Kari Lake Confident as Trial to Overturn Election Ends
Former GOP candidate for governor Kari Lake is confident about her chances in court as she makes her last remaining arguments in support of her lawsuit contesting the results of the 2022 race in Arizona.
Friday marks the third and final day in the trial over Lake's claim that election officials in Maricopa County failed to perform higher-level signature verification on ballots that were flagged by lower-level screeners. Lake had brought several claims—almost all of which were thrown out by the courts—alleging that Democratic Governor Katie Hobbs did not defeat her in the midterm election. Hobbs, who was inaugurated in January, won by more than 17,000 votes.
Lake has been seen in the courtroom throughout the trial, and her Twitter accounts have actively covered the trial's proceedings while portraying her legal efforts as inching closer to victory.
On Friday, her campaign's Twitter account said, "Maricopa County's Director of Elections has just proven our case in open court."
The day before, Lake's personal account tweeted, "Today, in court, we proved how messed-up the ONLY security feature (signature verification) on mail-in ballots is."
To prove her claim, Lake must show that the signature verification allegations were not only true but also affected the outcome of her race against Hobbs.
Newsweek reached out to Lake via email for comment.
The trial, which is the second one in Lake's lawsuit, began on Wednesday. The first witness to take the stand was a former Maricopa County election worker, Jacqueline Onigkeit, whom Lake described as a "whistleblower."
During her testimony, Onigkeit said she felt pressured and "uncomfortable" during the ballot counting process because supervisors had asked her and others to re-review some of the ballots that had already been rejected. But she confirmed that she participated in signature verification to the best of her ability.
"[Supervisors] told us, 'You need to be very cautious. You need to pay attention to what you're doing and remember that whatever you reject or approve, you can be called in to testify,'" Onigkeit said on the stand.
On the second day, Maricopa County Elections Director Ray Valenzuela disputed claims made by a signature verification specialist about how quickly ballots can be verified. He also testified that signature verifiers are randomly audited for "consistency."
Although the trial ends Friday, Superior Court Judge Peter Thompson is not expected to come to a decision this week, and it may be days or weeks before his ruling.
Lake initially filed the lawsuit last December but failed to convince Thompson there were grounds to declare her the winner in a two-day trial.
Lake tried to appeal the ruling, but the state's Court of Appeals reaffirmed the lower court's decision. The lawsuit made its way to the Arizona Supreme Court, which largely agreed with Thompson but sent one claim, about signature verification, back to the lower court for reconsideration, which is what the current trial has been focused on.
