Kari Lake Files Appeal to AZ Superior Court
By Mark Schwendau
Arizona Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake filed an appeal against a Maricopa County judge’s recent ruling dismissing her lawsuit challenging the recent Arizona midterm election results despite evidence to come out in the court of both irregularities, Arizona election laws broken, and one county official even seemingly perjuring himself after two days on the witness stand.
Lake filed a notice of appeal with the same Arizona Superior Court judge Tuesday challenging the dismissal of her case. Lake is also seeing a direct review by the Arizona Supreme Court, according to a court filing.
Arizona Superior Court Judge Peter Thompson ruled against Lake’s election case on Dec. 24, confirming the election of Katie Hobbs as Arizona governor-elect. He then ordered Hobbs’s side to file a statement of costs and motion for sanctions before Dec. 26.
On Dec. 27, Judge Thompson found there wasn’t enough evidence of misconduct by Maricopa County to overturn election results in the county even though Lake’s legal team stripped Hobb’s team bare in court. Once again, Lake proved another election was stolen, and a judge operated and ruled outside of the laws of the land. The law held Lake only had to show the possibility existed that, due to irregularities and laws broken, her voters were disenfranchised and discouraged from voting. She was never under any legal obligation to prove this cost her votes and the election. She proved that Hobb’s, as secretary of State for Arizona, compromised this midterm election where she was running to be the next governor. As many people correctly pointed out before the election, Hobbs should have recused herself due to a conflict of interest but refused to do so.
Judge Thompson’s ruling came days after Lake filed her lawsuit and after Thompson allowed only 2 of 10 election claims to go to a short two-day trial. Judge Thompson said that in an election contest like this one, the burden of proof is on Lake, the challenger, and that proof must be of the “most clear and conclusive character.”
Lake’s legal team did this in several different ways. There were two different size ballots printed at 19 and 20 inches. One witness for Maricopa County elections first said this was just an honest mistake and that he was not sure how it happened. A witness for Lake then took the stand stating there was no way this was done by mistake and had to be willful and intentional.
Another issue Lake’s team exposed is ballots were mishandled such that chain of custody was broken in violation of Arizona election laws.
Lake is to appeal the ruling.
“My Election Case provided the world with evidence that proves our elections are run outside of the law,” Lake tweeted Saturday morning. “This Judge did not rule in our favor. However, for the sake of restoring faith and honesty in our elections, I will appeal his ruling.”
According to election data made public, Lake lost to Hobbs by about 17,000 votes. Lake filed a lawsuit against Hobbs in her capacity as the current secretary of state, Maricopa County election officials, and other officials several weeks after the midterms. Interestingly, like the General Election of 2020, where Donald Trump was said to have lost Arizona to Joe Biden, the amount of the Democrats’ victory is always just enough to assure an audit does not have to be held thereafter by law. Democrat Katie Hobbs was said to have 50.3% or 1,287,891 ballots cast, while Republican Kari Lake was said to have had 49.6% or 1,270,774 ballots cast.
The problem with this election is multifold. Hobbs refused to debate Lake, seemingly never campaigned (just like Joe Biden in his basement), was missing in action (MIA) as Secretary of State, and the public just generally hates her! One of Lake’s campaign points was just how few days Hobbs actually reported to her office to be on the job in Arizona.
After his ruling, Judge Thompson gave the defendants in the case, Secretary of State Hobbs, the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, and other county election officials, until 8 a.m. Monday to file for sanctions against Lake’s lawyers for bringing a suit that they say she never had any evidence to back up and was, therefore frivolous.
More than 200 Arizona voters submitted statements to the court attesting to their frustrating experiences trying to vote on Election Day in Maricopa County because of ballot printing issues that caused voting machine tabulation problems. However, almost all of those voters ended up casting their ballots, and unhappiness with Election Day irregularities didn’t constitute grounds for overturning the election results, Judge Thompson then wrongfully concluded.
“This Court acknowledges the anger and frustration of voters who were subjected to inconvenience and confusion at voter centers as technical problems arose during the 2022 General Election,” Thompson wrote.
Lake’s team relied on witnesses like cybersecurity expert Clay Parikh, who testified that issues with ballot-on-demand printers on Election Day caused by a 19-inch ballot image being printed onto 20-inch paper was done intentionally and could not have happened by accident.
Maricopa County Co-Elections Director Scott Jarrett explained that the smaller printed-size ballots happened after other printer problems had already cropped up on Election Day when techs changed the settings to “fit to print” while they were troubleshooting. Jarrett said it only happened at three voting centers and impacted 1,300 ballots. But Parikh refuted that statement stating he found the miss-sized ballots in batches he inspected from six voting centers. These wrong-sized ballots had to be set aside at each voting center in special boxes.
Lake’s campaign then accused Jarrett of committing perjury for not mentioning the “fit to print” problem during his first day of testimony. In other words, his testimony seemingly changed from day one to day two, with him contradicting himself between the two-day trial.
Judge Thompson seemingly did not buy into Parikh’s theory about the ballots.
“If the ballot definitions (sizes) were changed, it stands to reason that every ballot for that particular definition printed on every machine so affected would be printed incorrectly,” Judge Thompson wrote. “As Plaintiff’s next witness indicates, that was not the case on Election Day. In either event, Mr. Parikh acknowledged that he had no personal knowledge of any intent behind what he believes to be the error.”
Another interesting expert for the Lake team was pollster Richard Baris. He testified for his polling website Big Data Poll where he found in his exit polling that tens of thousands of Republican voters were unable to vote on Election Day because of long lines caused by tabulator issues.
The defense put up Professor Kenneth Mayer, who teaches political science at the University of Wisconsin, as an expert witness for the defense, stating that Baris’ theory was purely based on speculation. The judge seemed to agree even though U.W. Madison is considered the very liberal “Berkley of the Midwest,” and Lake’s team seemingly questioned this guy as a witness.
“No election in Arizona has ever been set aside, no result modified, because of a statistical estimate,” Judge Thompson wrote regarding Baris’ testimony. “Election contests are decided by votes, not by polling responses, and the Court has found no authority suggesting that exit polling ought to be used in this manner.”
Judge Thompson also dismissed another very credible witness simply trying to do her job in enforcing Arizona election laws. Lake legal team witness Heather Honey testified she never received paperwork as part of public records request documenting the chain of custody for around 290,000 early ballots dropped off Election Day. She said that an employee of the county’s election contractor, Runbeck, told her that around 50 Runbeck employees illegally added ballots to the batches at the Runbeck facility.
But Judge Thompson, again, seemingly tried to shore up Hobb’s victory as he responded if Runbeck did allow this, county election officials testified that they didn’t sanction the practice or know about it. He also said that the county’s failure to respond to a public records request did not show proof of violation of chain-of-custody rules.
County election officials said missing paperwork would not invalidate hundreds of thousands of votes from legal voters and all early ballots have unique barcodes that identify them as coming from registered voters and they are not counted until their signatures on them are verified.
“Plaintiff has no free-standing right to challenge election results based upon what Plaintiff believes – rightly or wrongly – went awry on Election Day,” Judge Thompson wrote. “She must, as a matter of law, prove a ground that the legislature has provided as a basis for challenging an election.”
Legal experts seemingly agree with Lake going into the future, though. Two issues that consistently come as “the obvious”:
“Where there is smoke, there is fire!”
Nothing like these incidents of irregularities in this election has ever been known to take place in Arizona before, and Lake’s legal team proved it was willful and intentional.
One comes away from this first trial phase thinking that either these judges are in bed with one of the candidates OR they just do not want to navigate unchartered waters in America’s elections.
“Kari Lake will be appealing the lawsuit this week.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YN3TK-H_X78
Copyright © 2022 by Mark S. Schwendau
~~~
Mark S. Schwendau is a retired technology professor who has always had a sideline in news-editorial writing where his byline has been, “Bringing little known news to people who simply want to know the truth.” He classifies himself as a Christian conservative who God cast to be a realist. Mark is an award-winning educator who has published seven books and numerous peer-reviewed trade journal articles, some of which can be found on the Internet. His father was a fireman/paramedic, while his mother was a registered nurse. He holds degrees in technology education, industrial management, OSHA Safety, and Driver’s Education. His website is www.IDrawIWrite.Tech.
Kari Lake is becoming our last hope for fraud free elections in America. No modern Government is going to admit to stealing an election and it appears the Judges don’t care about Justice. There was either fraud or incredible incompetence in the 2022 Arizona Election. If don’t matter which one because both cry out for a New Fraud Free Election! The game is to drag this out until the people are sworn into office and them hope Kari Lake runs out of money in court.
The events in the trial are consistent with a belief that the judge had decided ahead of time his decision, then whittled down the claims and ruled as narrowly as possible to reach his desired outcome.
Did Ms Lake speak up and protest when the election was stolen from Trump in Arizona? Asking for a friend.
Indeed she did and that is when the liberals (who have a very poor command of the English language) dubbed her an “election denier”. That would be somebody who denied the election ever took place…. MORONS!
It didn’t take place. It was a Selection.