CNN.com/Dean Obeidallah — The Arizona Governor’s Race Is A Toss-Up, And What Happens If You Do Not Know What You Did

Dean Obeidallah is a former attorney and a columnist for The Daily Beast. Follow him @DeanObeidallah. The opinions are of his own. View more opinion on CNN.

“I don’t believe that people of Arizona would vote for her and that she would win. But if that’s what happens at the end of the day, how could you certify an election that is this botched?” Lake said.

Lake built her campaign on her support of the lies about election fraud that Trump said during his time in office. She has since falsely claimed to have won last month’s election.

Lake wants journalists to be imprisoned for lying about the election. She opposes vaccine mandates, she has demonized drag queens and declared at a conservative summit that women are inherently inferior. She said that God didn’t create us to be equal to men.

She was in a dead heat race with Lake in the New York Times/Sena College poll. Nathan L. Gonzalez rates the race a toss-up.

Democrat Katie Hobbs leads Republican Kari Lake by about 31,000 votes in the Arizona governor’s race as of Saturday morning, following the reporting of roughly 80,000 ballots in Maricopa County, the state’s most populous. Laxalt is holding onto a slim lead over Masto as of Friday evening, which is about 800 votes.

What Happens When President Barack Obama is Out of Business in Arizona: The Destruction of a Disgraced Arizonan Governor and the Misuse of the Establishment

The voters who poured into a Phoenix high school to hear from former President Barack Obama were looking to send a message of defiance Wednesday night.

They said they are determined to defeat former President Donald Trump’s hand-picked slate of election deniers – including gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake, Senate nominee Blake Masters and Secretary of State nominee Mark Finchem – and will not allow their state’s voters to be intimidated by activists who turned up to monitor ballot drop boxes late last month – some of them armed, masked and wearing camouflage.

If the Republicans gain control of key offices, Obama said democracy might not survive in Arizona. That is not an overstatement. That is a fact.”

Ms. Lake was expected to overtake Ms. Hobbs by Wednesday, but she failed to do so. Over the next few days, Ms. Lake escalated tensions as officials in Maricopa County, which encompasses Phoenix and is the state’s most populous and politically powerful county, tallied votes, including a record-breaking 290,000 ballots that were dropped off on Election Day.

In response to that suit, the embattled Maricopa County Board of Supervisors asked for legal sanctions due to “false allegations about Arizona elections.”

Rodriguez, a registered Democrat from Maricopa County, said that she was frightened by the fact that radical Republican candidates like Lake and Masters were elevated because of their support for Trump.

Is it possible that they are not focused on what the election was about? Rodriguez said. She noted that a lot of Trumpers still drive their trucks with Trump flags around her neighborhood. They show up at the election sites with guns on their hips, and they walk around with it. I mean, do they think that their intimidation tactics are going to work?”

The state was on edge as Obama arrived in Arizona less than a week before the midterm election to campaign for fellow Democrats, including Sen. Mark Kelly, who is in a close race with Masters. The fact that those top statewide contests may be decided on a razor’s edge is what brought Obama to the Grand Canyon State as he seeks to fire up the Democratic base and make sure that young voters and Latino voters – who will be critical to victory in Arizona – turn out in a midterm election year.

Both Biden and Obama have been arguing that the fate of democracy is at stake, but Biden, who has not been invited to campaign in top swing states, had to make his argument from the opposite side of the country.

Greenberg is a registered Republican from the state of Arizona and he went to the rally to protest the election results. He said in an interview that he wasn’t voting for Democrats in this election, he is voting against the Trump ticket.

“The Republican Party today is not the Republican Party I’m a part of,” said Greenberg, who described the 2020 election as fair and honest. I can’t put up with the lie and that’s more like the American Nazi Party.

It is a litmus test if election denialism, something that voters are prepared to accept in candidates, is found in Arizona. Is it something that makes these candidates appeal to voters?

Scores of pre-election lawsuits have been filed in battleground states ahead of Tuesday’s election, signaling the possibility of even more high-stakes and contentious court fights as voting wraps up and local officials start counting ballots.

Members of the group are no longer allowed to speak to or shout at voters who drop off their ballots, and they may not film voters at the drop boxes because of the ruling. The League of Women Voters brought the case and the Justice Department weighed in on it. Federal prosecutors said in a legal brief that the right-wing group was likely to be illegal and that they raised serious concerns of voter intimidation.

Democrat Michelle Gonzales: Embracing Democracy in Arizona’s Largest and Most Populous County, where Donald Trump is a Partisan

More than half the Republicans in a CNN survey said they do not believe Biden won the election.

In a state like Arizona where the Republican Party is ruled by people who consider Trump to be a racist and disloyal, it’s even more pronounced.

Michelle Gonzales, a registered Democrat from Maricopa County, said she believes that people came to see Obama Wednesday night “so they could feel hopeful” about the democratic process amid all the noise.

She said that it is important to hear from someone that we trust and believe in that we can hope for this election. “You can see all these people out here. Thousands of people waiting. I just want to believe that people want to believe in something better – that they have morals and values that we all should have as human beings and not elect these liars and con people.”

According to The Washington Post, nearly all of the Republican nominees for federal and state office in Arizona questioned the results of the 2020 election.

She and Trump have a common belief that election denialism is at the core of her messaging. She said that she would not have certified the result in the state if she’d been governor.

If Lake and Finchem are the ones in control of the election machinery, is there hope for a fair and transparent result in one of the likely swing states of the next election?

This is an editor’s note. Norman Eisen is a political law expert who advised the White House on election law when he served as President Barack Obama’s ethics czar. Taylor Redd is a researcher focusing on national elections. The views expressed are their own, and they are not reflected in this commentary. You can read more opinions at CNN.

These victories can provide some peace of mind to voters in Arizona, Michigan and across the nation. Courts will enforce the law to protect voting rights and the election system the same way they did with challenges during the last election.

Clean Elections USA founder Melody Jennings recruited individuals through her network of election deniers on Truth Social. A lawsuit alleged that armed individuals, whom Jennings referred to as “our people,” were monitoring those drop boxes. The lawsuit stated they surveilled them and focused on Arizona’s most populous county, where three out of four of the inhabitants are Hispanic or Latino. (In response to news about individuals carrying firearms, Jennings posted that she “would not make this choice & I prefer people in my group not choose this.”)

And in Michigan, Republicans say they’re appealing the dismissal of a case they brought against election officials in Flint, Michigan, alleging that the officials had not hired enough GOP poll workers for the election.

The hard questions for the GOP don’t stop there. Michigan has been seen as a target by the GOP. It is designed to bring more Republicans into the voting system. Indeed, the GOP nominee for secretary of state, an open election denier, is pushing a different but equally baseless attack on the election system in Detroit. Under the circumstances, it is fair to ask whether the Flint effort was part of the GOP’s election-denial strategy.

Flint won the legal action on Wednesday on the question of “standing”: Under state statute, the grievance process is only available to the county chairs of major parties. The lawsuit circumvented that requirement.

Why did the GOP bring this suit? We talked to an expert from Michigan who told us that it is common for mostly Republican areas in Michigan to have mostly Republican poll workers.

With the two cases outlined here – as was the case in 2020 – the courts were a bulwark against attempts to undermine the election. Rule of Law is still functioning to protect our democracy against intimidators, election deniers and their ilk, according to these cases.

There are well-organized voter intimidation efforts throughout the United States. It is critically important to continue to monitor legal developments leading up to the midterm election to preserve a tradition all Americans should be proud of: free, fair, secure and accurate elections.

The most prominent case is a GOP-backed lawsuit in Pennsylvania, where Republicans targeted absentee ballots with missing or improper dates on the container envelopes. Last week, the state Supreme Court ordered those ballots to be kept out of the count, but deadlocked on the underlying legal question about their validity, leaving it unresolved. The names of thousands of voters who are at risk of being rejected because of missing or incorrect dates were posted to websites by election officials in Pennsylvania over the weekend.

According to the Democracy Docket, more than half of the 120 cases surrounding voting that have been filed so far have sought to keep voters out of the polls. The group said that election lawsuits had been filed before Election Day in 2020.

He said the victory in Arizona might have been enough of a shot across the bow to stop some activists, but emphasized that the most serious attacks on elections didn’t emerge until weeks and months after the 2020 election, when lawyers for Mr. Trump repeatedly sought to reverse the outcome. We are ready for more lawsuits, said Mr. Danjuma.

Some of the cases brought by the same legal groups that sought to support Donald Trump in his bid to overturn his electoral loss have been brought.

Most of the cases that seek new restrictions have been brought by GOP committees, according to Democracy Docket. The RNC’s work with monitoring elections was removed from it after a court consent decree expired.

The court fights over the midterms may play a pivotal role in determining the winners in this week’s elections and even, perhaps, the balance of power in Washington. They could set the ground rules for the presidential election in twenty four years, as parties and groups test their strategies for when Trump is allowed to run again.

“My concern is that the number of those undated mail ballots could exceed the margins in some of those races, which could create real problems,” said David Becker, a former attorney in the Justice Department’s voting section who now leads the Center for Election Innovation & Research. “It’s better to resolve those disputes before you know the results and the margins. Once the margins are clear, that could create a political axe to grind.”

The RNC chairwoman said in a statement after the Supreme Court ruling that it was a victory for Pennsylvania voters and the rule of law.

In Wisconsin, a lawsuit obtained an order blocking state election guidance that told officials they could fill or correct information that was missing from Absentee ballot certifications.

In that case, the conservative activists are asking for a court to separate military ballot from the state count after a Milwaukee election official tried to get them to vote for a person they did not know. Lawyers who were involved in the campaign to reverse the 2020 election are bringing the lawsuit.

In Michigan, the Republican candidate for secretary of state is requesting that a court to throw out a large swath of absentee ballots in Detroit – where the state’s largest Black population lives – on the claim that any absentee ballot not requested or returned in person to the clerk’s office is unlawful.

The lawsuit was brought by the senior counsel at the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, in which he pointed to the fact that North Carolina Republicans failed to prevent the use of signature matching.

One of the poll worker litigations in Arizona is demanding more records, one is challenging the hiring of poll workers, and the other is trying to increase the number of Republicans working voting sites.

In Virginia, meanwhile, a judge last week ordered officials in Prince William County to appoint more Republicans to top election spots in individual precincts – following legal action by the state and county GOP.

Gates said that they were extremely responsive. “And for some reason, there’s certain people out there – and I hate to admit it Arizona Republican Party Chair Kelli Ward is interested in disrupting the election process, which she wants to create.

“We are filing, and mostly winning, these lawsuits because counties in various states are violating the law, plain and simple,” the RNC said in a statement to CNN. transparency is achieved when decisive victories are made public at the ballot box.

Albert, of Common Cause, said that the demands around the country that more Republican workers be hired could be a precursor for attempts after the election to attempt to toss out ballots from election sites in dispute.

Western battleground states have become the sites of disputes over the technology that is used for voting, where outlandish theories about fraud in the 2020 election have manifested in pushes to conduct aspects of the midterm elections by hand.

As a result of Donald Trump’s lies about voter fraud in the 2020 election, Cochise County planned to audit all of its ballots by hand.

David Stevens, one of the hand count’s proponents, did not reply to a CNN request for comment. According to The Arizona Republic, Stevens said during a court hearing that he believed the county had the authority to proceed and that the count would involve 40,000 ballots.

In neighboring Nevada – another state where Republicans hope to flip a Senate seat and control of the governors’ office – GOP Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske’s office recently halted hand counting in rural Nye County. The state Supreme Court ruled that volunteers who read aloud votes from the candidates are in violation of the law, which forbids the early release of election results.

If the secretary of state approves a new plan in which volunteers tally the results in quiet, Nye County hopes to revive its hand counting, according to Arnold Knightly. Like Cochise, Nye still plans to use electronic tallying machines in this election.

Proponents say that if these parallel counts are allowed to go ahead, they could cause distrust among voters and the county officials who will certify the results in the weeks ahead.

The Arizona Republican Party in 2020: What are we doing here? A response to M. Karamo, Ms. Hamadeh, and Mr. Finchem

Ward was the chairwoman of the Arizona Republican Party. “We have been preparing for this for over a year,” she said in a tweet on Thursday. There is a huge team of lawyers ready to take action.

Yet conspiracy theories, which made a big impact in 2020 in Arizona and elsewhere, are barely making a ripple today. Losing candidates can allege fraud if they want, but Arizona Republicans now demand proof. Many of the true believers were affected by Trumpian nonsense for two years.

“We can choose to curl up on the ledge and succumb, or we can dust ourselves off and restart the arduous climb up the steep slopes” of election integrity, wrote Patrice Johnson, the organizer of Michigan Fair Elections in a blog post. The next online meeting was scheduled for Thursday.

One of Michigan Fair Elections’ preferred candidates, Kristina Karamo, running for secretary of state, has not conceded despite losing by 14 percentage points and on Thursday afternoon sent out a list of supposed electoral “violations,” saying there was more to come.

The stability of the election system is dependent on concessions by candidates who spread rumors of voting fraud, elections experts say. Election officials can help put out fires through public outreach.

Further down the ballot is Mr. Hamadeh, who also railed against the news media and is locked in a seesawing race for attorney general against Kris Mayes, a Democrat. The Republican nominee in the secretary of state race is Mr. Finchem, a man who has admitted to being a member of the Oath Keepers militia group.

On Twitter, Ms. Lake and Mr. Masters have projected victory. Ms. Lake told Fox News on Thursday that she had “absolute 100 percent confidence that I will be the next governor of Arizona.” The man who took a small lead in his uncalled race wrote a note on his account thanking people of Arizona for entrusting him with a great responsibility. He has since lost ground and is slightly trailing.

The Masters campaign asked its supporters to give money on Thursday, saying there was a lot of questionable issues during the election and that they expected a legal battle to come.

On Twitter, Mr. Finchem jokingly asked his followers to “make sure” Ms. Hobbs and Mr. Fontes weren’t “in the back room with ballots in Pima or Maricopa.” Mr. Fontes replied, writing, “Stop with this conspiracy garbage.”

Ms. Hatchet and Mr. Fontes both want supporters to respect the vote-counting process. “Despite what my election-denying opponent is trying to spin, the pattern and cadence of incoming votes are exactly what we expected,” Ms. Hobbs wrote on Twitter.

The razor-thin elections for Nevada’s Senate seat and Arizona’s governorship have yet to be called on Saturday as counties in both states work to whittle down the tens of thousands of ballots that still need to be counted.

While those races remain in play, CNN projected Friday that Arizona Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly will defeat Republican Blake Masters in Arizona, and Republican Joe Lombardo will knock off Democratic Gov. Steve Sisolak in Nevada.

The Democrats are one seat away from retaining control of the Senate because of Kelly’s win. If Cortez Masto wins, Democrats have at least 50 seats needed regardless of the outcome of the Georgia Senate runoff. The Senate will be determined by the Georgia run-off if Laxalt wins.

The control of the House is still up in the air. Democrats have won 203 seats so far, while Republicans have won 211 (218 seats are needed to control the House), according to CNN projections. California has many uncalled House races.

Voting for Voting in Nevada Senate Races: Reply to the ‘Comment on ‘Curing Failed Mail-In Voting”

While McConnell has locked down enough support to remain leader, he is facing calls from Senate Republicans to delay next week’s leadership contests – which several GOP sources said is unlikely.

State law allows for mail-in ballots to be received in Nevada through Saturday, though the ballots need to have been postmarked by Election Day to be valid.

Political organizations, especially Democratic-leaning unions, that spent months urging people to vote in Nevada’s key Senate race are now turning their focus toward “curing” flawed mail-in ballots in the still-uncalled contest.

According to the officials in Maricopa, printer problems affected about 70 of them, but that the problems were fixed and that the ballots were set aside in a secure ballot box and counted separately. Bill Gates, the Republican chairman of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, called the inconvenience and the long lines that resulted “unfortunate” in one Twitter video but said that “every voter had an opportunity to cast a vote on Election Day.”

The county should be done counting by very early next week if the pace continues at 60,000 to 80,000 ballots a day, Gates said.

Hargove said that she hopes by Monday that Pima County will have the majority of the remaining votes counted. She had previously told CNN that all the votes would be counted by Monday morning. A large amount of votes were received from the recorder’s office on Friday, so she said that would no longer be the case.

Reply to the Gates ‘Comment on ‘The hand-counting process” in Maricopa county, Arizona’

Gates said that he wanted the RNC to communicate the concerns they had to us here. I am a Republican. Three of my colleagues on the board are Republicans. Speak to us about these issues, as opposed to making baseless claims.

He said that the suggestion that there was something wrong in Maricopa County is offensive to the good elections workers.

The RNC and the Republican Party of Arizona criticized the county process, demanding that it require around-the-clock shifts of ballot processing until all of the votes are counted. The groups said they would not hesitate to take legal action.

“Over the past couple of decades, on average it takes 10 to 12 days to complete the count. That’s not the case because of what Maricopa County decided to do. Because of the way Arizona law is set up, we have to follow the law to make sure that the count is accurate.

The appeals court made it clear in a vote that it wouldn’t reverse the court order that had barred the full hand count in time for the elections. A lawyer in Cochise County. The recorder said that the county isn’t giving up on trying to conduct a hand conduct that goes beyond the usual procedures.

Analyzing Voting Results in North Carolina with the Freedom Caucus: Correspondence to the Corrupt Candidate Mitch McConnell

Trump, who saw several key endorsed candidates fizzle out in the general election, is trying to cast blame on Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and gin up opposition to the Kentucky Republican ahead of Senate GOP leadership elections next week, CNN reported Friday.

McCarthy needs the support of at least 218 Republicans to become speaker, compared to McConnell’s requirement of just a majority of Republicans.

The chair of the House Freedom Caucus had a meeting with McCarthy. He said afterward that the meeting “went well” but wouldn’t say if McCarthy has his – or the Freedom Caucus’ – support for speaker.

Up until the moment polls closed, election administrators were still getting calls with claims about supposed flaws in the voting equipment, while poll monitors in some precincts hounded elections workers with questions about the machinery. In a few cases, people tried to disrupt voting. There were a number of issues that were seized on by republican candidates, election deniers, as well as Mr. Trump. The public’s confidence is at greater risk because of such misinformation.

Compared toArizona, Monday’s certification of the state’s voting results was calm. Boring, even. And most voters on both sides seem content with that.

They pointed to better and more frequent communication by elections officials, and transparency measures such as live cams at ballot boxes and in counting rooms. Some speculated that polling and right-wing media reports promising a Republican blowout in races across the country may have discouraged some right-wing activists from provocations at polling places.

“It was remarkably smooth,” said Damon Circosta, the chairman of the North Carolina State Board of Elections. By my enthusiasm, I was not expecting that.

Election Defenders: A Law Enforcement Alert on Election Deniers and Defending Electors in Maricopa, Kan. Two candidates in Nevada and Arizona admit that voter intimidation is a nuisance

There are still races undecided and could go on into next week in a few places. Two states in particular, Nevada and Arizona, feature several election-denying candidates in tight races and elections lawyers say they are gearing up for legal challenges aiming to once again put the soundness of the system on trial.

The Republican candidate for secretary of state in Arizona compared the election process to that of the 2000 election in Florida and also slammed the election system in Maricopa County, which is home to Phoenix.

“There are definitely still things for us to be concerned about,” said Orion Danjuma, a lawyer for Protect Democracy, an elections integrity group. Last month he helped the group file successful legal challenges to self-appointed vigilantes who patrolled ballot drop boxes in Maricopa County, at times carrying long guns and wearing body armor.

After receiving calls and emails from voters demanding that their ballots be counted by hand rather than on machines, which many activists falsely believe can be manipulated, Fred Sherman, the election chief in Johnson County, Kan., came up with a solution. Voters who raised that question in the district, Kansas’ most populous, would be given the option to place their ballot in a specially marked white envelope in a sealed red ballot bag and were given assurances that they would be hand counted.

Mr. Sherman said they created a bit of turbulence. “It’s like running a treadmill always on incline.” Mr. Sherman said he’d like “an easy run and you don’t have that when you have constant election denial.”

According to Douglas Wilson, a Democratic strategist in Charlotte, N.C., polling predicting a large Republican wave may have also worked to cool the ardor of election deniers. Under that logic, he said, attempts to undermine faith in the results would only have discouraged Republican voters.

One coalition, called Election Defenders, organized dozens of sessions to train people posted at polling places to help prevent voter intimidation. Its goal was to recruit 1,250 volunteers, but instead was overwhelmed with more than 2,000 people who completed several hours of online training on how to intervene in tense situations, dispel confusion, de-escalate confrontations with potentially armed activists and, more than anything, keep things calm.

Tiffany Flowers, a leader in the campaign, said that they had the problem of more people signing up than they had space to put them. She said she monitored social media for 20 hours on Tuesday.

One of the few incidents came in late from Maricopa County, involving a man who tried to physically prevent a woman from entering a voting center minutes before it was set to close. Ms. Flowers said that while several Election Defenders were taking the woman in, they waited outside to walk her back to her car.

“I strongly believe that there are more Americans who wanted to see everyone who was eligible to vote be able to vote fairly, freely and with dignity,” Ms. Flowers said.

A Right-Wing Activist’s View of a Democratic Candidate: Taking a Stand Against Trump over the Cliff

During an appearance on a right-wing activist Charlie Kirk’s show Thursday, she said that she hates that they are slow-rolling and dragging their feet. They do not want to give the truth, which is that we won.

There is no evidence that the election officials were using delaying tactics. Bill Gates, chairman of the County Board of Supervisors, called out Lake for his comments at the news conference. “It is offensive for Kari Lake to say that these people behind me are slow-rolling this when they are working 14-18 hours,” Gates, a Republican, said, gesturing to the election workers who were involved in tallying the ballots behind him through a glass window.

Hobbs noted in an interview with CNN that Lake had repeatedly called for her arrest and said that her rhetoric had led to “violent threats and harassment against me.” Lake argued that her opponent would not be able to stand up against the cartels if she wouldn’t agree to debate her.

Barrett Marson, an Arizona GOP consultant who worked for Masters during the Senate primary, spoke to the wisdom of following Trump Monday night. “It’s over. The only thing the Lake should do now is admit that they made a mistake. This election tells us one thing: following Trump over the cliff will not win elections.”

She dispatched her primary opponents with her forceful denunciations of Democratic leaders’ handling of the Covid-19 pandemic – blasting restrictions like masking as unnecessary and harmful to children. She was delighted when one of her admirer called her Trump in a dress, and she welcomed comparisons to Trump throughout the campaign.

Ms. Lake was a constant thorn in the side of the news media and a thorn in the side of the Right-wingers as she barnstormed the state, criss-crossed the country, campaigning for the other three top Republicans on the ticket.

Defending Arizona GOP gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake during the December 13 parade without protesting outside the courtrooms (the Arizona Tribune, in press, on CNN)

Editor’s Note: Jon Gabriel is editor-in-chief of Ricochet.com and an opinion contributor to the Arizona Republic. You can follow him on social media. The views expressed here are his own. CNN has more opinion.

The bipartisan group of officials smiled for cameras, showing no sign of the extended post-election battle still wending its way through courtrooms. There were no protesters outside the venue, or anywhere else for that matter.

There were long lines at polling places and malfunctioning tabulation machines on Election Day. This was followed by a 13-day vote count, which ended with razor-thin margins in key races. There were allegations of fraud and conspiracy.

“This is a responsibility I do not take lightly,” outgoing Republican Gov. Doug Ducey said before signing the certification documents. “It’s one that recognizes the votes cast by the citizens of our great state. Voting is a cornerstone of our nation’s democracy. It is an effective way of ensuring Americans voices are heard.

Ducey, a staunch conservative, earned the ire of the “America First” wing of his party back in 2020. During his certification, he seems to have focused on his legal duty as governor, rather than a phone call from Donald Trump. It became a viral moment during that crazy December.

Outside of angry statements online, few seem interested in challenging the results. Nobody is following the Lake team as they try to start a parade.

Defeated Arizona Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake has filed suit in Arizona Superior Court challenging the certification of the state’s election.

The suit was dismissed for standing in August, with US District Court Judge John Tuchi calling it full of “conjectural allegations of potential injuries.”

Last week, Tuchi agreed, sanctioning Lake and Finchem’s legal team to deter “similarly baseless suits in the future.” The final damages will be announced a month from now.

The person who will supervise Lake’s next lawsuit was present at Monday’s certification. Outgoing Republican Attorney General Mark Brnovich clarified that he served merely as a witness, and should not be interpreted as taking one side or the other in any future court case.

“As attorney general, I have made it one of my office’s highest priorities to defend our election laws and advocate for changes when necessary,” he added. Throughout the rest of my term, I’ll keep doing that.

A Ninth Circuit Court Order Denying Maricopa County Supervisor Kari Lake’s Campaign for a Democratic Supermajority Electoral Candidate

She is starring with a former White House Press Secretary and the MyPillow CEO at the “America Fest” conference, following her recent appearance on Steve Bannon’s show.

Tom Liddy, a lawyer for Maricopa County, faulted Lake’s campaign and the Arizona Republican Party for casting doubt on the validity of early and mail-in votes, which left GOP voters bearing the brunt of minor issues on Election Day.

“Kari Lake needs attention like a fish needs water – and independent experts and local election officials of both parties have made clear that this was a safe, secure and fair election,” Hobbs said, calling the filing “baseless” and a “nuisance lawsuit.”

The former news anchor at Fox 10 was one of the most prominent candidates as she and Hobbs vied to be the next governor.

In March, Ducey said he would make the transition as smooth and seamless as possible after meeting with her.

The lawsuit contained no real facts and was based on speculation, according to Dan Barr, a lawyer for Kris Mayes. He said he was going to move the case to Arizona early next week.

Cochise County tried to deny the certification of the election results, but was unsuccessful.

PHOENIX — A judge has thrown out Republican Kari Lake’s challenge of her defeat in the Arizona governor’s race to Democrat Katie Hobbs, rejecting her claim that problems with ballot printers at some polling places on Election Day were the result of intentional misconduct.

The judge ruled that she could be called to testify as secretary of state until she is sworn in as governor.

The legal team for the accused is led by a democrat, who framed the decision as a win, pointing out that a higher hurdle is still ahead in the trial. “Proving intentional wrongdoing and that it affected the outcome of the election will be impossible for Lake,” Elias tweeted.

Saturday’s ruling is also the latest blow for election deniers nationwide and harks back to the long stream of legal losses Trump suffered in 2020 as he sought to challenge his election loss.

The analysis that was provided by technical experts in favor of Lake failed to address the degree of precision needed to conclude the election results were unfair, according to Thompson’s ruling.

No single witness before the court had any knowledge of such wrongdoing. The Court cannot accept speculation and conjecture, which are not clear and convincing evidence.

A Superior Court Judge’s Benchmark on the Mismanagement of Maricopa County Elections in 2022 by J. Scott Jarrett

Lake’s legal team criticized the election management of Maricopa County and claimed that long lines led Republican would-be voters to leave the election.

Maricopa County elections co-director Scott Jarrett detailed the causes of printing problems in some polling places on Election Day that resulted in on-site ballot tabulators being unable to read some ballots.

Jarrett said in some printers, toner wasn’t dark enough – a problem that resulted in voters whose ballots couldn’t be read having to place their ballots in “door 3,” a secure box used for ballots that would need to be counted later at a central location. Jarrett said about 17,000 ballots ended up in “door 3” boxes across the county.

The shrink-to-fit feature on the printer was selected by a tech employee looking for solutions to Election Day issues, and so the ballot images were slightly smaller. They say about 1,200 ballots were affected by turning on the feature and that those ballots were duplicated so that they could be read by a tabulator. Ultimately, these ballots were counted, officials said.

He said that he didn’t have reason to believe that the issues were the result of intentional misbehaviour. He said all of the votes were counted after they were transferred to a bipartisan board.

In a decision Saturday, Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Peter Thompson, who was appointed by then-Republican Gov. Jan Brewer, found that the court did not find clear and convincing evidence of the widespread misconduct that Lake had alleged had affected the result of the 2022 general election.

The judge noted that the setting aside of the election results would never have been done before in the history of the United States.

“But this Court’s duty is not solely to incline an ear to public opinion,” the judge said. “It is to subject Plaintiff’s claims and Defendants’ actions to the light of the courtroom and scrutiny of the law.”

A High-Dimensional Defendant’s Challenge About the Printer Problems in the Arizona Elections Department and a Republican State Attorney General

Since ballots affected by the printers were taken to more sophisticated counter at the elections department headquarters, everyone had a chance to vote. They are looking into the root cause of the printer problems.

Lake faced extremely long odds in her challenge, needing to prove not only that misconduct occurred, but also that it was intended to deny her victory and did in fact result in the wrong woman being declared the winner.

Her attorneys pointed to a witness who examined ballots on behalf of her campaign and discovered 14 ballots that had 19-inch (48-centimeter) images of the ballot printed on 20-inch paper, meaning the ballots wouldn’t be read by a tabulator. The witness insisted someone changed those printer configurations, a claim disputed by elections officials.

Earlier on Friday, another judge dismissed Republican Abraham Hamadeh’s challenge of results in his race against Democrat Kris Mayes for Arizona attorney general. The court determined that Hamadeh didn’t prove the mistakes in the vote count that he had alleged.

A court hearing is scheduled Thursday to present results of recounts in the races for attorney general, state superintendent and for a state legislative seat.

He said that Lake must pay $33,050.50 to Hobbs for expert witness fees and he also said that the election of Hobbs will continue on January 5.