(Mark Pellin, Headline USA) Arizona Republican Kari Lake appealed her election integrity case to the state’s Supreme Court, following through on a promise to keep fighting for the rights of voters who were disenfranchised by a horribly flawed midterm election.
Lake allegedly lost the Arizona governor’s race to Democrat Katie Hobbs, who lagged in polls during the campaign and consistently dodged debating Lake. Since being installed into office, Hobbs has pushed an aggressively leftist agenda that embraces abortion, champions illegal immigration and targets gun rights.
“We filed our Historic Election Integrity case with the Arizona Supreme Court,” Lake tweeted Wednesday. “Pray for our Attorneys. Pray for the Judges. Pray for Justice. Pray for America.”
We filed our Historic Election Integrity case with the Arizona Supreme Court.
Pray for our Attorneys.
Pray for the Judges.
Pray for Justice.
Pray for America. 🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/SgFI9FixxT— Kari Lake (@KariLake) March 2, 2023
Lake’s appeal to the state’s highest court to overturn the results of the election comes after her case was rejected by superior and appellate courts. Lake has consistently said that purposeful disruptions to the elections process were significant enough to change the results of a razor-thin race.
The lower courts bought the argument that Lake didn’t present adequate evidence that large numbers of Republican voters were disenfranchised by a botched election that left tens of thousands of voters unable to cast their ballots.
Lake’s appeal vigorously disputed that notion, noting that on Election Day vote-machine “printers at nearly two-thirds of Maricopa’s 223 vote centers printed misconfigured and defective ballots, causing tabulators to reject those ballots. As more than 200 witnesses testified, chaos ensued with hours-long wait lines causing voters to give up waiting or to simply not vote at nearly two-thirds of Maricopa’s 223 vote centers.”
Kurt Olsen: “Is there anyway, in your opinion, for a 19-in ballot image to be projected on a 20-in ballot image by accident?”@ParikhClay: “No, sir.”
Olsen: “Why not?”
Parikh: “Because the settings the configurations & the procedures that were used would not allow that.” pic.twitter.com/HGy53LitJS
— Kari Lake War Room (@KariLakeWarRoom) March 2, 2023
The appeal reiterated accounts of the chaos, which caused thousands of voters to be sidelined. The issues with ballot printers focused on Maricopa County, which includes more than 60% of the state’s voters.
“A Republican attorney observer—part of a group of Republican attorneys covering 115 of 223 vote centers on Election Day—testified there was ‘pandemonium out there everywhere’ with ‘lines out the door, which did not—you did not see during the Primary…. [and] angry and frustrated voters.’”
Lake’s appeal also argued that chain of custody for ballots on Election Day was broken at an off-site facility, and that the state’s appeals court used the wrong standard of proof in rejecting Lake’s case.
Lake’s appeal again argued that facts and numbers were on their side, showing “more than 7,000 ballots being rejected by vote center tabulators every 30 minutes from 6:00 am to 8:00 pm— totaling over 217,000 rejected ballot insertions on a day with approximately 248,000 votes cast.”
By ignoring the arguments and evidence Lake presented, the filing claimed that the state’s appellate court had essentially “ruled that Arizona election laws don’t matter,” and “If allowed to stand, the Opinion will make commonplace the type of official arrogance exemplified by Maricopa’s blaming of Republicans for voting on Election Day.”
“Public trust in elections is at an all-time low. Decisions such as the Opinion only serve to further erode that trust,” the filing to the Supreme Court stated. “The undisputed facts, and the violations of law, show that Maricopa’s 2022 election must be set aside. Trust must be restored. This Court should grant review to correct this manifest error.”
