The Arizona Court of Appeals has agreed to hear Kari Lake’s lawsuit against Hobbs in her capacity as secretary of state, Maricopa County supervisors, Maricopa Recorder Stephen Richer, and other officials, asserting that the county’s handling of the election was seriously flawed and disenfranchised Election Day voters. 84% of the precincts affected were heavily red precincts and thus Republicans were at a huge disadvantage because of the number of people unable to vote.
The court decided to reset the preliminary hearing to February 21st and they agreed that the nature of the suit makes it necessary to handle it on an expedited basis. Hobbs’s lawyers have until January 17th to offer their reasons why the case should be dismissed. Lake had appealed to both the appeals court and the state Supreme Court, but the Supreme Court said that it had to wait for the appeals court to hear the case before they can take it up.
A Maricopa County judge, Peter Thompson, threw out Lake’s lawsuit on Dec. 24, making the absurd claim that her lawyers did not prove their case, despite the fact that election director Scott Jarrett admitted that the voting machines were reprogrammed on election day, meaning it was an intentional act. The original setting would have worked perfectly. But, the reprogrammed machines spit out ballots that the tabulators could not read. This was an intentional act perpetrated in the hopes of delivering a win that otherwise would have been a loss.
A portion of Lake’s lawsuit included claims that she would have won or had a better chance of winning if the voting machines had not been reprogrammed to give Democrats a huge advantage. On election day 72% of the voters were Republicans and yet somehow Katie Hobbs took 50% of the vote. You would have to suspend your disbelief to even think that could be remotely possible. It will be interesting to see what excuse this court will have to toss out Lake’s case. No one in Arizona should believe they have fair and honest elections.
Lake’s lawyers previously argued that those Maricopa officials allegedly “admitted, after first denying, that illegally misconfigured ballots were injected into the election” and triggered the “tabulators to reject tens of thousands of ballots.” Lawyers stated Republican voters on Election Day were disproportionally impacted.”
During the two-day trial, Lake called on independent pollster Richard Baris, who testified that he believes the Election Day technical problems disenfranchised enough voters that it would have changed the outcome of the race. Maricopa Election Day voters, he asserted, mostly trended Republican and that between 25,000 to 40,000 people who would normally have voted actually didn’t cast ballots as a result of the tabulator and printer errors.
Baris told the court that his estimate was primarily influenced by the number of people who began answering his exit polls but didn’t finish the process during the midterm contest.
“Chasing conspiracy theories, pushing agendas for special interests, attacking the rights of your fellow Arizonans or seeking to further undermine our democracy will lead nowhere,” Hobbs said.
Other officials who formally took office earlier this month were Adrian Fontes as secretary of state and Kris Mayes, who won by only about 280 votes, as attorney general. Both Democrats defeated Republicans who subsequently challenged their losses in court.
