Kari Lake, the former Republican gubernatorial candidate for Arizona in 2022, has not ceased her legal pursuit to thoroughly investigate what she believes to be numerous election irregularities concerning her narrow defeat.
The ex-newscaster, a staunch supporter and ally of President Donald Trump, filed a 74-page lawsuit against Democratic Governor Katie Hobbs and election officials in Maricopa County, citing recent evidence that bolsters her claims.
In previous legal proceedings, Lake was unsuccessful in convincing courts that the outcome of the election was tainted by a combination of misconduct, malfunctioning systems, and inadequate signature verification of ballots by early voters.
Subsequently, Lake has submitted an appeal against the ruling made in May to a court of appeals in Tucson with regard to certain electoral matters concerning Maricopa.
In her opening brief, Lake contends that new evidence substantiates her claims regarding the contamination of election results.
“New evidence demonstrates that Maricopa falsely certified its 446 vote-center tabulators passed mandatory L&A certification testing prior to Election Day and strongly suggests Maricopa planned the Election Day debacle,” says the court brief; L&A stands for “logic and accuracy.”
The filing emphasizes the importance of conducting proper Logic & Accuracy (L&A) testing for BOD-printed ballots, as misconfigured and defective ballots have caused Maricopa’s vote-center tabulators to reject tens of thousands of votes.
It is important to note that “BOD” stands for “ballot on demand.”
“The ensuing chaos led to massive lines and wait times, thereby impairing or depriving the right to vote of tens of thousands of predominately Republican voters” as a result, said the filing.
“Arizona elections are now in uncharted territory,” the filing continued.
“New evidence produced by Maricopa County (‘Maricopa’) strongly suggests that Maricopa officials intentionally sabotaged the 2022 General Election, then gave false testimony attempting to cover up their misconduct. Even viewed in the light most favorable to Maricopa, the evidence shows Maricopa intentionally failed to conduct logic and accuracy (‘L&A’) testing” required by law and “altered the election equipment thereby rendering the election irredeemably flawed.”
The filing also said that the October testing ahead of the November election was “simply kabuki theatre.”
“After Maricopa conducted its falsely ‘certified’ L&A testing on October 11, 2022, Maricopa conducted unannounced and unlawful testing on all 446 vote-center tabulators on October 14, 17, and 18. The tabulator system log files show that 260 of the vote-center tabulators rejected ballots with the same tabulator error codes that occurred on Election Day. In other words, this evidence supports a conclusion that Maricopa’s unannounced and unlawful testing was a dry run for the Election Day debacle,” the filing added.
The filing continued to state that Maricopa officials acknowledged, seven months after the event, that between October 14-18 of 2022 they had exchanged the memory cards and election software installed on 446 vote-center tabulators with new memory cards containing election software which had purportedly been tested on other equipment.
Maricopa did not conduct any Logical & Accuracy testing on these 446 tabulators after swapping out the elections software and memory cards as required by law.
Supporters of the 2022 gubernatorial candidate have cited a recent court ruling in support of this filing. Just this month, Yavapai County Superior Court Judge John Napper declared that the existing process for verifying voter signatures on early ballots does not comply with state law.
In a new court filing, Ryan Heath, a supporter of Lake, argued that the election he lost should be re-done due to the opinion expressed by Judge James Marner in declining to dismiss a case against the state.
In his statement, Judge Marner indicated his belief that state law requires a signature match with the registration records of Arizona voters. This opinion is in contrast to the current practice of using alternative documents for signature verification.
“Maricopa County failed, in fact, to apply uniform signature verification standards for a material number of approximately 1.3 million votes cast through mail-in ballots,” Heath said in his filing. “As a result, every single one of those 1.3 million votes is tainted by the fatal stain of ‘uncertainty,’ requiring the setting aside of all ballots from Maricopa County for all statewide races for the 2022 General Election as a matter of law.”
