Kari Lake’s appeal of the dismissal of her election challenge in Arizona’s gubernatorial race, the Arizona Supreme Court issued an order on Wednesday that remanded the part of the case regarding Maricopa County’s signature verification process back to the trial court judge, and dismissed the other parts.
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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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The Arizona Supreme Court is holding a private conference on Tuesday to discuss whether 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.
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The grassroots advocacy organization Americans for Prosperity (AFP) filed a lawsuit in the Arizona District Court Friday in opposition to Arizona’s newly enacted “dark money” law, alleging that it presents possible first amendment violations.
“The First Amendment safeguards the right of individuals to donate to private advocacy organizations without undue risk that they will be subjected to their identities being disclosed or other chilling by the government,” according to the complaint.
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Donald Trump has had an unusually long and dramatic tenure at the center of American politics. The reason is simple: Trump has an indomitable personality and an abiding refusal to kowtow to the establishment’s sacred cows. From the moment he entered the arena, he continuously provoked the ruling powers into a hysterical frenzy of breathless rage. Indeed, it’s hard to think of another American political figure who has caused more chaos, or faced more concerted and unscrupulous opposition.
Only days ago, Trump sent his enemies up a wall with a blistering statement calling for an immediate end to the war in Ukraine, which he dared to call a “proxy battle,” and not the moral crusade for “democracy” that busybodies in both parties in Washington have described ad nauseam. America’s most dangerous foes are not in Russia, Trump said, but right here at home. Patriotic Americans are under siege by corrupt, “godless” tyrants who want to flood their neighborhoods with foreigners, force “Marxist” ideology on them and their children, and let politically protected criminals run amok, Trump said.
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Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley has remained silent on the potential indictment of former President Donald Trump, while several of her 2024 opponents – and potential opponents – have weighed in.
Conservative businessman Vivek Ramaswamy, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former Vice President Mike Pence have spoken out against the Manhattan District Attorney’s political agenda they allege is behind the targeting of the former president. Their comments come after Trump announced on Truth Social that he expects to be arrested on Tuesday.
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New Democratic Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes issued a press release last month criticizing her predecessor, Republican Mark Brnovich, for disagreeing with two of his employees on whether there was election fraud in the 2020 midterm election. As a result of her press release, 17 people filed bar complaints against him, including Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs. Jennifer Wright, who served as the Arizona Attorney General Office’s (AGO) Election Integrity Unit (EIU) civil attorney, denounced Mayes for the move, and is asking the Arizona Supreme Court to look into whether Mayes violated ethics rules by releasing attorney-client privileged work to the public.
In a March 13 letter addressed to Justice Bill Montgomery as the chair of the Arizona Supreme Court’s Task Force on Ethics Rules Governing the State Attorney General, County Attorneys, and Other Public Lawyers, Wright referenced Mayes’ position on the task force, and said, “I encourage the Task Force to inquire as to what Rule of Professional Conduct Ms. Mayes relied upon to justify waiving her predecessor’s attorney-client privilege and publicly releasing privileged materials.”
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As the Georgia General Assembly advances a bill to further restrict private money from bankrolling elections—as occurred with Facebook billionaire Mark Zuckerberg’s grants in the 2020 elections—congressional Republicans are reintroducing a similar measure.
Idaho Gov. Brad Little signed a measure on March 8 to strengthen an existing ban on private dollars funding election administration in his state.
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WEST DES MOINES, Iowa — Taking a different position than his old boss on a key foreign policy issue, former Vice President Mike Pence told a gathering of Iowans Saturday that the U.S. must continue to help provision Ukraine in its war against Russian aggression. While he repeatedly trumpeted “Trump-Pence” successes, the presumptive Republican presidential candidate definitely differs with potential top presidential race rivals, former President Donald Trump and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, on U.S. involvement in the war-torn European country.
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Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy says an indictment against fellow candidate and former President Donald Trump would be a “national disaster.”
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The lawsuit filed against Fox News by Dominion Voting Services, set to go to trial on April 17, may turn out to be a seminal case in First Amendment jurisprudence, with effects that reach well beyond Fox. In a nutshell, Dominion charges that Fox defamed them by putting on air people who claimed that Dominion’s voting machines yielded incorrect results, to the benefit of Joe Biden. More than this, the plaintiffs have secured, through depositions, evidence that Fox News hosts and news executives themselves disbelieved the claims their on-air guests were making.
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Rasmussen Reports and College Republicans United issued the results of a type of “late exit” poll on Friday, revealing that likely Arizona voters said they voted for former Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake over Governor Katie Hobbs 51 percent to 43 percent.
Also, the poll found these likely Arizona voters voted for Abe Hamadeh and Mark Finchem over their Democratic opponents who won those respective state races.
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As the federal government extends its reach into county elections offices by funding cybersecurity services through the Department of Homeland Security, Republicans, state and local officials are arguing that election administration should stay local.
County elections offices across the U.S. are receiving ambiguous “cybersecurity services” free of charge from the nonprofit Center for Internet Security (CIS), which has played a key role in flagging purported election “misinformation” for Big Tech censorship and collaborates with other left-wing nonprofits and the Democrat-connected cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike.
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Democrat Kevin Robinson will replace Republican Phoenix City Councilman Sal DiCiccio in District 6, and Democrat Kesha Hodge Washington unseated incumbent Councilman Carlos Garcia following a runoff election on Tuesday.
Republican Sam Stone, who was up against former police officer Robinson, quickly conceded after seeing the results at his election night party in north Phoenix. Stone worked for DiCiccio and gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake.
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The Arizona Freedom Caucus (AFC) released a statement Tuesday, allowing several members to speak out against Ranked Choice Voting (RVC) in Arizona and promote two bills that would prohibit it in the state.
“RCV may not always result in the candidate with the most first-choice votes winning the election,” said AFC Member Senator Anthony Kern (R-Glendale). “I am aware that there are groups in Arizona advocating for RCV, but this will only lead to chaos, and we must ensure that our constituents have easy and fair access to the ballot box.”
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I love a good conspiracy theory. Aliens, ancient builders, Bigfoot—I will absolutely click on that headline and read the latest conspiracy, no matter how fanciful or ludicrous. Everyone has a harmless personal foible, right? And in the times we live in now, shadowy government conspiracies and UFOs are no longer just for “The X Files.”
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Democrats and their progressive allies are vastly expanding their unprecedented efforts, begun in 2020, to use private money to influence and run public elections.
Supported by groups with more than $1 billion at their disposal, according to public records, these partisan groups are working with state and local boards to influence functions that have long been the domain of government or political parties.
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You’re forgiven if you didn’t hear the news – or didn’t pay attention to it – but former Maryland governor Larry Hogan announced last week that he won’t run against Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis for the Republican Party’s 2024 presidential nomination.
This didn’t mean Hogan accepted the inevitable and intends to throw-in with the wisdom of his party’s voters and simply do what most loyal politicians do when the grassroots selects in a primary someone he or she doesn’t necessarily agree with. No, Hogan said he hopes like heck that someone other than Trump or DeSantis will earn the GOP nod – and henceforth release him from taking drastic measures. But should Republican primary participants opt for a Trump or DeSantis candidacy… Larry may run instead on a third-party ticket.
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In a weekly update to constituents, State Sen. J.D. Mesnard (R-Chandler) announced Monday that three of his election-related bills recently passed the Senate floor.
“Several of my bills that focus on improving our elections process by speeding up ballot tabulation, while preserving accuracy, security, and transparency, have now passed the Senate and are advancing to the House,” Mesnard shared.
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The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) has sparked comments from 2024 GOP candidates and hopefuls about why the bank failed and what the government should do in its wake.
Declared candidates, businessman Vivek Ramaswamy, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley and former President Donald Trump, as well as contender Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, have spoken out about what might have led to SVB’s collapse and against government bailouts. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) took control of SVB after its Friday shut down when their stock plummeted following mass withdrawals.
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Three more red states — Florida, Missouri, and West Virginia — this week followed Louisiana and Alabama in withdrawing from a multistate data-sharing partnership that facilitates voter registration and maintenance of voter rolls, citing unmet concerns over protecting voter information and partisan influence at the nonprofit.
The latest withdrawals from the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC) came after the nonprofit’s board of directors rejected changes proposed by a bipartisan working group of several member states.
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Following Tuesday’s news that the political party, the No Labels Party (NLP), qualified for Arizona’s 2024 ballot, the party confirmed to The Arizona Sun Times that it would only be using its presence on the ballot for a potential presidential candidate.
“Right now, we do not have any plans to use the ballot lines for races other than the presidency,” said a spokesperson for the NLP.
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Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has privately disclosed his intentions to run for president in 2024, two sources close to the governor told The Washington Post.
DeSantis’ private comments suggest that he is no longer in the deciding phase, and is likely to make an announcement once Florida’s legislative session concludes in May, according to The Post. The Thursday launch of Never Back Down, a political action committee designed to boost DeSantis as the GOP nominee, serves as another indicator of a possible campaign, as it intends to “carry him to the White House.”
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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.
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A third party has qualified for Arizona’s 2024 election ballot, spurring concern and pushback from Democrats who view it as a “spoiler” party that could potentially harm Democratic election prospects, according to the Hill. Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes announced Tuesday that the third party, the No Labels Party, has garnered enough signatures to appear on the ballot and qualify for federal and state races in the 2024 primaries and general election. Democratic think tank Third Way released a memo earlier in the day criticizing the party, stating that it would only serve as a spoiler for Arizona Democrats.
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The Arizona Free Enterprise Club filed a lawsuit against the state Monday, alleging that the early ballot signature verification process outlined in the Elections Procedures Manual (EPM) violates state law.
“The signature presented on an early ballot affidavit is the fulcrum on which the integrity of that ballot pivots; it is the only means by which the county recorder can verify that a person casting an early ballot by mail is, in fact, a duly qualified elector,” according to the lawsuit. “And given the centrality of early ballots to elections in this state, signature verification is also foundational to the overall integrity of Arizona’s elections.”
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Vivek Ramaswamy wants to do something normal politicians work to avoid. A successful biotech entrepreneur turned “anti-woke” reformer, the Republican author and activist is running for president while actively trying to break the fourth wall of American campaign politics.
Candidates don’t generally talk trash about the cadre of operatives and politicos who manipulate the political landscape behind the scenes. But Ramaswamy says his campaign received a call the day after he announced, and the consultant on the other end of the phone offered a prize that would intrigue any upstart presidential candidate: second place in the CPAC straw poll.
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Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy said Monday he was offered second place in the 2023 Conservative Political Action Conference straw poll if he paid a consultant.
“One of the things you see as an outsider is how corrupt the system is. You know something funny about this? I’ve attended CPAC before. I didn’t know it works this way,” Ramaswamy told Fox Business host Stuart Varney. “A consultant calls my campaign shortly after I declared, says ‘Hey, we can get you up to number two on there if you pay us a few hundred thousand dollars.’ I was shocked, you know … there’s a lot of people making money not only off of me, but every presidential campaign.”
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While former President Donald Trump continues to lead national polls for the 2024 GOP primaries, state polling is more of a determining factor, and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is topping several important states.
In states with the most recent primary polling, DeSantis leads in five– Alabama, California, Michigan, Pennsylvania and North Carolina. There are several other states in which he leads, but with several caveats.
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A “guinea pig.” That is what Sandy, Utah Mayor Monica Zoltanski said that “ranked-choice voting” (RCV) made of her hometown. The town opted into Utah’s controversial RCV pilot program, but the experiment has not gone well. The cost-saving promised by proponents never materialized, but the real alarm bells should have sounded when the experiment produced voter confusion and voter disengagement.
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Former Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake of Arizona alleged Saturday that she was offered a bribe to stay out of politics for two years. “Something happened to me this week before I left for CPAC and it shows how desperate these people are to stop me,” Lake said during the 2023 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC).
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Former President Trump on Saturday won the Conservative Political Action Conference straw poll as the preferred 2024 GOP presidential nominee, and former Arizona Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake won as the vice presidential choice of CPAC attendees.
Over 2,000 votes were cast.
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The Cochise County Board of Supervisors voted 2-1 on Tuesday to turn over management of elections to Cochise County Recorder David Stevens. Cochise County made national headlines last fall when the board attempted to conduct a full hand count of the midterm election and tried to delay certification of the results.
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Nearly half of likely Democratic voters and the majority of Republican voters consider President Joe Biden not fit to run for a second term due to his age, as reported by a Yahoo/YouGov poll.
The polls reveal that one out of seven likely voters, 68% believe that Joe Biden is “too old for another term as a president,” according to a Yahoo News/YouGov poll. Roughly 48% of Democrats and 60% of Republicans agreed that Biden’s age of 80 is an issue for re-election while 23% of Democrats said they were unsure.
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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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Democrat Attorney General Kris Mayes issued a press release Thursday criticizing her predecessor Mark Brnovich for not agreeing with two of his employees that there was no election fraud. Now, Maricopa County officials and others skeptical of election fraud are chiming in and agreeing with her.
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The Arizona Legislature’s Senate Elections Committee and House Municipal Oversight & Elections Committee held a joint hearing on Thursday featuring testimony from several people involved in researching the voter disenfranchisement that occurred in 2020 and 2022. The testimony by Arizona forensic investigator Jacqueline Breger accused multiple statewide and county officials, including Governor Katie Hobbs and Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, of racketeering connected to the Sinaloa Cartel. Democrats on those committees refused to attend the hearing.
Breger said she has been working with a law firm investigating multistate racketeering and corruption, but in the process discovered election fraud as well. She said neither she nor the attorney she works for are very political; he didn’t vote in the last two elections and she is a registered independent. While investigating racketeering involving the Sinaloa Cartel, their team accidentally discovered election fraud, she said, including finding that Maricopa County’s database is being infiltrated from the outside. “The Maricopa County database has absolutely no integrity whatsoever,” she declared. “Racketeering enterprises are inextricably intertwined with election fraud.”
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Democrat Attorney General Kris Mayes, who replaced Mark Brnovich in office last month, released documents showing that two employees disagreed with Brnovich on the credibility of some of the complaints the office received about voter disenfranchisement. Mayes issued a press release on Wednesday based on the opinions of two employees, Assistant Chief Special Agent Keith Thomas of the Criminal Division and Attorney General (AGO) Chief Special Agent Reginald “Reggie” Grigsby.
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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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The Arizona Court of Appeals dismissed Kari Lake’s appeal of her election lawsuit on Thursday, stating that voters were not disenfranchised. Lake said she intends to appeal to the Arizona Supreme Court, as her opponents and Maricopa County officials praised the dismissal. Maricopa County election officials have frequently criticized Lake, causing some to doubt their impartiality. The Maricopa County Supervisors are responsible for overseeing elections on Election Day, while Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer has oversight of early balloting.
Clint Hickman, chair of the Maricopa County Supervisors, issued a statement on Thursday referring to Lake’s legal arguments as “questionable mathematics.” He said, “When a candidate for office asks a court to throw out valid votes, you have to wonder how committed to election integrity they really are.” He said Lake has been rejected “at the polls, when Arizona voters rejected her bid to be governor…”
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