PHOENIX — Maricopa County’s supervisors are asking a judge to impose financial sanctions on the state’s two top election deniers, Republicans Kari Lake and Mark Finchem.
Lake, who is running for governor, and Finchem, the GOP nominee for secretary of state, filed a lawsuit in April seeking to ban the use of ballot counting machines.
It is full of claims that are demonstrably false, contends an attorney for the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, Emily Crager.
Moreover, she told U.S. District Court Judge John Tuchi that “any reasonable investigation would have revealed’’ as much. That means Lake and Finchem violated court rules barring the filing of frivolous lawsuits, Crager said.
Crager told the judge the lawsuit “has no factual or legal basis’’ and was filed “for the purpose of undermining confidence in elections and to further their political campaigns.’’
She said the lawsuit is so chock full of false statements, some of which she called “complete fiction,’’ that Tuchi should dismiss it and fine the candidates and their attorneys.
Lake did not respond directly to Crager’s legal filing.
When asked about it by Capitol Media Services, Lake responded, “When are you going to cover my policies? You and the rest of the PHX area media look absolutely ridiculous.’’
Finchem called the county’s legal filing “nothing more than the attempted weaponization of the judicial process against the political process.’’
“If they can’t stand up to scrutiny for elections, that’s their problem, not our problem,’’ he told Capitol Media Services.
Tuchi has not said when he will rule.
Lake’s, Finchem’s claims
In filing suit, Lake and Finchem argued that the machines that tabulate ballots are unreliable because they are subject to hacking. They said the use of components in computers from other countries makes them vulnerable.
There is something even more basic, said the attorney who filed the lawsuit on their behalf, Andrew Parker.
He said the tabulation of votes is an inherently governmental function, yet by using machines built and programmed by private companies, the state has effectively farmed that out.
What’s worse, Parker said, is that the technology is kept secret from the public.
“This lack of transparency by electronic voting machine companies has created a ‘black box’ system of voting which lacks credibility and integrity,’’ he wrote in the lawsuit.
Lake and Finchem want a court order to have the 2022 election conducted with paper ballots that would be counted by hand, which the lawsuit calls “the most effective and presently the only secure election method.’’
Maricopa County’s rebuttal
Crager’s response starts with the contention that Arizonans vote by machine. “Both plaintiffs Lake and Finchem have voted on paper ballots for nearly 20 years,’’ Crager wrote. “Thus, their claims that Arizona does not use paper ballots are the very definition of ‘frivolous.’ ‘’
During all that time, she said, their votes were tabulated by machine. But Crager said there was no challenge in the early 2000s, nor when the county began using equipment from Dominion Voting Systems in 2019.
“Instead, they waited until they were running for statewide political office, when a significant portion of their likely voters had become erroneously convinced that the 2020 election was ‘stolen,’ ‘’ she wrote.
“Only then did they raise concerns about tabulation equipment, after having determined that promoting distrust in elections was politically profitable,’’ Crager continued. “Indeed, both plaintiffs are actively stating their intentions ‘not to concede’ and require a 100% hand recount of all ballots.’’
There are other specific problems with the lawsuit, she said.
For example, Crager said, the legal papers cite findings by Cyber Ninjas, the firm hired by Senate President Karen Fann to “audit’’ the results of the presidential and U.S. Senate races in Maricopa County. But she said many of the findings proved “blatantly false’’ and were based on the company’s lack of knowledge of election procedures and its plain “ineptitude.’’
Crager also said claims of what occurred in other states was irrelevant as the equipment used in Maricopa County is different.
And Crager told Tuchi a special master hired by the Senate confirmed the county uses an “air-gapped’’ system that protects against connection to the internet.
“This court should not countenance candidates filing a meritless lawsuit for political purposes, which asserts fictional violations of constitutional rights and is completely devoid of any factual basis, but furthers a false narrative that election results cannot be trusted,’’ she said.
In the November general election, Lake faces Democrat Katie Hobbs while Finchem is running against Democrat Adrian Fontes.
