Elections in the United States of America have become a rather sticky subject in recent years. And nowhere is more controversial than in Arizona, where GOP gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake is still fighting an election challenge from 2022.
Thanks to a recent Arizona Supreme Court decision, Lake’s challenge has been given new life. However, it seems that Maricopa County still isn’t willing to play ball and prove exactly what happened in November.
If you know much about Lake’s election challenge, it’s that she is contesting the win of current AZ Governor Katie Hobbs, and more specifically, the fact that some tens of thousands of mail-in ballots in Maricopa County alone never had their signature verified.
According to her most recent lawsuit, she alleges that the county received thousands of these mail-in ballots and then, per the word of multiple “whistleblowers conducting signature verification at (the Maricopa County Tabulation and Election Center),” Arizona law and the much needed “curing” process regarding those ballots was completely disregarded.
The law states that each and every ballot must be cured or verified by election officials contacting ballot owners to verify a few informational items or by comparing their on-file signatures with those on the ballot. But according to these whistleblowers, about 90 percent of mail-in ballots were never verified at all.
Naturally, Lake wants to first confirm that this verification never actually happened and then, depending on the outcome, possibly demand another election.
But first, she and her team need access to the verification files. And the Supreme Court, in that recent decision I mentioned above, did, in fact, determine that Lake could potentially have a real case on her hands and suggested that a lower trial court review Lake’s allegations about how the verification was or wasn’t handled in 2022.
There’s just one problem.
Maricopa County refuses to hand over its records.
As Lake tweeted, “Maricopa County Election Officials REFUSE To Allow @KariLake Legal Team To Inspect Ballot Signatures. What are they hiding?”
This means that despite the Supreme Court ruling in Lake’s favor, the county is withholding evidence. You know, kind of like how they did during the 2020 election audit.
As Lake rightfully says, “This is the smoking gun.” Thankfully, she’s “not giving up.”
