Kari Lake loses election retrial

Kari Lake, who nominally lost the Arizona governor’s race last Midterms, lost a second trial of her claim that Maricopa County election officials effectively stole the election.

Kari Lake loses again

The Arizona Supreme Court had ordered Judge Peter A. Thompson to docket a proceeding to hear the last challenge by Kari Lake, concerning the signature verification process. Lake claimed that signature verification did not follow all the procedures that the law requires. But Judge Thompson ruled that she must prove that Maricopa County Officers of Election followed none of the procedures for signature verification.

Her team did show, according to Fox News, that signature verification happened in extreme haste. Witnesses admitted that officers sat at consoles and simply clicked through signatures faster than one per second. Seventy thousand signatures “passed” that way – and supervisors neglected (or refused) to address inconsistencies in signatures.

Nevertheless Judge Thompson held that the law provides no minimum standard for signature review. He also held that:

• A person who can somehow see that two signatures are enough alike needs only a casual glance to determine that.
• What the official officer-in-charge, or recorder, says, goes, and no court can gainsay that. To hold otherwise would violate separation of powers.

Therefore, said the judge, Kari Lake did not satisfy the burden of proof the court prescribed and the law required.

Kari Lake did not respond to Fox News’ request for comment.

Maricopa County Board of Supervisors Chairman Clint Hickman, in a gloating tone, hailed the ruling, according to a CBS affiliate. “Wild claims of rigged elections may generate media attention and fundraising pleas,” he said. “But they do not win court cases.”

What next?

Chairman Hickman also insisted that Judge Thompson “stuck to the requirement laid out by the Arizona Supreme Court.” Namely that she must provide “clear and convincing evidence … that signature verification did not take place.”

That remains far from clear. This same Judge Thompson, in the first trial, set the bar that Kari Lake must prove that:

• Maricopa County Officers of Election deliberately mishandled that election, and that:
• Their misconduct definitely did affect the outcome of the race.

The law, according to others who have studied it, does not require definite intentionality, but only the bare possibility of a bad result, which could be even by accident or negligence. So the question remains whether this judge simply did not care to contemplate overturning an election. Last year, in fact, Lake tweeted out that Judge Thompson took instruction from an outside group on how to rule. She then thought better of that, and deleted the tweet.

Late Monday evening, Kari Lake teased a “big announcement” for today.

She did not say what that announcement might be. Reaction to the tweet seemed to spring from three possibilities:

• Petitioning for review by the Supreme Court of the United States,
• Running for the United States Senate against Senator Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.) and whomever the Democrats care to nominate, or
• Auditioning or otherwise trying to persuade Donald Trump to name her as his Vice-Presidential running mate.

Other communications

Shortly before midnight in Arizona, Lake retweeted this tweet seeming to demonstrate exactly how quickly OOEs “verified” those signatures:

However, that TikTok video looks more like a video of gamblers seated before a row of electronic slot machines, incessantly and obsessively tapping at buttons to keep playing the game. Not only that, but it looks as if someone is playing it at the wrong speed – namely, too fast. Why Lake would retweet something like that, is far from clear. It might make a good illustration, but it has no evidentiary value.

Separately, Arizona Senator Sonny Borelli, Republican Floor Leader, called on County Boards of Elections not to use electronic voting machines in federal elections moving forward. Influencer DC Draino dropped a thread highlighting Senator Borelli’s letter to these county clerks of election:

Alex Nicoll, “Rapid Response Director” for the Lake campaign, shared an image of a written announcement of a press conference.

Reaction to her announcements is decidedly mixed, with a significant proportion dismissing her claims and/or questioning her mental fitness.