The Arizona Supreme Court on Thursday ordered a hearing in connection to GOP candidate Kari Lake’s signature verification issue, while fining her lawyers $2,000 for their claims that were made about ballots.
Previously, the court remanded one of several of her election-related claims to trial court and allowed sanctions to be considered against her. Specifically, Lake’s claim that Maricopa County violated its signature verification rules during last year’s election was allowed to proceed to trial court after it was improperly dismissed by a lower court, it was ordered.
The court fined Lake’s lawyers $2,000 for what they said were “unequivocally false” claims that more than 35,000 ballots were “injected” into Maricopa County’s total after the midterm election finished. Lake’s lawyers in March said that those ballots were added to the total at a third-party processing facility, while noting that Lake lost to now-Gov. Katie Hobbs by 17,000 votes.
“Not only is that allegation strongly disputed by the other parties, this Court concluded and expressly stated that the assertion was unsupported by the record, and nothing in Lake’s Motion for Leave to file a motion for reconsideration provides reason to revisit that issue,” the order said.
“Although Lake may have permissibly argued that an inference could be made that some ballots were added, there is no evidence that 35,563 ballots were and, more to the point here, this was certainly disputed by the Respondents,“ it added. ”The representation that this was an ‘undisputed fact’ is therefore unequivocally false.”
Lake’s attorneys said the chain of custody for ballots was broken at an off-site facility where a contractor scans mail-in ballots to prepare them for processing. The lawyers asserted that workers put their own mail-in ballots into the pile rather than returning them through normal channels, and that paperwork documenting ballot transfers was missing. Maricopa County disputes the claims.
Meanwhile, the court denied requests by Hobbs and Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, both Democrats, to seek more legal sanctions over Lake’s allegations.
“Sometimes campaigns and their attendant hyperbole spill over into legal challenges. But once a contest enters the judicial arena, rules of attorney ethics apply,” Brutinel wrote in his ruling. He denied a request for Lake to pay the legal fees for Fontes and Hobbs.
When the order was handed down, legacy news outlets like NBC News and The Associated Press focused primarily on the court having sanctioned Lake’s attorneys for $2,000 and made little mention of the trial court order on Lake’s signature verification claims. Little mention was made of the court’s order to deny requests to pay attorney fees for Hobbs and Fontes.
In mid-February, the Arizona Court of Appeals rejected Lake’s assertions, concluding she presented no evidence that voters whose ballots were unreadable by tabulators at polling places were not able to vote.
In her initial challenge, Lake focused on problems with ballot printers at some polling places in Maricopa County. The defective printers produced ballots that were too light to be read by the on-site tabulators at polling places, officials have claimed.
Lines backed up in some areas amid the confusion on Election Day, while Lake later alleged ballot printer problems were the result of intentional misconduct. County officials say everyone had a chance to vote, and all ballots were counted because those affected by the printers were taken to more sophisticated counters.
