The Maricopa County Superior Court ruled against gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake's complaint of election interference in Arizona's 2022 midterm elections, throwing out her final bid to overturn the election that she lost by over 17,000 votes.
The judge determined that Lake did not present "clear and convincing evidence or a preponderance of evidence of misconduct" to prove that there were problems with the county's application of signature verification procedures for early-voting ballots.
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"The Court DOES NOT find either clear and convincing evidence or a preponderance of evidence that such misconduct did in fact affect the result of the 2022 General Election by a competent mathematical basis," the judge ruled Tuesday. "It is ordered: confirming the election of Katie Hobbs as Arizona Governor."
Lake vowed to challenge the 2022 midterm election results all the way to the Superior Court, decrying that the election was stolen from her, a theme common among losing gubernatorial candidates backed by former President Donald Trump, who also falsely claimed many states played a role in election fraud in the 2020 election, including Arizona.
The Supreme Court had tossed out much of her appeal to the 2022 governor's race, but it allowed the signature verification challenge to go back to the Maricopa County Superior Court for consideration.
Lake presented her own signature verification expert during the court's hearing. The court determined that her witness's "analysis and preferred methodology is not law, and a violation of law is what Plaintiff [Lake] was required to demonstrate."
In her original challenge to the 2022 results, Lake focused primarily on ballot printers having problems at some polling places in Maricopa County, which is home to more than 60% of Arizona's voters.
Defective printers had produced ballots that were too faint to read by on-site tabulators, causing severe backups in lines across the county. However, Maricopa County officials frequently updated their voters and said in the aftermath that every voter had a chance to cast a ballot.
The appeals court had determined that the claim that ineffective ballots disenfranchised voters was baseless.
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Lake, like Trump, has refused to concede her loss in 2022. She went so far as to say that 2024 candidates who do not believe her election was stolen are a "big red flag." Lake has hinted that she is considering another political campaign in 2024.
A poll in April found Lake leading lawyer and former gubernatorial primary rival Karrin Taylor Robson by 28 percentage points, 38% to 10%, in a hypothetical race to become Arizona's next Republican Senate nominee. She also is reportedly on the short list of female candidates Trump is considering as his 2024 running mate.