Kari Lake argues that the county violated state laws dealing with chain-of-custody requirements of ballots.
By Howard Fischer || Capitol Media Services
The state Court of Appeals will consider later this month whether to expedite a bid by Kari Lake to overturn the results of the gubernatorial election she lost by more than 17,000 votes.
A three-judge panel has set Jan. 24 to consider her “special action” request. And they want a response from attorneys for now-Gov. Katie Hobbs by this coming Wednesday.
But that doesn’t mean the judges will give Lake’s attorneys the chance to argue to them directly on that date why she believes they should order what she calls “a new and fair election.”
If not, that leaves her to pursue a standard appeal. But the court won’t hear that until at least March.
Republican Lake, however, already is pushing ahead with an alternate plan. She is asking the Arizona Supreme Court to immediately intercede, bypassing the appellate court entirely, and decide whether Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Peter Thompson erred in rejecting her claims that there was misconduct in how the election was conducted.
There has been no action yet by the high court on that petition.
Her appeal consists largely of the same charges she made to Thompson that problems with printers on Election Day in Maricopa County depressed the votes of Republicans, people who Lake says would have voted for her. And she contends there is evidence that the problems which kept on-site tabulators from reading those ballots were the result of intentional misconduct by county election officials.
Lake also argues that the county violated state laws dealing with chain-of-custody requirements of ballots.
