Authorities in Maricopa County are seeking court sanctions against Kari Lake after she yet again lost in her somehow lingering effort to challenge the results of the race for Arizona governor that she lost last year to Democratic contender Katie Hobbs, who has been in office since earlier this year.
Lake’s case reached the state Supreme Court, where it was mostly rejected — again, though judges directed that further proceedings be held at the trial level to deal with complaints she’d raised about supposed problems in Maricopa County’s handling of signature verification for mail-in ballots submitted for last year’s races. She’s lost that second trial.
The state’s highest court wasn’t acting in response to substantially compelling evidence but rather in a procedural decision that mandated further consideration of what no credible authority probably expected would turn out in any fashion other than another defeat. According to an article from a CBS affiliate in Arizona, Lake’s arguments included that there’d been a lack of the needed additional rounds of signature verification after issues had been flagged and that thousands of ballots were improperly kept out of the count.
In the course of her sprawling legal challenge, Lake has at times challenged the standards of proof to which she’s been held, which have involved showing in specific terms an impact on the election’s outcome. In other words, it can’t just be a lot of smoke with no fire. An individual on whom Lake relied undercut the very idea that those thousands of ballots weren’t counted by admitting he couldn’t prove it. “But Parikh’s declaration not only failed to support Lake’s assertion, it contradicted Lake’s assertion,” the sanctions request said. “Parikh admitted that he “had and ha[s] no way of knowing if the original ballots were… tabulated and counted.””
The filing from the county also raised complaints about Lake’s team asserting the election was rigged. “Wrongfully and publicly asserting that the election was “rigged” is heinous and profoundly harmful,” they said. “Lake and her counsel engaged in a program of intentional and repeated fallacious misstatements of fact to mislead this Court. This conduct is plainly unethical and warrants sanctions from this Court.” The county did not specify an amount in financial penalty to be imposed with the sanctions they sought, instead leaving that to the judge. Read more here.
Image: Gage Skidmore/Creative Commons
