{"id":1904095,"date":"2023-03-23T22:40:10","date_gmt":"2023-03-24T02:40:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/arizona-supreme-court-breathes-new-life-into-key-part-of-kari-lakes-election-lawsuit\/"},"modified":"2023-03-23T22:42:54","modified_gmt":"2023-03-24T02:42:54","slug":"arizona-supreme-court-breathes-new-life-into-key-part-of-kari-lakes-election-lawsuit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/arizona-supreme-court-breathes-new-life-into-key-part-of-kari-lakes-election-lawsuit\/","title":{"rendered":"Arizona Supreme Court Breathes New Life Into Key Part of Kari Lake\u2019s Election Lawsuit"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">28<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Farizona-supreme-court-breathes-new-life-into-key-part-of-kari-lakes-election-lawsuit%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1904095&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div class=\"post_content\">\n<div class=\"aplayer_app\" data-source=\"https:\/\/vs1.youmaker.com\/assets\/2023\/0323\/065e2449-efff-4276-ab0f-dc38469cfaab\/audio.mp3?length=4622157&#038;duration=385\"><\/div>\n<\/p>\n<p>The Arizona Supreme Court has sent a key part of Kari Lake\u2019s election lawsuit back to trial court for review, breathing new life into the former gubernatorial candidate\u2019s legal challenge to the outcome that she says was unfair.<\/p>\n<p>In an order issued on March 22 (pdf), the Arizona Supreme Court directed the trial court to review a key claim related to signature verification procedures on early ballots in Maricopa County, reviving Lake\u2019s hopes in her election challenge.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe\u00a0signature verification process in Maricopa County is a house of cards. Thanks to this ruling, my team will get the chance to topple it,\u201d Lake said in a statement expressing satisfaction with the ruling.<\/p>\n<p>Maricopa County officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Epoch Times.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_4851568\" style=\"width: 640px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\"><noscript><\/noscript> Voters drop their ballot in a dropbox in the U.S. midterm election at the Maricopa County Tabulation and Election Center, in Phoenix, Ariz., on Nov. 8, 2022. (Olivier Touron\/AFP via Getty Images)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<h2>Seven Legal Issues<\/h2>\n<p>Lake has focused her legal challenge on the claim that Maricopa County election officials intentionally caused problems with ballot printers at some polling places on Election Day, which fell on Nov. 8, 2022. Their alleged intentional misconduct produced ballots that were too light to be read by on-site tabulators, leading to delays and long lines at dozens of polling places in what Lake said was a bid to quash Republican voters.<\/p>\n<p>Maricopa County\u00a0officials have disputed this in the past, arguing that everyone had a chance to vote and all ballots were counted because the ones that were affected by the printers were taken to more sophisticated counters at election headquarters.<\/p>\n<p>In her complaint to the Arizona Supreme Court (pdf), Lake raised seven legal issues with the request for review, including the allegation that 35,563 \u201cunaccounted for ballots\u201d were intermingled with other ballots at a processing facility and that procedures on testing tabulating machines weren\u2019t followed, and so the results of the election were at the very least \u201cuncertain.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Election data shows that Lake lost to Hobbs, a Democrat, by about 17,000 votes during the midterms.<\/p>\n<p>In its Wednesday order, the Supreme Court rejected Lake\u2019s claim of intermingled ballots, saying that \u201cthe record does not reflect that 35,563 unaccounted ballots were added to the total count.\u201d<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_4850705\" style=\"width: 640px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\"><noscript><\/noscript> Bill Gates, Chairman of the Maricopa Board of Supervisors, speaks at the Maricopa County Tabulation and Election Center in Phoenix, Ariz., on Nov. 8, 2022. (John Moore\/Getty Images)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<h2>Lake Appeals to Supreme Court<\/h2>\n<p>After two lower state courts rejected Lake\u2019s election lawsuit, she filed an appeal with the Arizona Supreme Court and the high court agreed in a March 3 order (pdf) to grant a motion for expedited consideration.<\/p>\n<p>The high court indicated it would deliberate on March 21 and decide whether to accept review and,\u00a0in its March 22 order, it denied review of six out of seven points included in Lake\u2019s appeal.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt is ordered denying review of issues one through five and seven,\u201d reads the opinion\u00a0written by Chief Justice Robert Brutinel. \u201cThe Court of Appeals aptly resolved these issues, most of which were the subject of evidentiary proceedings in the trial court\u201d and that Lake\u2019s challenges are \u201cinsufficient.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>However, the high court\u00a0granted review of issue number six pertaining to the Maricopa County Recorder\u2019s application of signature-verification policies during the election.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt is further ordered granting review of issue number six to the extent count three of the complaint challenges the Maricopa County Recorder\u2019s application of signature-verification policies during the election,\u201d the opinion reads.<\/p>\n<p>Issue number six asks whether the lower court was mistaken \u201cin dismissing the signature-verification claim on laches[,] mischaracterizing Lake\u2019s claim as a challenge to existing signature verification policies, when Lake in fact alleged that Maricopa failed to follow these policies during the 2022 general election.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Dismissing a claim based on laches is the idea that a plaintiff has unreasonably delayed in asserting their legal claim or right, causing harm or prejudice to the defendant.<\/p>\n<p>The Arizona Supreme Court concluded that the lower court indeed made an error as \u201cLake could not have brought this challenge before the election.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The court did not evaluate Lake\u2019s signature claim on its merit, however, ruling only that the lower court was mistaken in its justification for rejecting it.\u00a0With its decision, the Supreme Court sent that claim back to the trial court for consideration.<\/p>\n<p>Lake\u2019s campaign team called signature verification a \u201cthird rail\u201d for Maricopa County over the past several years and suggested that her election fight remains in play.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey have thrown every obstacle at Arizona election integrity activists to prevent them from reaching it. Unfortunately for them, they messed with the wrong woman,\u201d the Kari Lake War Room account said in a post on Twitter.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_4942376\" style=\"width: 640px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\"><noscript><\/noscript> Following two days of testimony in a civil case she filed seeking to overturn the Nov. 8 general election, Arizona Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake addresses the media outside the Superior Court of Maricopa County, Ariz., on Dec. 22, 2022. (Allan Stein\/The Epoch Times)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<h2>Other Reactions<\/h2>\n<p>While Maricopa County did not immediately respond with a request for comment from The Epoch Times to the ruling, lawyers for Maricopa County earlier categorically rejected Lake\u2019s latest petition for review.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBecause all of the arguments raised in the petition for review were already thoroughly refuted in both the trial court and court of appeals, this Court should deny the petition,\u201d they wrote in a March 13 response to Lake\u2019s appeal (pdf).<\/p>\n<p>\u201cLake\u2019s Petition utterly fails at fulfilling its limited task,\u201d Maricopa\u2019s lawyers stated. \u201cIt does not present any argument illustrating a need for this Court to review the court of appeals\u2019 opinion. It does not identify a single novel legal issue that this Court needs to clarify. And it does not identify any legal precedent that should be overturned or abrogated.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cInstead, the Petition is almost entirely a regurgitation of petitioner Kari Lake\u2019s failed arguments before the trial court and the court of appeals,\u201d they added.<\/p>\n<p>Maricopa County Stephen Richer told the Arizona Republic\u00a0in response to Wednesday\u2019s Supreme Court ruling that he has the \u201cutmost respect\u201d for the court as an institution and that, as the signature verification issue heads to trial court for reconsideration, \u201cwe\u2019ll now proceed and win, again, for about the 30th time.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Abha Khanna, an attorney representing Hobbs, has said that Lake\u00a0and her lawyers have been pushing \u201cfalse claims of election fraud.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Hobbs took office on Jan. 2 as the 24th governor of Arizona.<\/p>\n<p><em>Jack Phillips contributed to this report.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Arizona Supreme Court has sent a key part of Kari Lake\u2019s election lawsuit back to trial court for review, breathing new life into the former gubernatorial candidate\u2019s legal challenge to the outcome that she says was unfair. In an order issued on March 22 (pdf), the Arizona Supreme Court directed the trial court to<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":118,"featured_media":1904096,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[543],"tags":[4472,16911,4733,3728,8210,7233,9326,4585,3848,4730],"class_list":["post-1904095","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-epoch-times","tag-arizona","tag-breathes","tag-court","tag-election","tag-kari","tag-key","tag-lakes","tag-lawsuit","tag-life","tag-supreme"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1904095","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/118"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1904095"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1904095\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1904096"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1904095"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1904095"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1904095"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}