Republican candidate Kari Lake announces her plans to run for the Arizona U.S. Senate seat during a rally, Tuesday, Oct. 10, 2023, in Scottsdale, Ariz. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)
In a last-ditch effort to make herself the head of Arizona’s executive branch, election-denier Kari Lake this week asked the state’s highest court to reverse the 2022 election and declare that she, not Katie Hobbs, is the lawful governor of the Grand Canyon State.
Lake, who lost the 2022 election by some 17,000 votes but continuously claims to be the “lawful governor” of Arizona, on Friday filed a petition with the Arizona Supreme Court to overturn lower court rulings and allow her to present “new evidence” that Maricopa County improperly ran its election. The basis of Lake’s incredibly long-shot claim is that the county allegedly failed to conduct required “logic and accuracy” testing on its vote tabulators.
“Thus, Maricopa testified falsely and argued misleadingly about its violations of election law throughout this litigation,” the suit states. “If Maricopa had properly conducted L & testing as it falsely testified it had, the testing would have identified — and thus prevented — the 2022 Election Day chaos.”
The crux of Lake’s purported new evidence relies on claims from a “cyber expert” named Clay Parikh, who is also an adamant proponent of the false claim that the 2020 election was not valid. She requested that the court order another election or jettison more than 275,000 early ballots in Maricopa County, which she claims could not have had their signatures verified in accordance with state law.
“The Court could either set aside the election or proportionally strike 275,000 ballots,” the petition states. “Because Hobbs eclipsed Lake by more than 10% of Maricopa’s early voting, under (Grounds v. Lawe), Lake would win.”
Lake initially lost her longshot case at the trial court level on Christmas Eve 2022, when Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Peter Thompson declared that Hobbs had won a “valid election.” But Lake has been on the appellate trail ever since trying to find ways to revive her claims and get another chance to argue that the county’s election was not properly conducted.
Several judges have presided over different aspects of Lake’s case, and none have found any credible evidence of voter fraud or significant problems with the county’s vote tabulation process.
A three-judge panel on the Arizona Court of Appeals last month rejected Lake’s petition to overturn the gubernatorial election, emphasizing that she lost by about 17,000 votes while claiming to have evidence that “over 8,000 ballots” were “not counted.”
“Even if 8,000 uncounted votes had all gone to Lake,” the court said, “it would have been insufficient to overcome this differential. On this basis alone we can conclude that the court did not err in denying the Rule 60(b) (3) motion on its merits.”
Prior to that ruling, a trial judge rejected Lake’s assertion that 8,000 “affected” votes meant 8,000 uncounted votes. Based on the evidence presented at oral argument, the trial court determined that Lake’s claim was an “unsupported bare assertion.”
Another problem arises from Lake’s case: Should the court miraculously grant Lake’s request and make her governor, she would have to withdraw from her current bid to become the Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Kyrsten Sinema under Arizona’s resign-to-run law.
U.S. Rep. Ruben Gallego, the Democratic nominee for the Senate seat, responded to Lake’s latest filing Friday afternoon.
“As KariLake begs Arizonans to make her the next Senator, she’s pushing the courts to overturn the 2022 election and make her the Governor,” he posted on X, formerly Twitter. “She’s delusional. She’s unfit to serve. She’s too extreme for Arizona.”
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