[ad_1]
Advertisement
OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author’s opinion.
U.S. Senate candidate Kari Lake has made another legal move in her effort to have electronic vote tabulating machines banned in Arizona by filing a petition for certiorari with the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday along with 2022 Secretary of State candidate Mark Finchem, who is now running for a state Senate seat.
The pair “filed a 210-page petition with the nation’s top court last week, asking it to consider their case. The duo challenges the use of electronic machines that count votes, alleging they are hackable and not properly tested,” USA Today reported.
Their assertions, initially raised in 2022, have consistently been dismissed for lack of evidence. Dominion Voting Systems, the manufacturer of the machines employed in Maricopa County and several other states, secured a substantial settlement in a defamation lawsuit against Fox News last year, the outlet continued.
Lake narrowly lost her race against now-Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs, while Finch lost his race by a larger margin.
Advertisement
The pair initially filed a complaint to have electronic voting machines banned in April 2022, ahead of the midterm elections.
“Plaintiffs have a constitutional and statutory right to have their ballots, and all ballots cast together with theirs, counted accurately and transparently so that only legal votes determine the winners of each office contested in the midterm election,” the complaint filed then said.
“Electronic voting machines cannot be deemed reliably secure and do not meet the constitutional and statutory mandates to guarantee a free and fair election,” the pair argued.
U.S. District Judge John Tuchi, an Obama appointee, decided that their concerns were “too speculative to establish an injury in fact” and dismissed the case. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals later affirmed Tuchi’s finding.
The appeal to the nation’s highest court argues: “Although the 2022 election had not yet occurred when petitioners filed the operative complaint or when the district court ruled, a court could order ‘do-over’ relief (e.g., counting the paper ballots) in the 2022 election, as well as similar relief in future elections.”
The appeal documents were submitted just one day before Lake’s submission of over 10,000 signatures, qualifying her for the August primary ballot. Lake is a former television news anchor who has consistently targeted the media in her campaigns.
“I told the people of Arizona after that election that I would do everything I could to fight for their sacred vote, and this is just another step in that process,” she told reporters last week.
“We need to have honest elections,” she said.
Asked if her constant questions about the integrity of elections were fueling the public’s distrust, Lake chuckled and said no, telling a reporter to “open your eyes” to the way elections are now being run across the country, USA Today reported.
Last week, reports noted that Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer’s defamation lawsuit against fellow Republican Lake will proceed to trial, according to the Arizona Supreme Court.
Richer sued Lake due to her allegations that he was involved in the election tampering that she lost to Gov. Katie Hobbs in 2022. He claimed that misleading claims made by Lake and her campaign resulted in violent threats against his family and security issues.
Richer requested compensation from the court and requested that Lake take down the allegedly disparaging remarks.
Judge Jay Adelman of Maricopa County Superior Court turned down Lake’s motion to dismiss the case last year, concluding that Lake’s lawyers had not produced sufficient evidence that Richer had filed the lawsuit for an improper reason. She appealed that decision, but a panel of the Arizona Court of Appeals rejected it.
In January, Lake, who is currently a candidate for the U.S. Senate, appealed to the Arizona Supreme Court over the decision.
Advertisement
