Republican Kari Lake filed an appeal Wednesday in her election challenge suit of Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs’ win in November.
Lake announced that she had filed her appeal at a “Defend America Rally” in Scottsdale, Arizona, Wednesday evening saying how they have to get the 2022 election right, if there is any hope for the 2024 elections going well.
“My attorneys just filed, in the past few minutes, hour or so, they just filed a notice of appeal to the Arizona appellate court,” she said. “We saw what they did to the machines. We have the proof what they did to the machines.”
“They rigged the machines to fail on Election Day when We the People showed up to cast our sacred vote, and until we get our government back, I’m not going to stop fighting. I don’t care what they say,” Lake added.
Lake explained that she is not willing to heed the advice of those who say it would be better for her politically to end her court challenge.
“I don’t give a damn about having a political career, I want to save our country,” she said.
Lake’s notice of appeal cites two issues.
First, that Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Peter Thompson wrongly decided the issue of whether Maricopa County officials followed Arizona law concerning signature verification on an “outcome determinative” number of mail-in ballots.
Hobbs defeated Lake by about 17,000 votes, or 0.7 percent of the 2.59 million votes cast.
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At trial last month, an expert witness for Lake testified that based on his examination of computer user logs he determined that approximately 70,000 mail-in ballots were reviewed for signature matches in less than two seconds.
And that seven of the ballot reviewers had a 100 percent approval rate.
The second issue Lake’s notice of appeal points to is the widespread voting machine problems at polling locations throughout the county on Election Day.
Thompson denied Lake’s attorneys’ request to present at trial what they characterized as new evidence concerning the issue.
This evidence they said would show Maricopa County knew before Election Day that tabulators at nearly two-thirds of its vote centers “would reject significant numbers of ballots” due to ballot printers being misconfigured.
Hours-long lines formed at multiple voting locations throughout Maricopa County on Election Day as tabulators would not accept ballots because the bar codes were not properly aligned.
According to a filing Lake’s attorneys made at the trial court last month, tabulators rejected ballots more than 7,000 times every half-hour throughout Election Day countywide.
Republicans outvoted Democrats 3 to 1 that day, so the malfunction impacted their ability to vote more.
Lake attorney Kurt Olsen told Thompson in a pre-trial conference last month that logs obtained through a public records request showed that “Maricopa officials conducted secret testing on the tabulators on Oct. 14, 17 and 18 — that’s after the logic and accuracy test was certified — that 260 of those 446 tabulators failed that secret testing, and that those tabulators were then used in the election.”
In a court filing prior to last month’s trial, Maricopa County denied that secret testing occurred.
The county explained that on those dates, “the County installed new memory cards, containing the certified Election Program that had undergone the logic and accuracy testing, on each of its tabulators.”
Further, it said, “When installing the memory cards, the County tabulated a small number of ballots on each tabulator to be certain that the memory cards had been properly inserted.”
Lake told “Real America’s Voice” reporter Ben Bergquam before the Scottsdale rally Wednesday that her attorneys now have video of the testing.
“And that was not available to us because Maricopa County, the people who committed the crime against the people, held that information from us. Now we have the information, and that changes everything. And so we are filing a notice to appeal, and you’ll see more filings in the coming days,” she said.
“We are not stopping,” Lake said.
🚨BREAKING @KariLake reveals breaking news to @BenBergquam just before she took the stage at her ‘Defend America Rally’. Watch what she had to say!
Check out our entire rally coverage: https://t.co/pdCGPNFC9A pic.twitter.com/gwF2JfAir3
— Real America’s Voice (RAV) (@RealAmVoice) June 1, 2023
Regarding the video Lake referenced, the county tweeted Wednesday, “If it was a secret, why did we livestream it?”
Bottom line: The video shows the installation of new memory cards which happens in each election. A judge already considered this supposedly “new” evidence in Ms. Lake’s election contest and found it unconvincing. pic.twitter.com/quaFTPg4pi
— Maricopa County (@maricopacounty) May 30, 2023
The county added, “The video shows the installation of new memory cards which happens in each election. A judge already considered this supposedly ‘new’ evidence in Ms. Lake’s election contest and found it unconvincing.”
At her rally, Lake stated that she does not plan to stop her election challenge with just the Arizona court system.
“We want to take this case to the United States Supreme Court,” Lake said. “I hear they’re interested in it. They realize our country is being torn apart. The fabric of our country is just torn apart right now. And they want an election case, and I think we’ve got the perfect one to bring to them.”
“So whatever happens here in Arizona with our judges, I hope to God that they feel that hand of God pressing down on them.”
