OAN Roy Francis
UPDATED 1:22 PM PT – Friday, January 13, 2023
The Arizona Court of Appeals has agreed to expedite consideration of Kari Lake’s lawsuit which alleges that the 2022 midterm election was flawed.
In an order issued on January 9th, the court ordered a reset of the “matter for conference on February 1st, 2023.” The court has also reportedly agreed with Lake’s argument that her challenge should be handled as “a special action petition.”
According to the order, Governor Katie Hobbs (D-Ariz.) and her lawyers have until January 17th to respond and make the case as to why Lake’s challenge should be rejected.
After a Maricopa County judge had rejected her case in December, the Republican petitioned both the state’s Appeals Court and Supreme Court. Earlier this month, the Supreme Court had denied her petition, saying that the lawsuit has to go through the Appeals Court first.
Lake filed her lawsuit against Hobbs, Maricopa County supervisors, Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer, along with other officials. The lawsuit asserts that the county’s handling of the midterm election was flawed and that it had disenfranchised Election Day voters. She argued that these issues were enough to sway the election results. She had lost by around 17,000 votes.
The lawsuit also claimed that dozens of Maricopa County ballot printers had not worked properly on Election Day, resulting in votes that were in her favor not counting.
Lake had hired independent pollster Richard Baris as a witness during the trial. Baris asserted that he thinks the technological issues on Election Day disenfranchised enough votes to have altered the outcome of the contest. He claimed that the majority of Maricopa Election Day voters tended to be Republicans and that between 25,000 and 40,000 persons who ordinarily would have voted didn’t do so because of tabulator and printer issues.
Maricopa County judge Peter Thompson had thrown out her lawsuit saying that she did not produce enough evidence to support her claims in December, although he ruled that Lake should not be sanctioned and fined to pay thousands of dollars.
A court date for Lake’s challenge has been reportedly scheduled for March.