Republican U.S. Senate candidate, Kari Lake has lost another Arizona appeals court challenge arguing that votes were not properly verified when she lost the 2022 governor election to Katie Hobbs.
Last week Arizona’s Court of Appeals upheld the finding last year that Ms. Lake had failed to prove that signatures were neglected by election verification.
Bryan James Blehm, Lake’s attorney did not return a call from Northeast Valley News about whether or not Ms. Lake would now appeal to the Arizona Supreme Court.
Sanctions were imposed on Mr. Blehm by the State Bar of Arizona for “unequivocally false” representations to the Supreme Court while handling the Lake election challenges.
Lake has been among the most vocal of GOP candidates promoting former President Donald Trump’s false claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him.
Lake has continued to deny her loss in the 2022 gubernatorial contest to now Governor Katie Hobbs in which she lost by more than 17,000 votes.
Lake has lost each time in the trial and appeals courts as well as in front of the Supreme Court.
Arizona’s Division Two Court of Appeals affirmed the lower court’s rulings on June 11, in an opinion authored by presiding Judge Sean Brearcliffe.
Maricopa County has repeatedly denied Lake’s allegations that it failed to perform logic and accuracy tests required by law.
The appeals court panel ruled that Lake’s evidence was not, in fact, discovered recently, making it impermissible.
The appellate court also agreed with trial court Judge Peter Thompson that In agreement with the trial court Judge, Peter Thompson, Ms. Lake did not prove that any misconduct on the part of Maricopa County election officials or workers.
Northeast Valley News asked some Valley voters their thoughts on the lasts Kari Lake loss in court.
“Lake, the ultimate election denier—has racked up more losses than the worst sports franchise,” said Tim Shoreman of Phoenix when asked outside of the City of Phoenix departments and offices if he was surprised about the latest court decision regarding Ms. Lake’s election allegations.
Some of those asked wondered if Lake would ever give up on her claims, but others were not surprised by her refusal to concede to her loss.
“She’s one of those people who will never admit defeat, it’s kind of a sickness, there’s probably a diagnosis for it,” chuckled Susan Moore a City employee.
Brearcliffe wrote that the appeals court concurred with Thompson that Lake’s “allegation(s) of fraud leap[ed] over a substantial gap in the evidence presented.”
In court, Brearcliffe wrote, “We noted that Lake had ‘presented no evidence that voters whose ballots were unreadable by on-site tabulators were not able to vote,’ and only ‘sheer speculation’ that issues on election day discouraged ‘a substantial number of predominantly Lake voters’ from voting.”
Reportedly, Brearcliffe concluded that Lake failed to prove allegations that Maricopa County Elections Director Scott Jarrett lied on the witness stand at trial. She and her attorneys claimed that Jarrett misled the court about a problem with ballot-on-demand printers, but Brearcliffe chalked that up to a misunderstanding between Jarrett and Lake’s lawyers.
The appeals court also agreed with Thompson in dismissing Lake’s assertion that 8,000 ballots cast on Election Day that were rejected by tabulators at polling sites were never counted, saying she had tried to “leap a gap in proof with unsupported bare assertions.”
