Arizona SCT reverses dismissal of Lake’s signature matching claim

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This is a BFD

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I’ve heard this for 6 years.

So we finally have a state Supreme Court with some balls?

This is kind of a big deal.

We might now see enough come out to force Hobbs to resign (fat chance, I know) or prompt AZ residents to recall her (assuming AZ has that provision).

I just want discovery on fake ballots, and a day in court on that issue alone, especially B4 the 2024 election.

This is a big deal, and a big chance. Lake’s lawyers must bring their AGame

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This is a BFD

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Hope so, we shall see.

I'm old enough to remember that mail-in voting usually has a 5-10%+/- rejection rate for issues with ballots but has magically dropped below 1% in Arizona (and other states) in 2020 and 2022...

Lake's suit was on seven different charges, the state supreme court upheld six.

The one it didn't uphold was the charge that Maricopa County did not follow signature verification procedures. Both county and appeals courts "somehow" (nudge-nudge-wink-wink) interpreted this as applying to the policies themselves, not how the policies were applied in 2022, and dismissed her claim based on grounds that she filed her legal challenge too late (I think the county court purposefully tried to interpret it poorly and the appellate was just being lazy).

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Lake's claim invokes a section of Arizona law that requires signatures on early ballot envelopes be checked against the signature already in a voter's file, and sets the process and timeline for verifying, or "curing," a ballot if the signature doesn't appear to match. She claimed Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer's office accepted "a material number" of ballots with unmatched signatures last year.

The Supreme Court did not evaluate Lake's signature claim on its merit, only on the legal justifications offered by prior courts. The court's order requires Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Peter Thompson to evaluate that single element of Lake's case again to determine if the claim was properly dismissed previously, or if Lake can prove “votes (were) affected ‘in sufficient numbers to alter the outcome of the election.’”

The Supreme Court quoted the appeals court ruling, saying that to prove her claim, Lake must provide a “competent mathematical basis to conclude that the outcome would plausibly have been different, not simply an untethered assertion of uncertainty.”

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LINK

So to my non-lawyer reading of this... she will have to first prove that Maricopa County violated the validation law. Once proven, I guess then she would need to prove how many individual infractions there were. In that case, does she get to subpoena signature files and validation records from Maricopa County?

We've seen the County basically stonewall to the point where it becomes obvious they are really saying "frick off". I wonder if we see that again?

About time a court stepped up