Lake loses suit over her defeat in Arizona governor’s race

A judge has thrown out Lake's challenge of her defeat in the Arizona governor's race, rejecting her claim that problems with ballot printers at some polling places were the result of intentional misconduct.

Judge Peter Thompson, who was appointed by former Republican Gov. Jan Brewer, found that there was not enough evidence to support Lake's allegations. She said in a statement that Lake would appeal.

The judge said that Lake's witnesses didn't know about the wrongdoing.

The court can't accept speculation or conjecture in place of clear and convincing evidence.

Lake made the centerpiece of her campaign, which was to promote former President Donald Trump's election lies. Lake has not conceded even though most of the other election deniers around the country did. She asked the judge to either declare her the winner or order a revote in one of the state's most populous counties.

Setting aside the results of an election has never been done in the history of the United States.

The judge said that the court's duty isn't just to incline an ear to public outcry. It is to bring the claims and actions of the defendants to the attention of the court.

Problems with ballot printers were the focus of lawyers for Lake. There were ballots that were too light to be read by the tabulators. The lines were backed up in some places.

Everyone had a chance to vote and the ballots affected by the printers were counted, according to county officials. The root cause of the printer problems is being investigated.

The chain of custody for ballots was broken at an off-site facility where a contractor scans mail ballots to prepare them for processing. They claimed that workers at the facility put their own mail ballots into the pile, rather than sending them through normal channels. The county disagrees.

Lake had to prove that the wrong woman was declared the winner in order for her to win.

Her attorneys pointed to a witness who looked at the ballots for her campaign and found that 14 of them had 19-inch (48-centimeter) images of the ballot printed on 20-inch paper. The witness said someone changed the configurations of the printers.

The ballot images were smaller due to a shrink-to-fit feature being selected on a printer by a tech employee who was looking for solutions to Election Day issues The ballots that were affected by the feature being turned on were duplicated so that the tabulator could read them. The ballots were counted.

A person who takes public opinion polls testified on behalf of Lake that technical problems at the polls would have changed the outcome of the race if they had been fixed. An expert who was called to testify by election officials said there was no evidence to back up the pollster's claim that tens of thousands of people didn't vote because of Election Day problems.

A witness for Lake said that people who had their vote rejected by tabulators could still cast a ballot and have it counted.

The judge said that the printer failures didn't affect the results.

Thompson had dismissed some of the claims. Lake accused the secretary of state and the county recorder of censoring social media posts with election misinformation in order to get them removed from the site. She had claimed that mail-in voting procedures are illegal and that she had been discriminated against.

On January 2, the new governor will take office.

The judge dismissed the challenge of the results in the attorney general race. The court concluded that there were no errors in the vote count that would have made a difference.

There will be a court hearing on Thursday to present the results of the recounts.