After a federal judge directed that lawyers who represented failed Republican candidates Kari Lake and Mark Finchem in a defeated case pushing for a hand count of ballots in Arizona (instead of using tabulation machines) cover legal fees incurred by the other side, Maricopa County authorities have finalized the amount for which they’re pushing: $141,690.
It’s still apparently up to that judge to approve a specific amount, but Judge John Tuchi was already unequivocally opposed to the substance of the now moot case from Lake and Finchem. As with Republican claims of mishandled elections in other areas and races, they ignored the well-documented security measures that are already in place. “Imposing sanctions in this case is not to ignore the importance of putting in place procedures to ensure that our elections are secure and reliable,” Tuchi said. “It is to make clear that the court will not condone litigants ignoring the steps that Arizona has already taken toward this end and furthering false narratives that baselessly undermine public trust at a time of increasing disinformation about, and distrust in, the democratic process.”
Alan Dershowitz was involved with Lake’s representation in the case pushing for counting ballots by hand, so he may be subject to some of these costs once officially imposed. Lake has since filed additional litigation, this time challenging results from this year’s midterm elections. In one highlight showing the utter lack of substance, the case includes commentary from well over 200 voters from Maricopa County, where voters casting ballots on Election Day encountered processing issues at some polling locations — although according to local rules, they could just go to another polling place not experiencing the problems. Printers evidently produced ballots too light to be scanned, and voters marking their choices on such a ballot could also leave it in a long-used secure bin for later tabulation in line with the central tabulation done elsewhere in Arizona.
Only three of the voters cited in Lake’s lawsuit didn’t end up actually voting on Election Day, and all three simply chose to no longer pursue casting a ballot once allegedly encountering difficulties. None “were prevented from casting a ballot by the Defendants, but instead each chose not to vote because the declarant decided that waiting in line or visiting a different polling place was a greater inconvenience than the value they placed on voting that day,” the county observed. Lake’s other claims in the case, which mirror legal challenges from Finchem and failed Republican candidate for Arizona Attorney General Abe Hamadeh, include that issues with the printers were intentional — a notion not reasonably supported by the available evidence.
Just to further illustrate the lack of real-world evidence for what they’re alleging, an earlier court case from Hamadeh included concerns about the accuracy of the process of transposing the selections from unreadable ballots — and didn’t even cite any evidence from this year! At all!
NEW Maricopa County wants federal judge to order @KariLake & Mark Finchem's attorneys to pay county's legal bill of $141,690. Among the attorneys: Alan Dershowitz. 🧵(1/3) pic.twitter.com/zxxCWDMqSm
— Brahm Resnik (@brahmresnik) December 16, 2022
Image: Gage Skidmore/ Creative Commons
