Former Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake was in court Thursday to support an argument that ballot signatures are public record and ought to be reviewed.
Thursday’s appearance in court was Lake’s latest legal maneuver since Yavapai County Superior Court Judge John Napper ruled that the signatures of mail-in ballots had not gone through the proper verification process, per Arizona law. Lake said in a statement afterward that the failed verification “has allowed for the integrity of our elections to be washed away.”
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“Following this ruling, I have the utmost confidence that we will win our lawsuit to review the early ballot signatures later this month,” Lake added.
“Signatures have never really been anything special. And that’s why we so routinely, so commonly, so every day, your honor, deposit them into the stream of commerce where they wind up on the County Recorder’s website with the tens of millions of other signatures dating back a hundred-plus years ago,” Lake’s attorney Bryan Blehm said in his opening statement. “And so, signatures are not in and of themselves protected, whether they be voters’ or whether they be commercial transactions’, your honor. There’s very little difference.”
Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer is on the other side of Lake’s suit and pointed out in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, that Lake lost her attempts to contest the election “at every level,” which included trial court, court of appeals, and the Arizona Supreme Court.
On Thursday morning I will be in state court, on the witness stand, to defend voter privacy and election security.
The plaintiff is a former losing candidate for office.
Note, however, this is a public records case, it is not an election case. Plaintiff already filed an…
— Stephen Richer—Maricopa Cnty Recorder (prsnl acct) (@stephen_richer) September 20, 2023
“Plaintiff is requesting that all early ballot envelopes — including the voter’s name, address, phone number, and signature — be made public. No county in Arizona has ever done this since early voting in Arizona in 1992. I agree with that long-standing practice,” Richer wrote. “I believe these envelopes are not public record according to state statute. And I believe that making them public would have a chilling effect on voting, would weaken the security controls on early voting, and would open the door to voter harassment.
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Professional Victim @stephen_richer is lying again.
We’re not asking these signatures to be made public.
We are asking to review them to assess whether they are legitimate or not.
We have a STRONG reason to believe they’re not.
Clearly, so does Stephen. pic.twitter.com/0KxW1a1TkR
— Kari Lake (@KariLake) September 20, 2023
“We’re not asking these signatures to be made public,” Lake clarified in response to Richer on X. “We are asking to review them to assess whether they are legitimate or not. We have a STRONG reason to believe they’re not.”
The trial will continue Friday.
