Progress is being made on the election challenges filed by both Arizona Gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake and Attorney General candidate Abe Hamadeh.
While a Maricopa County Superior Court judge dismissed eight of the ten claims in Lake’s election contest lawsuit, an evidentiary hearing starts on Wednesday to consider the two counts he did allow to proceed: violations of ballot chain of custody and printer interference in Maricopa County.
Lake’s attorneys will have to prove misconduct and that the misconduct would have changed the outcome of the election, a high hurdle according to legal experts. Lake is behind the Democratic candidate, Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, by over 17,000 votes.
“The Court takes no position as to the evidentiary weight it will give Plaintiff’s proffered experts at trial and notes that, at trial, it must indulge all reasonable assumptions in favor of the election when weighing the evidence before it,” Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Peter Thompson wrote in the ruling.
In the Hamadeh case, Mohave County Superior Court Judge Lee Jantzen allowed four of Hamadeh’s five counts to proceed to trial. Unlike Lake, Hamadeh is not far behind the declared winner, Kris Mayes, with just 511 votes separating the two.
Hamadeh has made allegations regarding the counting of provisional votes, ballot duplication errors, and ballot adjudication errors — all of which they believe would have effected at least 511 votes, making his case the GOP’s best chance at relief from the results of the 2022 general election.
Hamadeh Hopes AG Election Challenge Will Restore Confidence For All Voters