Kari Lake effort to force hand counts of all ballots in AZ rejected by court

A federal appeals court has reaffirmed the dismissal of a lawsuit seeking to bar the use of voting machines in Arizona that was filed last year by Kari Lake and Mark Finchem, two Republicans who lost their bids for statewide office in 2022.

The ruling comes from the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals after the duo chose to appeal a federal judge’s earlier ruling that called the case “frivolous” and ordered the two to pay $122,000 in sanctions.

“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 court said in its opinion. Lake has filed multiple lawsuits since losing her bid for governor last year, though this lawsuit seeking to ban the use of electronic voting machines — including the electronic tabulators that count millions of ballots every election — was filed months before voters headed to the polls in 2022. There is no evidence of widespread election fraud and the state uses all paper ballots, not voting machines.

An attorney representing Lake and Finchem previously admitted in court that the Republicans had no evidence to support their claims that tabulation equipment or any voting equipment in the state had been hacked. Tabulators in Arizona are not connected to the internet and paper ballots are used across the entire state.

The court agreed with the previous judge’s ruling that “speculative allegations that voting machines may be hackable” was not sufficient enough to win the case. The opinion also notes that the attorneys for Lake and Finchem were sanctioned “in part” for “misrepresentations about Arizona’s use of paper ballots.”

“Their operative complaint relies on a ‘long chain of hypothetical contingencies’ that have never occurred in Arizona and ‘must take place for any harm to occur,’” the ruling by the three-judge panel said. “This is the kind of speculation that stretches the concept of imminence ‘beyond its purpose.’”

Both Finchem, a former state legislator who ran for secretary of state, and Lake have faced sanctions in multiple cases they have brought, including over $100,000 in sanctions for a case brought in “bad faith” by Finchem and other Republicans that alleged defamation.

For the case involving both Finchem and Lake, a separate panel of judges is currently deciding their appeal of the $122,000 in sanctions.

Lake is currently running for the U.S. Senate and Finchem, who used to represent the Tucson area in the legislature, is eyeing a bid for the state Senate in a Prescott-based district.