Kurt Olsen — an attorney representing Arizona GOP candidate Kari Lake in her election challenge of Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs’ win in November — indicated Thursday his client may be taking parts of her case to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Wednesday night, the Arizona Supreme Court affirmed most of the trial court’s and the Arizona Court of Appeals’ rulings in favor or Hobbs and Maricopa County, but did remand Lake’s claim that signature verification laws for mail-in ballots were not followed by the county in the 2022 to the trial court for consideration.
The trial court had ruled in December that Lake needed to bring the claim that the county was not following proper procedures to ensure the identity of voters before the election.
The judge cited the doctrine of laches, which requires plaintiffs to assert rights in a timely manner or they are barred from legal remedy.
The Arizona Supreme Court held, “Contrary to the ruling of the trial court and the Court of Appeals Opinion, this signature verification challenge is to the application of the policies, not to the policies themselves. Therefore, it was erroneous to dismiss this claim under the doctrine of laches because Lake could not have brought this challenge before the election.”
Other key claims in Lake’s suit that the Arizona Supreme Court sided with Hobbs and Maricopa County on included alleged voter disenfranchisement due to hours-long lines forming at polling stations on Election Day after ballot printers and tabulations malfunctioned.
Further, Lake’s attorneys assert in their legal brief that there were 35,563 unaccounted-for ballots added to the total cast on Election Day after they were sent to a third-party vendor, Runbeck Election Services, for processing. That number is significant because it exceeds Hobbs’ approximately 17,000 vote margin of victory.
The Supreme Court justices stated flatly, “The record does not reflect that 35,563 unaccounted ballots were added to the total count.”
FrankSpeech.com host Emerald Robinson asked Olsen about the court’s decision against the voter disenfranchisement claim.
Do you think Kari Lake should take this to the Supreme Court?
Yes: 98% (50 Votes)
No: 2% (1 Votes)
“We of course were disappointed,” Olsen responded and also pointed to the chain of custody issues regarding the 35,563 ballots.
“However, we do have federal claims that are tied to those issues. These are federal constitutional claims under the equal protection clause and the due process clause,” the attorney continued.
“We do have the option to appeal that decision to the U.S. Supreme Court to seek what is called a petition for writ of certiorari, to ask the US Supreme Court to address this issue. And we’re evaluating that now.”
Lake Attorney Kurt Olsen on the dismissed chain of custody & disenfranchisement claims
“We do have the option to appeal that decision to the US Supreme Court. To seek what is called a Writ of Certiorari, to ask the US Supreme Court to address this issue. We’re evaluating that.” pic.twitter.com/B2MThviBrP
— Kari Lake War Room (@KariLakeWarRoom) March 24, 2023
Robinson asked what the timetable for that decision would be.
Olsen answered that it is something they would look at in the next couple of weeks, with their current focus being on the upcoming trial in Arizona.
“It is an option, and we do intend to pursue that at some point just the question is when,” Olsen then more definitively added.
In their brief to the Arizona Supreme Court, Lake’s legal team explained their equal protection and due process constitutional claims, writing that “Republicans disproportionately favor voting on Election Day (Republican-versus-Democrat disparity of 58.6% to 15.5%).”
Therefore, when polling places experienced voting machine issues, it was the Lake voters most impacted. So they did not have an equal opportunity to vote compared with those who chose to vote by mail, Lake argued.
Further, the Lake campaign alleges that the polling stations where the tabulator issues occurred were more heavily located in Republican voting areas.
🚨Breaking🚨
Maricopa County Tabulation & Election Center had a “heat map” in their central count showing “Republican Voter Dot Density.
Our team compared it with the locations where tabulator failures occurred on Election Day
This was a targeted attack on Republican voters pic.twitter.com/mB0JE8a7e4
— Kari Lake War Room (@KariLakeWarRoom) January 30, 2023
Lake’s court filing to the Supreme Court says: “Maricopa’s failure to perform mandated [logic and accuracy] testing led to tabulators rejecting ballots at nearly two-thirds of Maricopa’s 223 vote centers over 7,000 times every thirty minutes, beginning at 6:00 am and continuing past 8:00 pm — causing massive disruptions, hours-long lines and disenfranchising thousands of predominantly Republican voters on Election Day.” (page 1).
Lake tweeted Wednesday following the court’s ruling, “We’re just getting started.”
We’re just getting started.
— Kari Lake (@KariLake) March 23, 2023
She apparently may have meant not only at the state level, but on to the U.S. Supreme Court, as well.
