An Arizona decide threw out a lawsuit filed by Kari Lake over her defeat in final 12 months’s race for governor, ruling that she had didn’t show that the state’s most populous county, Maricopa, had uncared for to assessment voters’ signatures on mail-in poll envelopes.
The choice, issued late Monday, is the newest authorized setback for Ms. Lake, a Republican who was backed by former President Donald J. Trump in one of many nation’s most outstanding governors’ races in 2022.
Throughout a three-day bench trial final week in state Superior Court docket in Maricopa County, Ms. Lake’s legal professionals argued that election employees labored too shortly to correctly assessment 300,000 signatures that accompanied mail-in ballots.
However in a six-page decision, Choose Peter A. Thompson wrote that the method had complied with state regulation, which requires signatures to be in comparison with ones in public voter information, however doesn’t embody particular pointers for a way a lot time a employee should spend on every poll.
“Plaintiff’s proof and arguments don’t clear the bar,” he wrote, including: “Not one second, not three seconds, and never six seconds: No customary seems within the plain textual content of the statute.”
At a information convention on Tuesday in Arizona, Ms. Lake mentioned that she would attraction the ruling and that her legal professionals have been exploring varied pathways ahead.
“We will’t belief the buffoons operating our elections in Maricopa County anymore,” she mentioned, later including, “You’ve not seen the final of our case.”
The case was the newest in a string of courtroom losses over the election for Ms. Lake, who has claimed, with out proof, that mail-in voting compromises election integrity. Different claims in her lawsuit had beforehand been rejected by the courtroom.
Ms. Lake has recommended she could run for workplace once more. This 12 months, she mentioned she was contemplating a run for the U.S. Senate seat at the moment held by Senator Kyrsten Sinema, who left the Democratic Party in December to develop into an impartial.
Clint L. Hickman, the chairman of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, which helps oversee elections within the county, praised the decide’s choice in a statement on Monday.
“Wild claims of rigged elections could generate media consideration and fund-raising pleas, however they don’t win courtroom instances,” he wrote. “When ‘bombshells’ and ‘smoking weapons’ should not backed up by info, they fail in courtroom.”
