Kari Lake's Legal Team got the Win that they Needed in the Arizona Supreme Court which says that they have the right to challenge the signature verification procedures in Maricopa County.
UPDATE: Maricopa County election report released as Lake, Finchem election challenges continue - April 10, 2023
Kari Lake's Attorney: This Is Not A Few Bad Signatures, But a 'Systemic Failure' In Voter Verification
Arizona Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake’s lawyer, Kurt Olsen, said that Maricopa County did not have a few bad signatures on mail-in ballots in November’s election, but an entire “systemic failure.”
Wednesday night, the Arizona Supreme Court affirmed most of the trial court’s and the Arizona Court of Appeals’ rulings in favor of Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs and Maricopa County, but did remand one of Lake’s claims — that signature verification laws for mail-in ballots were not followed by the county in 2022 — to the trial court for consideration.
The trial court had ruled in December that Lake had been too late in bringing up her claim that the county was not following proper procedures to ensure the identity of voters. She should have brought that up before the election, according to that decision.
That judge cited the doctrine of laches, which requires plaintiffs to assert rights in a timely manner, or they are barred from legal remedy.
However, in this week’s ruling, the Arizona Supreme Court disagreed. “Contrary to the ruling of the trial court and the Court of Appeals Opinion, this signature verification challenge is to the application of the policies, not to the policies themselves. Therefore, it was erroneous to dismiss this claim under the doctrine of laches because Lake could not have brought this challenge before the election.”
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Olsen told FrankSpeech.com host Emerald Robinson Thursday, “The Supreme Court did remand this case back on the issue of signature verification, which is a very, very significant issue.”
“There are literally over 100,000 ballots in question because of invalid signatures that were accepted and tabulated,” he continued.
“This is not a challenge about simply a few bad signatures. … This is about a systemic failure of the entire signature verification process, which is allowing tens of thousands of ballots with signatures that don’t match the record on file. And this is the only security feature for mail-in voting,” Olsen said.
Lake’s legal filing to the Arizona Supreme Court stated that “whistleblowers conducting signature verification at [the Maricopa County Tabulation and Election Center] came forward with the evidence that Maricopa disregarded Arizona law and allowed tens of thousands of uncured ballots with nonmatching signatures to be counted.”
“Curing” ballots involves reaching out to voters whose ballots would be rejected due to errors in order to confirm the voter’s identity.
“So the question really becomes who is mailing in all these votes with signatures that don’t match the voter signature on file? … It really goes to the heart of a critical issue for the security of mail-in voting,” Olsen said to Robinson.
In a statement issued after the Supreme Court’s ruling, Lake said, “Immediately following the election, multiple Maricopa County Elections Department officials — individuals who were involved in the signature verification process — reached out to me and urged my team to review the signatures.”
“Three whistleblowers came forward with revelations of massive failures in the signature verification process. These whistleblowers were intimately involved in the process and they allege that Maricopa County WILLFULLY ignored law and procedure,” she added.
“When we verify these allegations, there will be no doubt that this election was compromised and that its results fail to meet the standard of certainty as outlined in Arizona law.”
Click Here to Read More of this story in The Western Journal.com
