Kari Lake vows to fight on. Kyrsten Sinema must be delighted

Kari Lake, faced with yet another loss in her six-month-old election challenge, on Tuesday conce ...

Nah, just kidding.

Instead, Lake held a news conference wherein she grabbed her rhetorical sledgehammer and proceeded to bash the judge, state and county elected leaders and, of course, the media.

She also made what she called a “big announcement.”

No, not that she’s running for the Senate, though she’s thinking about it. (Oh, she’s running.)

Lake announced she plans what amounts to a get-out-the-vote drive in 2024.

You have to have evidence to win a case

“The courts just ruled that this corrupt election was fair,” a clearly angry Lake said.

“The courts just ruled that our elections can run lawlessly. The courts have ruled that anything goes.  Well, we can play by those same rules, OK? If anything goes, then anything goes.”

Actually, the judge didn’t rule that anything goes.

Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Peter Thompson, a Republican appointee, ruled that you have to have evidence to back up your claims that the election was stolen.

Long story short: Lake didn’t provide any.

Not in her two-day trial in December and not in her three-day trial last week on the lone remaining claim brought by her attorneys — that Maricopa County didn’t verify the signatures on early ballots.

Kari Lake couldn't prove what she claimed

The centerpiece of Lake’s argument was her expert’s opinion that 274,000 ballots were too quickly reviewed by elections workers, with 70,000 of them looked at for less than two seconds each.

But the judge pointed out that state law doesn’t put a time requirement on early ballot review — just that signatures must be consistent “to the satisfaction of the county recorder or his designee”.

Beyond that, Lake didn’t prove that so much as even one of those ballots was the result of fraud, much less that enough of them could be tossed out to change the outcome of the governor's race.

“Even if the Court had a basis for disqualifying 70,000 ballots under the proportional reduction method … , given the mathematical computation set forth in her Response to Defendants’ Motion to Dismiss, Plaintiff would not prevail,” Thompson wrote, in his Monday ruling.

In other words, Lake lost.

She could not make up the 17,117-vote deficit that made Katie Hobbs Arizona’s governor.

Just don’t expect her to ever accept it.

She'll launch a 'ballot chasing operation'

Instead, she held a combative press conference with a lot of talk about an election stolen from “we the people” but no acknowledgement that fully 1,287,891 of those people voted for Katie Hobbs.

Lake also announced she’s launching what she called “the largest, most extensive ballot chasing operation in our state’s history and, frankly, possibly in American history”.

Others would call it standard political strategy for any competent campaign.

You know, all the things Lake should have been doing in 2022, when she instead encouraged people not to vote by mail.

After mistakes: Why judge showed Lake's attorneys leniency

When she insulted moderates as RINOs and even told supporters of the late Sen. John McCain to “get the hell out” of one of her final campaign events.

That’s why she lost, though she and her most ardent supporters will never admit it.

“You’ve not seen the last of our case … ,” Lake vowed on Tuesday. “Because we have the best case, we have evidence …”

Somewhere, Kyrsten Sinema is smiling

Yeah, yeah. We know.

Everybody’s either corrupt or complicit because Lake didn’t win.

Never mind those 11 judges — at the trial court, the Arizona Court of Appeals and the Arizona Supreme Court — who have now looked at her complaint and found it lacking.

No doubt the supposedly stolen election will be the centerpiece of Lake’s 2024 Senate campaign, because Lake just can’t help herself.

And because election denial was such a winning message in 2022.

Somewhere, I picture Sen. Kyrsten Sinema leading the applause.

Reach Roberts at laurie.roberts@arizonarepublic.com. Follow her on Twitter at @LaurieRoberts.

Support local journalism: Subscribe to azcentral.com today.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Kari Lake refuses to say she lost. Because that worked so well in 2022