An Arizona judge ruled against Kari Lake's efforts to overturn the election outcome

• Arizona's Kari Lake lost her effort to overturn the state's gubernatorial election on Saturday.

• A judge ruled against her claims, saying she failed to prove the election outcome had been swayed by deliberate malfeasance from elections officials.

• Lake said she intends to appeal the ruling.

An Arizona judge on Saturday rejected Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake's effort to overturn her election defeat, ruling that Lake failed to prove that elections officials had intentionally engaged in misconduct, and similarly failed to prove the election outcome was swayed as a result.

Lake lost the gubernatorial election in November to Democrat Katie Hobbs by 17,117 votes, and immediately alleged that hundreds of thousands of illegal votes had been cast, swinging the election to her opponent, echoing many of former President Donald Trump's claims following his 2020 election loss.

Judge Peter Thompson said Saturday that technical issues during the Arizona election certainly caused "inconvenience and confusion" for voters on Election Day, but that Lake had not provided evidence that any of the issues were deliberately caused, and they resulted in Lake's loss.

Lake "has no free-standing right to challenge election results based on what [Lake] believes — rightly or wrongly — went awry on Election Day," Judge Peter Thompson wrote in his decision. "She must, as a matter of law, prove a ground that the legislature has provided as a basis for challenging an election."

He continued: "A court setting such a margin aside, as far as the Court is able to determine, has never been done in the history of the United States."

Lake had originally sued over the election results, citing 10 claims of various forms of election malfeasance. The judge rejected eight of them, and allowed her to proceed on two counts. That culminated in a two-day trial in Phoenix earlier this week.

On Saturday, Lake tweeted that she would appeal Thompson's ruling.

"My Election Case provided the world with evidence that proves our elections are run outside of the law," she wrote. "This Judge did not rule in our favor. However, for the sake of restoring faith and honesty in our elections, I will appeal his ruling."

The campaign manager for Governor-elect Katie Hobbs, Nicole DeMont, released a statement on Saturday praising Thompson's decision and saying Hobbs is continuing her efforts to prepare to take office.

"Last month, Arizonans made their voices heard at the ballot box. They chose sanity over chaos, and commonsense, bipartisan results over division," the statement said. "The voters of Arizona — not the conspiracy-riddled, dark corners of the Internet — are the ones who choose our leaders."

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