Kari Lake appeals her court losses over her election loss

PHOENIX — Failed gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake is making another last-ditch effort to overturn the election, this time criticizing a court that rejected her claims. In legal papers filed Wednesday with Arizona Supreme Court, Lake claims the Court of Appeals not only ignored legal precedents but ratified what she called a Maricopa County decision to ignore laws on chain-of-custody requirements for ballots and for testing certain election equipment. More telling, Lake’s attorney, Bryan Blehm, said the appellate judges’ decision that Lake must have “clear and convincing evidence’’ of misconduct in an election to set aside the result “effectively immunizes election officials’ noncompliance with Arizona’s election laws.’’ Official results of the November election show Republican Lake lost to Democrat Katie Hobbs by 17,117 votes. But Blehm already is setting the stage for seeking review by the U.S. Supreme Court if the Arizona justices reject Lake’s claims. He contends that, aside from allegations state election laws were violated, there are questions of whether the election was handled in a way that violated federal constitutional provisions of equal protection. The new filing is largely a rehash of the claims that were presented to — and rejected by — both a trial judge and the Court of Appeals. Lake contends a private company under contract with Maricopa County injected more than 35,000 ballots into the system before returning the ballots to county officials for tabulation.

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She also said the state’s most populous county failed to conduct legally mandated tests of the tabulators used at its 223 Election Day vote centers. That led to problems, Lake said, at two-thirds of those vote centers where ballots printed on site often could not be read, causing “massive disruptions’’ and “hours-long lines.’’ She claimed that disenfranchised “thousands of predominantly Republican voters’’ based on her argument that Republicans are more likely to wait until Election Day to cast their ballots than Democrats, who are more likely to cast early ballots. Lake wants the Arizona Supreme Court to either declare her the winner or order a new election. Blehm said Supreme Court precedents say compliance with election statutes is mandatory. Tied to that, he said, are prior court rulings which he said support the premise that evidence of violations affecting election results, or at least rendering them uncertain, are enough to void an election. The law does not require, according to Blehm, that Lake present proof of fraud. Nor, he said, need she prove by the “clear and convincing evidence’’ standard that any problems did, in fact, alter the final outcome, despite the Court of Appeals’ conclusions to the contrary when it threw out Lake’s case. “If allowed to stand, the (appellate court) opinion will make commonplace the type of official arrogance exemplified by Maricopa’s blaming of Republicans for voting on Election day,’’ Blehm wrote. That refers to comments by Tom Liddy, a lawyer for the county, who said Lake’s campaign and the Arizona Republican Party were complicit in Election Day problems by casting doubt on the validity of early and mail-in ballots. Liddy said that resulted in not just a higher Election Day turnout, but in more than 290,000 people bringing their ballots directly to polling places that day. “That’s political malpractice,’’ Liddy said when Lake first brought her claims before a trial judge. “You reap what you sow.’’ Blehm said statements like that should convince the justices to review the lower court rulings against Lake. “Public trust in elections is at an all-time low,’’ he wrote in his petition to the Arizona Supreme Court. “Decisions such as the (appellate court) opinion only serve to further erode that trust.’’ He also claimed there are “undisputed facts’’ and “violations of law’’ showing that the results, at least from Maricopa County, should be set aside. Lake’s filing also repeats claims from her original lawsuit that Maricopa County failed to follow signature-verification requirements in reviewing early ballot envelopes, a failure she contends allowed tens of thousands of ballots to be counted. She didn’t get a chance to present any evidence to Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Peter Thompson. He ruled that Lake knew about the county’s procedures for reviewing signatures long before the November election. Thompson said any claim that did not comply with the law should have been filed before the election, not afterwards, a conclusion upheld by the appellate court. Blehm urged the state’s high court to set that decision aside. He said Lake couldn’t have known about the problem until “whistleblowers’’ who were conducting the verification came forward after the election with evidence. There is no legal requirement for the justices to grant Lake a hearing. They also are empowered to review the record and, if they agree with the lower courts, simply affirm those rulings.

PHOENIX — Failed gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake is making another last-ditch effort to overturn the election, this time criticizing a court that rejected her claims.

In legal papers filed Wednesday with Arizona Supreme Court, Lake claims the Court of Appeals not only ignored legal precedents but ratified what she called a Maricopa County decision to ignore laws on chain-of-custody requirements for ballots and for testing certain election equipment.

More telling, Lake’s attorney, Bryan Blehm, said the appellate judges’ decision that Lake must have “clear and convincing evidence’’ of misconduct in an election to set aside the result “effectively immunizes election officials’ noncompliance with Arizona’s election laws.’’

Official results of the November election show Republican Lake lost to Democrat Katie Hobbs by 17,117 votes.

But Blehm already is setting the stage for seeking review by the U.S. Supreme Court if the Arizona justices reject Lake’s claims. He contends that, aside from allegations state election laws were violated, there are questions of whether the election was handled in a way that violated federal constitutional provisions of equal protection.

The new filing is largely a rehash of the claims that were presented to — and rejected by — both a trial judge and the Court of Appeals.

Lake contends a private company under contract with Maricopa County injected more than 35,000 ballots into the system before returning the ballots to county officials for tabulation.

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Take our latest Tucson News Quiz!

She also said the state’s most populous county failed to conduct legally mandated tests of the tabulators used at its 223 Election Day vote centers. That led to problems, Lake said, at two-thirds of those vote centers where ballots printed on site often could not be read, causing “massive disruptions’’ and “hours-long lines.’’

She claimed that disenfranchised “thousands of predominantly Republican voters’’ based on her argument that Republicans are more likely to wait until Election Day to cast their ballots than Democrats, who are more likely to cast early ballots.

Lake wants the Arizona Supreme Court to either declare her the winner or order a new election.

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Blehm said Supreme Court precedents say compliance with election statutes is mandatory. Tied to that, he said, are prior court rulings which he said support the premise that evidence of violations affecting election results, or at least rendering them uncertain, are enough to void an election.

The law does not require, according to Blehm, that Lake present proof of fraud. Nor, he said, need she prove by the “clear and convincing evidence’’ standard that any problems did, in fact, alter the final outcome, despite the Court of Appeals’ conclusions to the contrary when it threw out Lake’s case.

“If allowed to stand, the (appellate court) opinion will make commonplace the type of official arrogance exemplified by Maricopa’s blaming of Republicans for voting on Election day,’’ Blehm wrote.

That refers to comments by Tom Liddy, a lawyer for the county, who said Lake’s campaign and the Arizona Republican Party were complicit in Election Day problems by casting doubt on the validity of early and mail-in ballots. Liddy said that resulted in not just a higher Election Day turnout, but in more than 290,000 people bringing their ballots directly to polling places that day.

“That’s political malpractice,’’ Liddy said when Lake first brought her claims before a trial judge. “You reap what you sow.’’

Blehm said statements like that should convince the justices to review the lower court rulings against Lake.

“Public trust in elections is at an all-time low,’’ he wrote in his petition to the Arizona Supreme Court. “Decisions such as the (appellate court) opinion only serve to further erode that trust.’’

He also claimed there are “undisputed facts’’ and “violations of law’’ showing that the results, at least from Maricopa County, should be set aside.

Lake’s filing also repeats claims from her original lawsuit that Maricopa County failed to follow signature-verification requirements in reviewing early ballot envelopes, a failure she contends allowed tens of thousands of ballots to be counted.

She didn’t get a chance to present any evidence to Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Peter Thompson. He ruled that Lake knew about the county’s procedures for reviewing signatures long before the November election. Thompson said any claim that did not comply with the law should have been filed before the election, not afterwards, a conclusion upheld by the appellate court.

Blehm urged the state’s high court to set that decision aside. He said Lake couldn’t have known about the problem until “whistleblowers’’ who were conducting the verification came forward after the election with evidence.

There is no legal requirement for the justices to grant Lake a hearing. They also are empowered to review the record and, if they agree with the lower courts, simply affirm those rulings.