An Arizona state judge has cut down candidates who refused to admit their campaign losses.
Donald Trump provided an example for a group of candidates with his big lie that the 2020 election was somehow stolen from him. Arizona candidate Mark Finchem ran for Secretary of State, but the Republican lost to his Democratic competitor, Adrian Fontes. Now the former Republican candidate is in hot water.
Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Melissa Julian sanctioned Finchem following a lawsuit challenging his election loss, with the judge now concluding his lawsuit was “groundless and not brought in good faith,” according to NBC. “None of Contestant Finchem’s allegations, even if true, would have changed the vote count enough to overcome the 120,000 votes he needed to affect the result of this election,” the judge said. “The Court finds that this lawsuit was groundless and not brought in good faith.”
Finchem apparently pointed to issues with the technology at polling locations in Maricopa County, Arizona’s largest by population, on Election Day of last year. Amid concern about those issues, some have falsely characterized individual instances of scanners rejecting ballots as distinct votes under threat. Every time someone put their ballot into the machine, it recorded a rejection if there was such an issue, and the vote may still have been counted perfectly fine — leaving the rejections on the record, the total of which proves nothing. Julian herself also previously dismissed Finchem’s lawsuit.
At this time, the total of the fees for which Finchem and a lawyer of his will be responsible has not yet been decided. He’ll be covering legal expenses for Adrian Fontes and Katie Hobbs.
Julian indicated that should Finchem’s lawsuit have reflected reality, the Republicans still would not have created a win, based on key details. The judge said that Finchem’s team “identified 80,000” votes that might have been lost — but he would’ve needed more!
“Finchem’s expert report identified 80,000 potentially ‘missing votes,'” the judge has observed. “Yet, Finchem lost the election he challenged by 120,208 votes. That margin was so significant that even if it were assumed that 80,000 votes were missing and that those votes would all have been cast in his favor, the result of the election would not have changed.”
About 70 Maricopa County polling sites apparently had printer problems on Election Day, sparking difficulties in making the scanners onsite read the votes. But that did not keep Arizona’s people from voting.
The Republican candidate for Arizona’s governorship in last year’s elections, Kari Lake, challenged the victorious Democratic candidate, Katie Hobbs, alleging that misconduct sunk her campaign as well, but Lake keeps failing, including last December.
Gloria Christie is a political journalist for the liberal online newspaper The Bipartisan Report. Find her here on Facebook. Or at Three White Lions, her book written in her own unique style with a twist of humor on Amazon Kindle Vella and the Gloria Christie Three White Lions podcast on Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, etc. Christie’s Mueller Report Adventures In Bite-Sizes a real-life compelling spy mystery (in progress).
