An Arizona judge has ruled that two out of the ten claims, brought by Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, are going to trial. Lake is challenging the victory of Democrat Governor-elect Katie Hobbs.
Maricopa County Superior Judge Peter Thompson dismissed eight out of ten counts in Lake’s election lawsuit, ruling they didn’t meet the required criteria to bring election challenges under Arizona law.
Judge Thompson, however, ruled on two counts that involve printers malfunctioning on Election Day and ballot chain of custody may go to trial. Lake posted on her Twitter account: “BREAKING: Our Election Case is going to trial. Katie Hobbs attempt to have our case thrown out FAILED. She will have to take the stand & testify. Buckle up, America. This is far from over.”
BREAKING: Our Election Case is going to trial. Katie Hobbs attempt to have our case thrown out FAILED. She will have to take the stand & testify.
Buckle up, America.
This is far from over. pic.twitter.com/291EnXPP3U— Kari Lake (@KariLake) December 20, 2022
Kari Lake has claimed the printers that malfunctioned on election day were not certified and were vulnerable to hacking attacks. She also stated there was intentional action taken to cause malfunctions in the printers and prevent votes from being counted.
Judge Thompson stated in his ruling that Lake must prove in the subsequent trial that there was tangible interference with the printers in violation of Arizona law. The alleged interference must be proven to have caused Lake to lose votes, affecting the outcome of the election.
Regarding the chain of custody issue, Lake has claimed that employees violated various election protocols such as adding ballots of family members and failing to secure an “inbound receipt of delivery”. Judge Thompson stated whether Maricopa county abided by its protocol is not necessarily a legitimate legal dispute.
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Kari Lake lost the gubernatorial race by approximately 17,000 votes, a very thin margin in a state-wide election. She has indicated that these issues on Election Day drastically affected the outcome of the race. Lake has indicated her team will explore every legal avenue to overturn the results.
Lake recently gave an interview to Tucker Carlson where she commented on the status of her legal challenges:
“The Election Day voting was sabotage and that’s what our case is going to prove. It’s a 70-page lawsuit that reads like a real crime novel. And it’s shocking what they did. The man who runs Maricopa County elections, ran a PAC he actually started a PAC raising 1000s of dollars to defeat me and he’s running our elections and then my opponent oversees all the elections in Arizona. It was a conflict of interest and not only was Katie Hobbs working with big tech to censor people, the man who runs Maricopa County elections, they were also censoring people as well online.”
Lake further proclaimed:
“We’re ready to go with what we believe to be an exceptional lawsuit. And we believe we will be victorious in that lawsuit. We’ll take it all the way to the Supreme Court if we have to. We will not stop fighting.”
A two-day trial is set to take place before January 2. If the results of the gubernatorial race are not affected by the litigation, Katie Hobbs will be inaugurated in a January 5 ceremony.