On Friday, the Republican candidate for governor of Arizona who came in second place, Kari Lake, filed a lawsuit challenging the results of an election that was certified by the state this week. Kari Lake’s opponent, Doug Ducey, won the race.
The filing of the complaint by Ms. Lake occurred after she had spent many weeks making a series of public declarations and postings on social media with the intention of casting doubt in the conclusion of a campaign she had lost to her Democratic opponent, Katie Hobbs, by a margin of more than 17,000 votes. This defeat was validated by the official records that Ms. Hobbs, who is presently serving as secretary of state, signed on Monday.
Ms. Lake, a former news anchor, based her presidential campaign on baseless conspiracy accusations that the presidential election in 2020 had been stolen from Donald J. Trump, who had backed her. Trump had given her his endorsement. During the course of the last month, Ms. Lake, her campaign, and her various friends have been canvassing rallies and social media platforms in an effort to collect Election Day reports from voters.
Ms. Lake filed a lawsuit against Ms. Hobbs as well as authorities in Maricopa County, which is the biggest county in Arizona and contains the city of Phoenix.
According to the allegations made in the lawsuit, the election in Maricopa County was tainted by fraud, and as a result, she ought to be recognised as the victor. The charges in the 70-page file are all over the place, ranging from voter and poll worker experiences to poll statistics showing that people agreed with Ms. Lake on the election’s mishandling. The brief itself is based on a mishmash of allegations. Some of the evidence presented here comes not from the election that took place a month ago but rather from the one that will take place in 2020. Various other accusations level accusations of misconduct against authorities for their participation in measures to suppress election-related disinformation.
A representative for Maricopa County named Fields Moseley said that the court system was the appropriate venue for campaigns to make their case in order to contest the results.
Several of the individuals who were cited as experts in the lawsuit, as well as one of the attorneys who filed the case, Kurt Olsen, are members of a loose election-denial network that is led by Mike Lindell, an entrepreneur who owns a pillow company and who has been spreading conspiracy theories about voting machines since the beginning of 2021. Another lawyer from Lake, Bryan Blehm, represented the contractor Cyber Ninjas during the partisan audit of Maricopa County’s 2020 election results last year. This year, he also represented supervisors in Cochise County in a lawsuit over an attempt to carry out a hand-counted audit plan. The lawsuit stemmed from the supervisors’ belief that the audit plan violated their constitutional rights.
Ms. Lake’s legal action came at the same time as the filing of lawsuits on Friday by two other Republicans in Arizona who lost their midterm elections: Mark Finchem, who ran for secretary of state, and Abe Hamadeh, who campaigned for attorney general. Both candidates lost their respective races. The Republican National Committee has supported Mr. Hamadeh in his complaint, despite the fact that Mr. Hamadeh is now behind his opponent in the contest that is being rechecked by a margin of 511 votes.
Mr. Hamadeh had earlier filed a lawsuit at the end of the previous month in an attempt to overturn the election, but a judge in Maricopa County rejected the lawsuit on the grounds that it had been submitted too soon. His current challenge, which was filed in Mohave County, a Republican stronghold where he won 75 percent of the vote, is more limited than Ms. Lake’s suit in that it claims that it is not contesting the election’s legitimacy. Ms. Lake’s suit was filed in Maricopa County, which is a Democratic stronghold.
Dan Barr, an attorney for Kris Mayes, Mr. Hamadeh’s opponent, said that the complaint was “based on supposition” and that it had “no genuine facts.” He said that he intended to submit papers early the next week to both dismiss it and shift it to Maricopa County.
The margin of defeat for Mr. Finchem, who was one of many contenders for secretary of state around the nation who contested the results of the presidential election in 2020, was more than 120,000 votes. In the lawsuit that Mr. Finchem brought against the state of Arizona, which was filed in Maricopa County, he claimed that the state “failed miserably” to run a “full, fair, and secure election,” and he requested the court to declare the election “annulled” and to call him the winner instead.
An previous attempt at winning a federal case on behalf of Ms. Lake and Mr. Finchem was thwarted by the efforts of one of Ms. Lake’s attorneys, Mr. Olsen, who was also engaged in that earlier attempt. Although it was submitted before the election on November 8, a federal court ruled earlier this month that it included “false, deceptive, and unsubstantiated factual allegations” regarding election systems. This was despite the fact that it was submitted before the election. The court ruled that the defendant’s deceptive representations were sufficient to justify punishment. He said that he will make a decision on who of the attorneys who were engaged in the case should be disciplined at a later time.
Ms. Lake’s complaint contains a number of allegations, some of which revolve on the lengthy lines and other issues that occurred on Election Day in Maricopa County, which she believes contributed to voters being disenfranchised.
The New York Times investigated dozens of testimonies from voters, poll workers, and observers that were posted by Ms. Lake and her supporters on social media or retold in public hearings in the aftermath of the election. The investigation was carried out in the previous month.
On the other hand, the distrust that some voters have in the voting processes caused them to refuse to utilise the ballot boxes. According to the officials, those voters were provided with various voting choices, including the opportunity to vote elsewhere. The circumstances caused huge queues to form at several of the polling sites; but, according to the county, everyone who wanted to cast a vote was allowed to do so.
