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Maricopa Attorneys File Response In Lake’s Election Lawsuit With AZ Supreme Court

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OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.


Maricopa County attorneys have responded to Arizona GOP gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake’s election lawsuit, which she brought to the state Supreme Court, arguing that her legal team has not presented any new arguments after the state Court of Appeals rejected her case a few weeks ago, The Epoch Times reports.

“Lake’s Petition utterly fails at fulfilling its limited task,” the county lawyers stated. “It does not present any argument illustrating a need for this Court to review the court of appeals’ opinion. It does not identify a single novel legal issue that this Court needs to clarify. And it does not identify any legal precedent that should be overturned or abrogated.

“Instead, the Petition is almost entirely a regurgitation of petitioner Kari Lake’s failed arguments before the trial court and the court of appeals,” they wrote.

The Arizona Supreme Court earlier this month agreed to expedite the hearing of Lake’s election lawsuit and has set a March 21 date to consider whether to accept the petition. The court will also decide during the conference whether to hear oral arguments, according to a brief order issued last week, The Epoch Times noted.

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Lake’s legal challenge was first filed with a Maricopa County court, where she claimed that problems on Election Day prevented enough Republicans from turning out to vote for her on November 8. However, Judge Peter Thompson rejected the challenge after a two-day trial in December. The Court of Appeals also rejected it two months later, stating that Lake did not provide sufficient evidence to warrant a redo of the election in Maricopa County, the report said.

Lake, who was endorsed by former President Donald Trump, lost the midterm election to Democrat Katie Hobbs by a margin of approximately 17,000 votes, according to officials. Following the Supreme Court’s decision to expedite her challenge, she took to social media and requested people to “pray for the judges.”

In her latest legal action, Lake’s team contended that Maricopa County election officials deliberately caused issues on November 8th using vote-tabulation machines, which led to delays and long lines at numerous polling locations in an attempt to suppress GOP voters. Lake also claimed that Maricopa County officials mixed unlawful ballots with legal ones.

“The evidence and testimony presented at the Arizona Senate Committee on Elections meeting on January 23, 2023, showed more than 7,000 ballots being rejected by vote center tabulators every 30 minutes from 6:00 am to 8:00 pm—totaling over 217,000 rejected ballot insertions on a day with approximately 248,000 votes cast,” said the GOP candidate’s lawsuit.

Lawyers for Maricopa County on Monday rejected all of Lake’s claims, writing: “Because all of the arguments raised in the petition for review were already thoroughly refuted in both the trial court and court of appeals, this Court should deny the petition.”

If her lawsuit is ultimately unsuccessful, Lake has a lot of options on the table, politically speaking.

Recently, she’s been asked about reports that Trump could be “seriously” considering her to be his 2024 running mate. And now, an early poll exploring the 2024 U.S. Senate election in Arizona found that Lake could win the race.

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A recent survey by Blueprint Polling found that Lake is leading by 4 points over Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego and by 22 points over incumbent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, who switched her party registration from Democrat to Independent.

“An early 2023 survey of likely general election voters illustrates that Senator Kyrsten Sinema’s path to reelection is both complicated and unprecedented. Sinema runs a distant third in a hypothetical three-way race in the general that also includes 2022 GOP gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake and Democratic Congressman Ruben Gallego,” the survey found.

“Kari Lake polls at 36% in a three-way Senate race with Gallego and Sinema. The congressman follows closely at 32% while the incumbent polls less than 14%. One in six voters are undecided. Sinema draws support from both Republicans and Democrats—she gets the vote of 15% of Biden 2020 voters and 11% of Trump 2020 voters,” the group found.

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