Attorneys for Lake, Maricopa County spar in court over ballot envelope signatures

Lawyers for Maricopa County argued in court Friday — almost six months to the day after Gov. Katie Hobbs was declared the winner of the November election — that a judge should dismiss a final claim in former gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake's challenge to her loss.

Hobbs' legal team, as well as those representing the county and Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, appeared in a Mesa courtroom and via live feed to ask Superior Court Judge Peter Thompson to dismiss Lake's claim about ballot envelope signatures without hearing evidence during a trial tentatively set for next week.

Lake has not conceded the race and continues her effort to convince a judge to declare her the governor of Arizona or order Maricopa County to re-do the election. She did not attend the court hearing Friday.

Lake's lawyers attempted to reopen part of their case that had already been dismissed several times, claiming they had new relevant evidence the election was "rigged."

The hearing, which ran about 90 minutes, ended without an immediate decision from Thompson, who is expected to rule in the coming days.

It highlighted Lake's ongoing adherence to claims that election malfeasance cost her the election. It comes as Lake is weighing her political future, including a bid for a U.S. Senate seat, in which her opponents likely would make false claims of election fraud a central focus, as Hobbs did.

The legal teams were back in court because the Arizona Supreme Court found Thompson previously used incorrect legal reasoning when he dismissed the ballot envelope signature claim in December. The state's top court agreed with Thompson and an appeals court on six other issues, dismissing them and affirming Hobbs' victory.

A trial is tentatively set for Wednesday, if Thompson finds no reason to dismiss the case before then.

Motions to dismiss

Attorneys for Hobbs, Fontes and the county each argue that Lake's claim that Maricopa County counted enough ballots with inconsistent signatures it changed the outcome of the election is based only on speculation and a flawed analysis of signatures from the 2020 election two years prior.

"Data and allegations about an entirely different election provide no basis whatsoever to claim or assume deficiencies in this election," Hobbs' attorney, Abha Khanna of the prominent Democratic firm Elias Law Group, argued via live feed.

Lake's attorney Kurt Olsen said the 2020 analysis corroborates the observations of three election workers who helped verify signatures that thousands of ballots with inconsistent signatures were counted.

Deputy County Attorney Joseph La Rue said those eyewitnesses were raising allegations based on belief, not facts, and that they could not be relied upon because they were just the first step of a multi-step signature verification process. They could not know whether further analysis deemed a signature match, he said.

Lake has not looked at any signatures from the 2022 election, which will make her ability to prove her claims a challenge. The Arizona Supreme Court set the bar for Lake to win her case on the remaining count, based on a "competent mathematical basis to conclude that the outcome would plausibly have been different, not simply an untethered assertion of uncertainty.”

Another attempt to tackle tabulator issues

Lake's lawyers, who were sanctioned earlier this month for lying in court, made a bid at reopening part of Lake's case based on what they said was new evidence about Maricopa County's testing of ballot tabulators. Lawyers for the county argued it is too late for Lake to make such an argument.

Thompson previously heard testimony in December on the claim that Lake is trying to now revive, that the county's ballot-on-demand printer issues on Election Day were caused intentionally and changed the outcome of the race. He dismissed it — and was affirmed by the appeals and Supreme Courts in doing so — finding no evidence of misconduct that influenced the election.

"This evidence would support our allegation that the election was rigged," Olsen told the judge, arguing that Thompson should allow Lake's team to present public records he claimed would show the county secretly tested ballot tabulators before the election and knew they would fail on election day.

La Rue rebutted the veracity of the claim, which he said showed only that the county did its job to test tabulators. He argued Olsen was trying to make a new argument as to tabulator testing, and that should not be allowed since the case has already woven its way through several layers of legal appeals.

"And finally, your honor, I just want to say on behalf of Maricopa County and the Maricopa County recorder, the assertion that this election was rigged is offensive, and it's untrue," he said.

Hobbs, a Democrat, was declared the winner of the Governor's Office on Nov. 14, becoming the state's 24th governor by a margin of 17,117 votes, or less than 1 percentage point, over Lake.

Reach reporter Stacey Barchenger at stacey.barchenger@arizonarepublic.com or 480-416-5669. Follow her on Twitter @sbarchenger.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Ariz. judge hears arguments in Kari Lake's final 2022 election challenge