The Arizona Supreme Court has rejected a plea by defeated Arizona Republican candidate for governor Kari Lake to take up her case challenging her loss to recently inaugurated Democratic candidate Katie Hobbs before a lower-level court of appeals further deals with it.
Lake’s case already went to trial, where a judge concluded she proved neither that there was an intentional conspiracy to alter the outcome of the 2022 elections nor that such a conspiracy actually affected some kind of a change in the results. Claims at trial centered in part on problems at some Maricopa County polling places with printers on Election Day, although arguments also ranged significantly further. One witness told the court of a supposed conversation with a third party who informed her ballots weren’t counted before delivery to a vendor local authorities use for processing votes. The thing is — that’s what was supposed to happen, which seems to adeptly sum up the state of Lake’s predictably poorly supported arguments.
An original lawsuit from Lake alleged the evidence “shows that the machine failures Arizona voters experienced in Maricopa County on Election Day could not have occurred absent intentional misconduct.” Yet, not a single witness attested to personal knowledge of such a scheme at trial when asked. It’s not even clear the issues seen on Election Day could’ve swung the outcome. It wasn’t every polling place experiencing the hurdles, and at those that did, voters could leave their ballots for secured, later tabulation in a back-up option that evidently had been long available in roughly its present form. They could also check out and go to another polling place, since county residents are generally able to cast their ballots at any such site on Election Day, it seems. The Arizona Supreme Court’s rejection of Lake’s push for consideration of her appeal at that level wasn’t particularly lengthy, although the filing noted the entire court considered the push before the rejection was issued Wednesday.
The Supreme Court did note some of the action the Arizona appeals court already took, including directing that respondents reply to some of Lake’s latest arguments and scheduling what could be oral argument — potentially hinging on whether the court accepts a past filing from Lake as an opening briefing — for later this month, on January 24. That date will be even further into Hobbs’s term as Arizona governor that she kickstarted this week. There is no clear indication Lake will have some kind of sudden reversal of fortunes and get Hobbs out of the top job. Democrats also formally took power as Arizona’s new Secretary of State and Attorney General this week, flipping the latter, as the party did with the state’s governorship.
UPDATE: Arizona Supreme Court denies Kari Lake’s petition to transfer her appeal in her election contest case directly to the state’s highest court. Lake’s lawsuit challenging her loss for Arizona governor will continue in the state’s appellate court. https://t.co/7VPq7c1hCv
— Democracy Docket (@DemocracyDocket) January 5, 2023
Image: Gage Skidmore/ Creative Commons
