Kari Lake’s appeal of the second dismissal of her lawsuit by the trial court judge is winding its way back up through the courts.
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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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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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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 bill that has been making its way through the Arizona Legislature would make it easier for the public to obtain the Cast Vote Record (CVR), which is the electronic representation of how voters voted, but some election integrity proponents are concerned that after an amendment by State Representative Alex Kolodin (R-Scottsdale) was removed in Conference Committee, a loophole allows counties to accept early ballots without verifying the signatures. SB 1518, sponsored by State Senator Ken Bennett (R-Prescott), passed the Senate 17-11 on Tuesday, with a handful of conservative stalwarts joining Democrats to oppose it, but failed in the House 24-32 due to opposition from the House’s Arizona Freedom Caucus.
Jennifer Wright, former Election Integrity Unit civil attorney under previous Attorney General Mark Brnovich, who is currently representing Abe Hamadeh in his election challenge for Attorney General, tweeted her praise at the legislators who voted against the bill. “Thank you @RJ4arizona, @realAlexKolodin, and others for stopping SB1518 that contained language codifying procedures revealed in @KariLake’s trial that Maricopa used to permit ballots from early vote centers to forgo signature verification,” she said.
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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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Kari Lake’s second trial challenging her gubernatorial loss concluded on Friday, with Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Thompson giving no indication when he would issue his ruling.
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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.
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Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Peter Thompson heard oral arguments Friday in Kari Lake’s election contest.
Thompson is considering a Motions to Dismiss filed by the defendants and a 263-page Motion for Relief from Judgment filed by Lake’s attorneys urging the court to bring back her second count regarding “illegal BOD printer/tabulator configurations,” which Thompson had previously dismissed.
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Scottsdale-based nonprofit Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) released a statement Thursday putting Gov. Katie Hobbs (D) on blast for vetoing Senate Bill (SB) 1600, aimed at protecting a child born alive.
“Every human life is valuable, and every baby deserves to be protected. By rejecting critical legal protections for babies who survive abortions, Gov. Hobbs has made it clear: She would rather cater to the abortion industry than affirm the basic human rights of vulnerable children. Her failure to protect the lives of children once they are outside of the womb is unthinkable and inexcusable,” said ADF Senior Council Denise Burke. “We’re grateful to the Arizona lawmakers who took a strong stand for life by passing this vital legislation.”
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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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The Arizona Democrat Party (AZDP) filed a lawsuit Thursday against several state election officials and Secretary of State Adrian Fontes (D) in an attempt to keep the newly qualified No Labels Party (NLP) from appearing on the 2024 state ballots.
“This undemocratic and outrageous lawsuit is a national disgrace,” says Ryan Clancy, chief strategist for the NLP, in a release emailed to The Arizona Sun Times. “Next time you hear this crowd talking about protecting democracy, remember what they are really doing is protecting their turf. No Labels is confident that the court will uphold the Secretary of State’s decision to certify No Labels in Arizona.”
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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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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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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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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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In its final canvass report for the 2022 primary election, Maricopa County says it rejected 14 times more signatures than it did in the 2020 general election. This comes on the heels of Attorney General Mark Brnovich’s finding that the county’s standards for signature verification were “insufficient to guard against abuse.”
“Canvass Queen” Liz Harris, so named after conducting an 11-month long independent grassroots audit of the 2020 election in Maricopa County, told The Arizona Sun Times, “The entire voting system needs an entire overhaul. Period.”
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The Arizona Republican Party, along with its secretary Yvonne Cahill, has filed a lawsuit against Democratic Secretary of State Katie Hobbs over more actions she has taken that appear to be making it easier to commit voter fraud. The AZGOP’s Application for Issuance of Writ Under Exercise of Original Jurisdiction asks the court to compel Hobbs to include signature verification procedures in the election procedures manual and remove the language she added authorizing the set up of unmonitored ballot drop boxes, and challenges “no-excuse” early ballots as violating the Arizona Constitution.
AZGOP Chair Kelli Ward, who has been out on the forefront combating election fraud since the 2020 presidential election, told The Arizona Sun Times, “We want to make sure that our elections are secure so we can restore voter confidence and strengthen our representative republic.”
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Democrats have already passed H.R. 1, also known as the For the People Act, in the House of Representatives; fortunately, the bill faces a much tougher road in the Senate. Among the bill’s many serious problems are a wide array that I would characterize as “mechanical,” in the sense that they dictate the nuts and bolts of how states would run elections. H.R. 1 attempts to dictate these elements in a way that is either impossible to put into effect or would gut the effective administration of elections. One example is how H.R. 1 dictates, through its Section 1621, that states must deal with signature verification – a cornerstone of election security, especially with the growth of mail-in balloting.
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