By Stacey Barchenger and Sasha Hupka || The Arizona Republic
The losing candidates for two of Arizona’s top offices had initial hearings in their election-related legal challenges Tuesday, setting the schedule for what’s to come.
Generally speaking, the two Republican filers — gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake and secretary of state hopeful Mark Finchem — allege they won the Nov. 8 election and have asked judges to overturn the outcome. Both were defeated by their Democratic opponents in the official election results, which were certified Dec. 5.
Such legal challenges are allowed under Arizona law, which also sets a relatively tight timeframe for deciding such matters. The initial step, scheduling hearings, took place Tuesday.
Here’s what to know about the cases:
Opinion: Help, America! Arizona is stuck in a Kari Lake time warp and we can’t get out
Lake’s hearing delayed after access information shared
Slated to start at 11 a.m., the hearing in Lake’s case began about 40 minutes late because of the number of people — at least 700 at one point — who tried to access the online platform reserved for attorneys in the case instead of watching the livestream on the court’s public website.
“I don’t know how that link was so widely distributed, and I’m not going to go into it at this time with anybody speculating how that happened,” Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Peter Thompson told attorneys and Lake, who gathered via the online meeting platform Microsoft Teams. “It is important for the public to have full view of this and access, but we cannot crowd the Teams platform such that the attorneys and the parties involved in this case aren’t even able to participate.”
It appeared the information for the meeting was shared by multiple sources, including by Lake who shared posts with the details on Twitter. Lake’s campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment. She has refused to speak to The Arizona Republic since July.
After the delay, Thompson directed attorneys for the defendants in the lawsuit to file motions to dismiss the case, a routine step, on Thursday. He scheduled a hearing on the motions for 9 a.m. Monday, and additional hearings to dig into Lake’s claims, if necessary, on Dec. 21 and 22.
