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OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author’s opinion.
Former 2022 Arizona Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake got some more bad news from a federal appeals court this week regarding her election challenge.
The U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on Tuesday that she and Mark Finchem, the latter of whom ran as the Republican candidate for secretary of state, did not produce any evidence to substantiate their claim that the use of vote tabulation machines violated their constitutional rights, according to a report from Alternet.
The three-judge panel noted in their 11-page opinion that Lake and Finchem “conceded that their arguments were limited to potential future hacking, and not based on any past harm.”
“(E)ven assuming Plaintiffs could continue to claim standing as prospective voters in future elections, they had not alleged a particularized injury and therefore failed to establish the kind of injury Article III requires,” the ruling said.
“None of Plaintiffs’ allegations supported a plausible inference that their individual votes in future elections will be adversely affected by the use of electronic tabulation, particularly given the robust safeguards in Arizona law, the use of paper ballots and the post-tabulation retention of those ballots,” the panel added.
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Finchem lost his race by more than 122,000 votes. In March, he was sanctioned by Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Melissa Iyer Julian after she accused him of bringing a “groundless” case to her court.
“None of Contestant Finchem’s allegations, even if true, would have changed the vote count enough to overcome the 120,000 votes he needed to affect the result of this election,” she wrote. “The Court finds that this lawsuit was groundless and not brought in good faith.”
Also, Lake was sanctioned in May, accused of making “false factual statements” in court regarding her loss to Democratic rival Katie Hobbs in the governor’s race. The court ordered her legal team to pay $2,000 after assessing that she falsely claimed that 35,000 ballots in Maricopa County, where there are around 60 percent of the state’s registered voters, were improperly added to the total vote count.
For her part, Lake has since announced her candidacy for a U.S. Senate seat currently held by former Democrat-turned-Independent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema. She has also picked up her first big endorsement.
According to Fox News, Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), has come out in support of Lake, who will attempt to turn at least one of Arizona’s two Senate seats red again after both went blue over the past two election cycles. Sinema won her seat in 2018, defeating Martha McSally, and last year, incumbent Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly handily fended off Trump-backed Blake Masters 51.4 percent to 46.5 percent.
“Joe Biden’s policies have crushed Arizona. Arizonans are dealing with record inflation – up 20 percent under the Biden administration. Arizona is also on the front lines of the worst illegal immigration crisis in American history. Nearly 8 million illegal immigrants under Biden, equal to the population of Arizona,” Barrasso said in a statement, per Fox News. “The U.S. Senate needs a Senator from Arizona that understands these issues, and will fight hard to solve them.”
In a statement to the outlet, Lake said she was “honored by the friendship and endorsement.”
“(Barrasso) is a tested and proven conservative leader who I greatly admire. I look forward to working with Senator Barrasso to get America back on track and fire Chuck Schumer,” she noted further.
Fox News adds:
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Lake received the endorsement of former President Donald Trump amid her campaign launch last Tuesday, but Barrasso’s endorsement marks a major milestone as she has sought to build a bridge to establishment Republicans in an effort to coalesce support for what could be one of the most contentious races in 2024.
Ahead of her endorsement, Lake spent time meeting with various senators on Capitol Hill, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and hardly mentioned election fraud in her announcement speech despite it being central to her political persona following her loss in the Arizona gubernatorial election last year.
