Scottsdale lawyer/Kari Lake supporter asks high court to void 2022 election

PHOENIX — A Scottsdale attorney who is a supporter of Kari Lake is asking the Arizona Supreme Court to void not just the results of the race for governor she lost but the entire 2022 election statewide.

In a new filing, Ryan Heath contends it was illegal for Maricopa County to verify signatures on early ballots by comparing them with images from prior early ballots. He contends Arizona law says the only valid comparison has to be with the person’s original voter registration.

Heath is asking the justices to decertify the results and order a recount of all early ballots, this time using what he argues is the only permissible method.

If that isn’t possible, Heath says the court should order a new statewide canvass, but counting only the votes from the other 14 counties, which he says uses the proper method of comparing signatures.

If the justices don’t find either of those acceptable, Heath proposes to decertify all state races, including ballot measures, and order a new election to be conducted in Maricopa County “in a manner that ensures strict compliance with Arizona’s election safeguards.’’

In some ways, Heath’s arguments are not new.

He proffered similar legal arguments in a “friend of the court’’ brief earlier this year in the middle of Lake’s so-far-unsuccessful efforts to get her loss overturned. The justices rejected the brief as exceeding their word limits.

Heath conceded in his new filing that even Lake objected to his efforts to intercede in her case.

There was no official response from the county. But the litigation is likely to get a fight from county officials who have argued that state law does not limit their signature comparisons to only a voter’s original registration, which may have occurred years earlier, but can include other examples on file.

For early ballots, the state Election Code requires the county recorder to “compare the signatures thereon with the signature of the elector on the elector’s registration record.’’

There are procedures for election officials to contact a voter in cases of “inconsistent’’ signatures to allow the ballot to be counted. Heath says none of that permits a county, on its own, to decide that other signatures on file can be used for comparison.

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What makes all that relevant is questions about whether some early ballots were improperly accepted.

Any move to eliminate the ballots that Heath contends were illegally tallied is likely to favor Republicans. That is because most Democrats generally outpolled their GOP opponents among early voters, with Republicans generally faring better among those who waited until Election Day to go to the polls.

Eliminating the challenged early ballots could change the outcome of several races.

That is part of the argument that Heath is raising on behalf of two listed clients. One is David Mast, who was also behind Heath’s unsuccessful attempt to intercede in the Lake case.

According to the lawsuit, Mast voted in person. Heath argues that his votes were “diluted’’ by the inclusion of illegal early ballots where the county did not follow the law on signature matching.

The other is Cochise County Supervisor Tom Crosby, who, in a separate legal action, had to be ordered by a judge to certify the results of the 2022 election after he and fellow Republican Supervisor Peggy Judd pushed for a hand count based on claims that vote-counting machines are prone to hacking or otherwise untrustworthy.

This isn’t Heath’s first effort to alter the results of the 2022 race. In January, he filed legal papers asking Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Peter Thompson to void his order dismissing Lake’s challenge to the election results. The judge declined.

Lake still has a pending appeal of one of Thompson’s prior rulings against her on a related question of whether the county used proper signature verification procedures. That claim is based not on which signatures the county used for verification but her argument that it was not possible for the county to perform the necessary verification in the time it provided, saying about 274,000 signatures on early ballots were compared on computer screens in less than three seconds, with about 70,000 in two seconds or less.

Also still outstanding is a bid by Republican Abe Hamadeh to get a new trial in his challenge to Democrat Kris Mayes being declared victor in the race for attorney general. Hamadeh contends Mohave County Superior Court Judge Lee Jantzen refused his bid to examine more ballots to determine if all legal votes were counted.