(Joshua Paladino, Headline USA) Arizona Superior Court Judge Peter Thompson granted Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake‘s petition to inspect Maricopa County’s ballots before her lawsuit goes to trial, the Gateway Pundit reported.
Lake asked Thompson if her team could inspect 50 early ballots, 50 printed ballots, 50 printed ballots that were spoiled, and 50 early ballot return envelopes.
🚨@KariLake files to inspect the ballots in Maricopa County. Requests ballots:
➡️printed by Runbeck (contractor)
➡️printed by county’s ballot-on-demand printers
➡️including spoiled ballotsProposes random sampling from sites and segregated batches as selected by Lake pic.twitter.com/T1tS9GPaii
— TheLegalProcess (v2.0 | Post-Election Ed) (@ALegalProcess) December 15, 2022
Thompson granted the first three requests but denied the fourth, stating that early ballot return envelopes are not covered by Arizona’s ballot inspection law.
“Early-ballot return envelopes are not themselves ballots, even if they arrive as a “package” as Plaintiff argues,” Thompson wrote in his decision. “The defendants are correct that ballots — unlike the return envelopes — do not contain signatures.”
Lake’s team has to pick a ballot inspector who will choose the six Maricopa County voting areas from which to randomly collect the 150 ballots. She had to notify the court about her choice by Dec. 16 at 12 p.m.
Thompson ordered the inspection to start on Dec. 20 at 8 a.m.
Katie Hobbs, the Democrat gubernatorial nominee and Secretary of State who managed her own election, could stop the ballot review if the judge grants her motion to dismiss.
The Hobbs campaign filed the motion to dismiss on Dec. 16.
The court does not seem likely to dismiss the case before trial, given its decision to authorize ballot inspections.
The Lake campaign has compiled eyewitness, documentary, and statistical evidence to support its claim that Hobbs purposefully botched in-person voting in Arizona’s 2022 midterm election to disenfranchise Republican voters who prefer to vote on Election Day.
Arizona,
I wanted to give you a critical update on our fight to save our state.
Read the entire lawsuit here:https://t.co/EDytPyRllZ pic.twitter.com/gAP94UKhLm
— Kari Lake (@KariLake) December 14, 2022
