A three-day trial is scheduled to begin Wednesday over the only remaining legal claim challenging Republican Kari Lake’s loss to Democrat Katie Hobbs six months ago in the Arizona gubernatorial race.
The former television host was among the most vocal Republican candidates of the past year who promoted former President Donald Trump’s election lies, which he made the centerpiece of his campaign.
While most election deniers across the country conceded after losing their races in November, Lake did not. He lost to Hobbs by more than 17,000 votes.
The courts have dismissed most of his lawsuit, but the The Arizona Supreme Court revived a claim challenging the implementation of early ballot signature verification procedures in Maricopa County, home to more than 60% of the state’s voters.
Superior Court Judge Peter A. Thompson said in a failure on monday that Lake alleges that Maricopa County officials failed to perform any higher-level signature verification on mailed ballots that had been flagged by lower-level inspectors for any inconsistencies. Lake’s lawyers say they are challenging all levels of signature verification.
Three workers at lower-level signature verification who filed statements in court on Lake’s behalf said they experienced rejection rates due to mismatched signatures on 15% to 40% of the ballots they found.
Lawyers for Arizona election officials said the workers’ speculation about the signature verification efforts does not amount to a violation of the law or poll worker misconduct, and raised questions about whether the three workers would be able to know the result. of the specific ballots they had marked.
Lake does not question whether the voter signatures on the ballot envelopes match those on their voting records.
In a ruling Monday night, Thompson refused to dismiss Lake’s claim.
Lake faces a major challenge to prove not only his allegation about signature verification efforts, but also that it affected the outcome of his career.
County officials say they have nothing to hide and are confident they will prevail in court.
Lake’s attorneys say there was a rush of mail-in ballots in Maricopa County at a time when there were too few workers to verify ballot signatures. His attorneys say the county eventually accepted thousands of ballots that had previously been rejected by workers for mismatched signatures.
In reviving the claim, the Arizona Supreme Court reversed a lower court decision that found Lake waited too long to bring it up.
Earlier in his lawsuit, Lake had focused on problems with ballot printers at some polling places in Maricopa County. Faulty printers produced ballots that were too light to be read by on-site tabulators at polling places. Lines built up in some areas amid the confusion. Lake alleged that the problems with the ticket printer were the result of intentional misconduct.
County officials say everyone had a chance to vote and all ballots were counted because those affected by the printers were taken to more sophisticated counters at the polling place.
In mid-February, the The Arizona Court of Appeals rejected Lake’s claimsconcluding that it did not present evidence that voters whose ballots were unreadable by the tabulators at the polling places could not vote.
The following month, the state Supreme Court declined to hear almost all of Lake’s appeal, saying there was no evidence to support his claim that more than 35,000 ballots were added to the vote total.
Earlier this month, the court fined Lake’s lawyers $2,000 for making false statements that more than 35,000 ballots had been improperly added to the total count.
The trial that begins Wednesday will be the second to be held in Lake’s election challenge.