Arizona GOP candidate Kari Lake announced over the weekend that she filed an appeal in her Arizona election case, claiming there is new evidence in her 2022 midterm-related lawsuit that implicates Maricopa County officials.
“New evidence produced by Maricopa STRONGLY suggests County officials intentionally sabotaged the 2022 General Election, then gave false testimony attempting to cover up their misconduct,” Mrs. Lake wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, on Saturday.
Her appeal, filed with the Arizona Court of Appeals, claimed that a top Maricopa County elections manager, Scott Jarrett, allegedly gave false testimony about issues that occurred on Election Day in November 2022. On that day, several officials with Maricopa County had announced that there were issues with voting machine printers that forced some voters to go to other polling locations.
“Maricopa’s Co-Director of Elections, Scott Jarrett, gave false testimony about the causes and the extent of the Election Day tabulator ballot rejections caused by misconfigured, speckled, or faded BOD-printed ballots,” said the appeal. “BOD” refers to “ballot on demand.”
“In reality, vote-center tabulators rejected BOD-printed ballots at a rate of over 7,000 every 30 minutes from 6:30 am, shortly after the polls opened, through 8:00 pm, after the polls closed,” it continued (pdf).
The appeal asserted that the “ensuing chaos led to massive lines and wait times, thereby impairing or depriving the right to vote of tens of thousands of predominately Republican voters,” while adding that “Arizona elections are now in uncharted territory.”
Neither Mr. Jarrett nor Maricopa County have publicly responded to Mrs. Lake’s Saturday appeal. The Epoch Times has contacted Maricopa County for comment on Sunday.
Maricopa County lawyers have previously rejected Mrs. Lake’s claims that there was intentional malfeasance on behalf of county officials in connection to Election Day printer problems. Mr. Jarrett blamed printing issues in some polling spots on toner that wasn’t dark enough, saying that it resulted in voters with certain ballots that couldn’t be read having to place them in a secure box to be counted later.
After the November midterms, Mrs. Lake and her team have filed multiple lawsuits and appeals in a bid to challenge the election. So far, all of them have been rejected by multiple judges.
Mrs. Lake, a former local Fox anchor, has not conceded the race. Her Democrat opponent, Katie Hobbs, was sworn in as governor earlier this year.
In July, Mrs. Lake filed an appeal to the Arizona Supreme Court that claimed some 8,000 unreadable ballots were misconfigured on Election Day. While in her initial lawsuit filed last year, she argued that thousands of voters on Election Day were disenfranchised in Maricopa County.
And several weeks ago, the GOP candidate filed a motion to dismiss a defamation lawsuit filed by Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer earlier this year. In June, Mr. Richer claimed Mrs. Lake and her team have made false accusations that he was attempting to sabotage the midterm elections, saying that he’s since received death threats.
The motion stated that Mr. Richer “certainly has the right to publicly dispute defendants’ speech,” but Arizona law “does not allow him to bring this lawsuit in an attempt to punish or silence such speech simply because he disagrees with it.” It added, “In fact, Richer’s own public statements about this lawsuit shows that his intention is to violate Kari Lake’s right to free speech.”
Mrs. Lake has also suggested that she might run for the U.S. Senate seat that is currently held by Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, a former Democrat-turned-independent.
“I’m contemplating it,” Mrs. Lake told Fox Business last month in response to a question about a Senate bid. “I mean, I could go off and go back into media and make a fortune, but this is not the season for that,” she added.
From The Epoch Times