Justices say Kari Lake can't jump directly to them in appeals process

PHOENIX — Kari Lake won’t get to jump the line in her bid to overturn her 2022 election loss.

In a brief order Wednesday, the Arizona Supreme Court rejected Lake’s request to immediately take up her appeal of a lower court ruling that went against her. The justices said there was “no good cause’’ to let her skip the normal process of first taking the case to the Court of Appeals.

Lake had pleaded that a quick resolution of her complaints is necessary to resolve her claim of “extraordinary new evidence,’’ much of which a lower court judge found lacking, and also to deal with her allegations of “election maladministration’’ ahead of the 2024 election — an election in which she’s hinted she might run for U.S. Senate.

There was no immediate response Wednesday from Lake, the Republican who lost the Arizona governor’s race to Democrat Katie Hobbs in November.

Lake’s request to the high court had drawn skepticism from attorneys for Maricopa County, whose election procedures she continues to challenge.

On one hand, Deputy County Attorney Joseph La Rue said bypassing the appellate court might make sense given that, whatever that court ruled, the case eventually would wind up before the state Supreme Court. He said expediting the process — one that county officials think will ultimately end all of Lake’s litigation — would promote “judicial economy and finality in elections.’’

Lake is scheduled to file her opening briefs at the appellate court by Sept. 15. Then attorneys for Maricopa County and Hobbs will get to respond before a ruling — one that, as La Rue noted, will be appealed to the Supreme Court, potentially dragging the issue into 2024.

But La Rue also told the justices Lake was improperly trying to once again raise claims they already rejected.

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“Most of the factual allegations in the petition are demonstrably false and misrepresentations of the record,’’ La Rue said.

He reminded the justices that this is a “recurring problem,’’ citing the fact that they fined Lake’s attorneys $2,000 in May in a related appeal for repeatedly lying to them.

The pending appeal is all that’s left of a laundry list of allegations in a lawsuit Lake filed in December challenging the official election results in which she lost to Hobbs by 17,117 votes.

Those included claims that someone in Maricopa County intentionally altered printers at voting centers so they would produce ballots that could not be automatically read by on-site tabulators. Closely related were complaints of long lines on Election Day that deterred some people from voting.

But Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Peter Thompson ruled and the Court of Appeals affirmed that Lake failed to present “clear and convincing evidence’’ to back her claims. For example, she failed to show that anyone was denied the right to vote, the judge said.

The Supreme Court agreed with the lower courts. But the justices said Lake should be given a chance to argue that Maricopa County did not follow proper procedures in verifying signatures on early ballots and did not maintain the proper “chain of custody’’ of those ballots.

In a new trial, Thompson ruled that Lake failed to provide evidence of misconduct in the way the county verified the signatures on early ballots. That’s what she now wanted the Supreme Court to overturn.