Friday, the Arizona court handling Arizona Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake’s legal challenge of November’s election gave her team access to check votes cast. Superior Court Judge Peter Thompson signed an order that ordered Maricopa County to allow Lake’s attorneys to review a total of a hundred-fifty randomly selected ballots. The breakdown for the review is as follows: 50 randomly selected “ballot-on-demand” printed votes from Election Day, 50 randomly selected early ballots that were cast in the race, and 50 randomly picked ballots that were marked “spoiled” on Election Day. The inspection of the ballots is scheduled for Tuesday.
Katie Hobbs, the Democratic candidate for secretary of state, beat Lake by just over 17,000 votes on November 8. Long lines in Maricopa County, broken machines, and uncounted ballots combined with counted ones caused chaos in a county dominated by Republicans. In Late November, Arizona Attorney General demanded answers from Maricopa County.
In another bizarre twist, emails and documents uncovered by the Daily Caller News Foundation showed Gov.-elect Katie Hobbs’ senior assistant and Arizona’s Democratic Secretary of State attempted to intimidate the Mohave County Board of Supervisors by threatening prosecution if the election results were not certified by Monday, November 28. The basis for the delay was concern that the Secretary of State’s office had not legally authorized voting machines used in their precincts. Republican members of the Board, as in other counties in the state, attempted to convene public hearings investigating the legality of the devices.
In Lake’s complaint filed last week, her attorneys contended that significant ballot printer and tabulator failures on Election Day that affected 131 polling places (59 percent of the total) lowered the candidate’s vote totals. The county reported that 71 locations, or nearly one-third of all sites, were affected.
Lake said that because Republicans outvoted Democrats three to one on Election Day, her supporters were subjected to widespread vote suppression.
Multiple places around Maricopa County experienced lengthy lines that lasted for hours. The county stated that a setting on the in-question ballot printers prevented the ballot tabulators from reading the ballots.
Lake’s team is clearly interested in determining if carelessness or wrongdoing had a role in the failure of so many voting machines on Election Day, and they are attempting to gain a deeper understanding of the cause.
On Monday, Lake told Real America’s Voice presenter Charlie Kirk, Seventy-five percent of voters on Election Day supported her. Then, if you effectively close or make it impossible or very difficult to vote at around 60 percent of the polling stations, you will erode that lead. Lake stated this is the disfranchisement of Arizona voters.
The report from the Board of Supervisors attempts to minimize the extent of incompetence and wrongdoing on Election Day. Observers have attested to what they saw and did on Election Day, and their testimony contradicts the BOS’s claims, Lake added.
KPNX-TV reported that Maricopa County attorneys would attempt to dismiss Lake’s complaint before Thompson on Monday. A two-day hearing is expected to occur on December 21 and 22 if the claim is not dismissed.
KPNX-TV said that Under state law, the court must rule within five days — no later than Tuesday, December 27 – whether to certify Hobbs as the winner or throw away her triumph.