Appeals Court says Kari Lake isn't entitled to rerun of election she lost

Nor is Lake entitled to a new trial, the judges said, to present evidence she claims was unavailable the first time she went to court to challenge her election loss to Democrat Katie Hobbs.

The judges acknowledged there are legal procedures to resurrect a case, even after a judge has ruled, such as whether evidence was available at the time. But they said Lake’s claims don’t fit any of the requirements.

And in one case, they noted, Lake did have the evidence at the time of the trial, which she claimed would show misconduct in the handling of the election — but she didn’t present it because her expert didn’t have time to study it.

“The rule does not provide relief for one who possesses documents at the time of an election contest, but does not have the time, for whatever reason, to analyze them,’’ wrote appellate Judge Sean Brearcliffe.

He also said even if there was misconduct — something the court is not deciding — Lake didn’t show how any of that interfered with her ability to present her claims in court.

Lake claimed some ballots produced on Election Day at vote centers in Maricopa County were printed at the wrong size, which her expert witness said could have affected 8,000 or more ballots by making them unreadable to the on-site tabulators.

A trial judge rejected her assertion that 8,000 “affected’’ votes somehow translated into 8,000 uncounted ballots.

But Brearcliffe said that’s just part of the problem with Lake’s arguments.

“Perhaps most important, the vote differential between Lake and Hobbs in the election was over 17,000 votes,’’ he wrote. “Even if 8,000 uncounted votes had all gone to Lake, it would have been insufficient to overcome this differential.’’

There was no immediate response from Lake or either of her attorneys.

She can still seek Arizona Supreme Court review.

But Lake, now running in the Republican primary election for U.S. Senate against Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb, also appears to be looking beyond state courts, where she has been continually rebuffed. Brearcliffe noted that Lake, in court documents, also argued she can file suit in federal court alleging civil rights violations.

In arguments to the state appellate court, Lake’s attorneys contended she should get a do-over because of a series of acts by Maricopa County officials.

These included her claim they did unannounced tests on vote-counting equipment and knew equipment would fail on Election Day, and that the printer problems triggered long lines at polling places.

Her attorney Kurt Olsen argued those lines led many voters, more likely than not to be Republicans, to leave without voting.

Olsen also resurrected claims, rejected by a trial judge, that the county election officials did not properly compare the signatures on early ballot envelopes with samples they had in their files. He argued it was physically impossible for election workers to review as many signatures as they did each minute.

But Brearcliffe said Lake and her attorneys presented no evidence that those doing the signature verification had to follow a specific process nor to take any specific amount of time. Instead, it came down to an election worker determining either that signatures corresponded or, if they didn’t, sending them to a process where the issue could be resolved through a phone call to the voter.

He also said the trial judge was free to conclude the testimony of county election officials about verification was “more credible’’ than that of Lake’s witness.

“In any given election a questionable or even outright fraudulent signature may slip through, and some may have slipped through here,’’ Brearcliffe wrote. “But Lake did not show that the applicable signature verification procedures were not performed, let along that non-performance affected an outcome-determinative number of votes.’’

Even if this case goes away, eventually, Lake still has legal issues.

Key among them is a defamation case filed against her by Republican Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer based on her statements claiming he “sabotaged’’ the 2022 election by having ballots printed in the wrong size and that he illegally inserted more than 300,000 phony ballots into the system.

Lake agreed in March to have a default judgment entered against her, essentially admitting she defamed Richer.

But Lake has claimed that was a strategic move as it now forces Richer to prove he was financially harmed. That fight continues to play out in Maricopa County Superior Court.