Comments

The Kari Lake election fraud verdict: Part I — 71 Comments

1. Neo I read but know nothing of it Kari months before the election brought up something on voting but was tossed out.
   And hasn’t there been others who bring up pre-election cases and they get tossed as nothing happened yet?
   No one is going to get a case to upset fraud voting. The Marxists are living off it and without they are done for. Their lives expect it.

2. On a practical level, until a judge allows access to the ballot envelopes, we will make no headway through the courts. It’s the only part of the process that can be verified– whether a signature matches or not and whether the signature was cured or not.

   In this case the judge threw out the complaint about mismatched signatures because he said the complaint was the about the process, not that the process hadn’t been followed. The judge said contesting the process required the suit be filed before the election.

   But that is not what the Lake lawsuit should have claimed. Initially her filing claimed:

   Her suit claimed: “Maricopa county officials also permitted the counting of tens of thousands of mail-in and drop box ballots that did not satisfy signature verification requirements.”

   But later they muddied the claim with information that questioned the process. This gave the judge the out.

   The problem is any judge that rules to allow an audit of the signature verification process will become a pariah in their community.

   The ultimate judgment the court can make is that the process of mail-in ballots is inherently flawed, and the results left to uncertainty and require a change in process.
   The philosophy of this is found in the courts overruling the legislative job of re-districting. Judges regularly rule the process is unfair to one group or another. The same could be said about the current mail-in voting system.

3. I agree with the comment that elections are easy to game and hard to police. The Dems know that. They know that election contests are exceptionally hard to win. With anonymous ballots, they know that they can get away with all sorts of cheating. There are no consequences for cheating. That’s why the Dems keep doing it and get better at it each election. No way will the Dems lose in 2024 unless something is done. Hello, President Fetterman.

   I read Tom Liddy’s brief in favor of sanctions against the Lake lawyers. It is lawfare at its worst. He makes a big deal out of the fact that Lake couldn’t prove intentional cheating. How else to explain the ballots that were one inch short? Or all the waiting in line or other chaos on election day?

   Apparently, DC Dem election lawyer Mark Elias wants $500k from the Lake campaign for something. I guess he was part of the team fighting the election contest.

   And am I right to understand that the Republicans run the elections in Maricopa County? How can this be?

   The use of sanctions in lawsuits really rubs me the wrong way. I had a complicated fraudulent conveyance case. I was up against the Nebraska’s top fraudulent conveyance lawyer. The guy threatened me with sanctions. But I talked to another former opponent and turns out this guy asks for sanctions against nearly all of his lawyer opponents! In any event, I got most of the client’s money so it was a huge win for me.

   In the Arizona case, the State wants to send a message: Don’t ever file an election contest again.

   BTW, Tough case on appeal. The trial judge made finding of facts that probably won’t be overturned unless clearly wrong. At least the AZ S. Ct is appointed and not elected.

4. For the credibility of the judiciary, the election should have been redone.

   This ruling has furthered the belief among many in two systems of justice. And the gop / right is usually on the losing side.

   It’s a big step forward this actually went to trial. That is unusual. Must judges dodge the issue with standing.

   Kari Lake got minimal help from the gop party in this lawsuit. Mike Lindell did the funding.

   Ronna Romney McDaniel blamed her for losing the election.
   https://www.newsweek.com/kari-lake-blame-losing-election-ronna-mcdaniel-suggests-1769420

   And Ronna McDaniels comments on election fraud are milquetoast. Basically we don’t dare bring up fraud, or it will make the Gop look bad.

5. Apparently the WI S. Ct. ordered an election to be redone and that case was cited by Lake’s team to the trial judge.

   Frankly, from a personal safety issue I wasn’t that surprised that the trial judge did nothing. But that’s where we are in America today. Leftwing nuts could attack the judge.

   But if the entire AZ Supreme Court orders a new election, then one judge doesn’t have to take the Left’s hate.

6. When I watched Viva Frei, the one guy said it was not necessary to prove intentionality. Merely that the issues resulted in an outcome that might have changed the actual vote.

7. I agree that the burden of proof Lake had to meet in this case was nearly impossible to meet but I don’t agree that absent such a nearly impossible standard nearly every election would be contested. The vast majority of elections don’t have anywhere near the amount of problems that occurred in Maricopa County and election rules and procedures could be fairly easily put into place that would eliminate most fraud and appearance of fraud.

   What the judge in this case is saying is that even if a preponderance of the evidence indicates fraud there is still no legal remedy. How can voters have faith in a system which would have to accept a result even if a judge decided it was most likely fraudulent?

8. Kari Lake got hit with minimal court costs. Around $30k. Hobbes was asking $500k

   https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/12/breaking-lake-v-hobbs-judge-denies-defendants-motions-attorney-fees-sanctions/

9. “What the judge in this case is saying is that even if a preponderance of the evidence indicates fraud there is still no legal remedy.”

   Not really. Preponderance of the evidence merely means “more likely than not.” The judge ruled nothing whatsoever about whether it was more likely than not that fraud occurred which changed the outcome of the election.

10. So the judge solidified the template to be followed for those wishing to rig an election.
    Just make every “irregularity” look like an honest mistake or an unforseen event; as many times as needed to produce the desired result.
    No intent, no crime, no proof of a crime. It’s just an honest mistake folks. All is well.

    What should really happen is the AZ state legislature needs to investigate voting irregularities , but apparently they have no interest in doing this. If it’s a democrat party majority, I can understand why.
    If the state legislature is republican controlled, well, in the best traditions of Mitch McConnell and Mitt Romney, they are doing what republicans do best.
    Lose.

11. They are just being “mavericks?”

12. The Lake attorney’s need to amend their complaint to make it clear they are not contesting the procedures in place, but simply the election officials didn’t follow those procedures, allowing mismatched signatures to be counted without following the procedure of curing.

13. would that it mattered, they don’t care, the process is the punishment, laches before the contest, squirrel after, of course such a dubious state of events as occurred in maricopa, and in mohave and other counties could not be countenanced, ‘but this is what democracy looks like, to these mr magoo characters like michael beschloss,

14. The writing is on the wall and it ain’t good. The left has always had the advantage because it’s far easier to tear down than build up. That our elections are close enough to enable electoral fraud to succeed… speaks volumes.

    “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.” H. L. Mencken

15. It’s very frustrating, and Republicans need to keep pushing on election integrity. Here in NC, a rogue lame duck Democrat state supreme court outlawed our voter ID law, claiming it’s “racist” in intent, which is nonsense. So the legislature will pass another one, and, we hope, override Gov. Cooper (D) who will veto it, and this time around our state supreme court will uphold the law. The state GOP focused money and effort on the judicial races over the past two cycles and it has paid off.

16. Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.

    –H. L. Mencken

    I can chuckle along with the Mencken quote, but what is the alternative — letting some elite intellectual group make the decisions?

    Unless the discussion is about pure democracy, isn’t Mencken’s quote an indictment against a Republic as well?
    _______________________

    Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.

    –Winston Churchill
    _______________________

    As usual, the story behind this quote is not straightforward. It was not original to Churchill. Churchill preceded the maxim with “It has been said…”

    https://richardlangworth.com/worst-form-of-government

17. therein lies the rub, mencken was probably a progressive, albeit a cynical one, if this is what the people really wanted, they wouldn’t game the system so deliberately, twain by contrast was probably a premature populist, up to a point, seing his disdain for the trust, the rush toward foreign engagement in the phillipines,

18. Yes. The courts are not the answer. Frankly, giving court’s the power to call a redo on an election without making the plaintiff meet a robust standard of proof would create judicial tyranny. (Try to think of a standard of proof that doesn’t require a showing of intent or a showing that the complained-of conduct changed the result of the election. Then apply that standard to Stacy Abrams’ complaints.)

    If there is an answer, it will have to come from building a large enough electoral coalition to overcome the monkey business and then make real changes while in power.

19. And what would this coalition agree to? A robust standard. Not a robust standard for what constitutes valid votes or eligible voters. Courts tend to find such robustness racist or a tool of disenfranchisement. Not like the robust standards for acceptance of signatures or the robust curing of votes or robust discerning of voter intent. I guess the coalition would agree to robust Unicorn skittles for all.

20. Mencken was a cynical ass, but not always.

21. Realistically the game is lost.

    Oh maybe not completely. But from now on every time a leftist wins a new district. The rules will begin to rapidly change to favor the left. Including outright fraud.

    Then you are stuck with little ability to oust them. They know this hence the massive efforts to modify and muddle rules once they are in power. Look at nearly anyplace they have taken hold. The institutions become monolithic in their political outlook. And they use control of media outlets and various social media to reinforce this scam. To practice viewpoint discrimination and gaslight at every turn.

    As the rules are currently constituted I highly doubt this can be beat back. Most people I think sense what is happening even if they do not grasp the entirety of it. Which is why opinion pols the last several years have all shown that a very large proportion of the electorate. Expect political violence to increase up to a new civil war.

22. Bauxite:

    If racial discrimination due to a voting rule is alleged, the standard of proof is lower and I don’t think intent is necessary either. That’s a built-in advantage for Democrats, because they regularly allege racial discrimination results from the voting security safeguards Republicans want put in place, and that’s how the Democrats sometimes win in court.

23. jakhny: I’m aware that the judge did not rule that fraud was more likely than not in this case. My point was that even if that standard had been met, it would not have been sufficient to offer a remedy. I also don’t think intent matters on whether or not a remedy should be provided. If election procedures were not followed and as a result the outcome was affected, I think there should be a revote. Incompetence should not be an excuse for a flawed election result.

    Elections are really not that complicated. Countries all over the world manage to pull them off without the problems that occurred in Maricopa County and many other jurisdictions in this country. I think that if the courts actually made election officials follow their own rules, the problems that we see in so many places would no longer exist.

24. “many commenters write to say that the GOP doesn’t care and has made little effort to fix things.”

    The issue is that if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. Where is the GOP effort at ballot harvesting or using such tactics against the Democrats?

    Mike

25. neo – I’m not sure I agree that the standard for proving alleged racial discrimination is practically lower. I think the recent NC Supreme Court case is an extreme outlier that is likely to be ignored when the new NC Supreme Court takes office in January. At the federal level, suits alleging racial discrimination because of facially neutral voting procedures have repeatedly failed. Let me know if I’m missing something.

    (Also, in another thread, I wrote that a Republican won statewide in AZ. I thought I read that the R team SoS candidate won. It looks like that candidate actually lost by a few hundred votes, so I was wrong.)

26. In the last 30 years we have gone from a high trust society to a low trust society, and this is utterly and completely due to the machinations of the PostModern Liberals. The goal is to destroy America, and they’re pretty much succeeding at it. The Right lacks the will, in general, and the overall support, more critically, to actually DO anything about that.

    Just what happens next is the “interesting” part, in the apocryphal Chinese Curse sense of the word.

    Indeed, it appears that the post-911 generation is going to be the ones who deal with things. And I’m not sure they are fully ready, and perhaps not even able, to shoulder that burden..

    *sigh*.

27. om – The Florida rules survived a judicial challenge. The Georgia and Texas rules survived a judicial challenge. Stacy Abrams’ claims in GA were thrown out. The only case I’m aware of that struck down facially neutral voting procedures was the recent NC case, which is an extreme outlier by a lame duck state supreme court that is not likely to be followed by the incoming Republican justices.

    Extreme partisan state Supreme Courts, like the outgoing NC and current PA courts are a problem. Most of the extreme state Supreme Courts, however, are elected, so they can be fixed.

    To your other point, you certainly need candidates committed to fixing the problem who aren’t going to blink when the hysterical nonsense comes from the left. The funny thing, though, is that the Republicans who have actually been battle tested on this issue are generally not Trump allies – DeSantis, Kemp. Throw Abbott in there too. Abbott really isn’t a Trump foe, but isn’t strongly associated with Trump either.

28. Bauxite:

    If extremely partisan state courts such as that of PA and NC declare safeguards against fraud unconstitutional, then election fraud might occur and elections would be less and less likely to change the makeup of the courts. So “fixing” the problem would become more and more difficult the fewer voting security safeguards there are.

    I also believe it is the case that if a state court declares a law such as voter ID unconstitutional according to the state’s constitution, then the state court becomes the court of last resort and SCOTUS doesn’t have jurisdiction over the case. So those state courts are highly important.

29. The concerned conservativeTM brings The Great Orange Whale to the party even when he isn’t in same the ocean.

    Extreme partisan state Supreme Courts, that to a concerned conservativeTM probably means a court that adheres to original intent of the Constitution.

    Regarding State cases, care to think back to PA, 2020 or the case of NC (as admitted). FL, GA, and TX are welcome outliers thus far. concerned conservativeTM seems to be ignoring the Fat Lady, the US DOJ Civil Rights Division. She will be belting out some law suits if those little states don’t toe her line.

    Yes what is needed are more coalitions of concern, nothing too extreme, certainly nothing robust. (farce)

30. MBunge –

    “Where is the GOP effort at ballot harvesting or using such tactics against the Democrats?”

    Ballot harvesting was attempted by the GoP in California. But GoP voters (at least in California) aren’t inclined to hand their ballots over to strangers who turn up on their doorstep. So instead, the California GoP put ballot drop boxes in locations that GoP voters frequent.

    The California Democrats promptly filed a lawsuit, of course (it was thrown out of court).

    Something to remember, though, is that ballot harvesting even in its non-fraudulent form natively favors the Democrats. Democratic voters generally tend to be less inclined to vote than Republican voters. And ballot harvesting is a way of making it as difficult as legally possible for someone to skip the election. So by its very nature, it will generally help the Democrats more than it will help the Republicans even if Republican voters don’t have concerns about participating in it.

    As for the Kari Lake suit, I was of the opinion that it was very unlikely that a judge would rule that Lake actually won absent the discovery of an e-mail chain implicating Hobbes herself in the fiasco. But I did expect that – given the huge number of issues – the judge would rule that the election should be re-done. At the very least, the huge number of technical issues appear to have disenfranchised large numbers of voters who apparently gave up in disgust after experiencing issues that kept their vote from being tabulated properly. At this point it’s up to the citizens of Maricopa County to make their displeasure known. Perhaps rallies held *every* night in front of the homes of the individuals responsible for conducting the elections will do the job.

31. A not insignificant segment of right-of-center online commentators seem to be of the, “GOP is always worthless, elections are always rigged, why bother with either” curmudgeon-cynic school of thought — see, for example, commentary on CFP posts. This worldview is of course self defeating and likely is stoked by Democrat trolls, but plenty of folks on the right seem to fall into the trap. I’m not sure how to fight it other than be positive and never give up the fight, but it’s frustrating.

32. ISO 9000 or it will get ugly

33. The Kari Lake case was almost certainly lost as soon as the judge declared that Lake had to show intent; as long as they didn’t intend to disenfranchise people, the election stands.

    Speaking as a voter, if not an Arizonan, I don’t much care whether the election officials were incompetent or malicious, and I don’t think the court ought be worried overmuch about it either; settle whether the voters’ intent was accurately assessed first, then you’ll have the time to determine the related-but-separate question of intent without the time-critical office selection getting in the way.

    By the by, the fiction that messed up/illegal voting rules don’t present a threat of irreparable harm can go die in a fire, screaming. No judge is going to throw out ‘properly’ cast ballots, therefore there’s no way to repair the harm.

34. Fraudulent elections only elect thugs, despots and tyrants. Once it is established in the minds of the electorate that elections are simply kabuki propaganda for the current regime, the non-violent options for real political change are reduced to almost zero.

    “But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”

    —- Thomas Jefferson, 1776

    Prepare accordingly.

35. I don’t know if I’ve said it here, but the way to make sure that we have clean elections (for values of clean) is to stop ceding election officials to the Dems. Ideally every precinct would be balanced Rep/Dem. I have been in various organizations (charities, sports, community entertainment and so on) and I have come to realize that policy and procedures may come from on high, but the implementation, or not, is at the lowest levels. I’ve actually done this a few times, since I was one of the people who did things, I decided what I wanted to happen. This may be some sort of fraud, but I never profited from it. What if you are in charge of a polling place and when you are packing up there’s a knock at the door and a bunch of people come in with baskets of mail in ballots. Nothing in your training covers this. Calling your supervisor results in “They’re all right, no chain of custody needed “. So you accept them, even though it stinks to high Heaven, or you can toss them. Proper action would be to turn them away-if every precinct manager did the same. But that would be the ideal. I am so angry that ANYONE, Right or Left could mess with our elections so and hide behind “saving our democracy “. No wonder I need blood pressure medicine.

36. No rant this time, just something I think is very funny, in regards to mail in ballots. During the 2016 Presidential election my wife received a mail in ballot from Colorado. My wife was born in Alaska and has lived here her whole life. Yet she got a ballot from CO with her name on it and the correct address-where we had lived for only 18 months. How was a mistake that accurate made?

    Oops, sorry, I guess my ranting wasn’t over.

37. I guess we know why Katie Hobbs, the secretary of state, refused to debate Lake even when trailing in the polls…

38. neo – A Republican majority Supreme Court is about to take office in NC. The PA Supreme Court’s partisan majority took office because Dems caught the R team sleeping during off year elections in 2015. The three Dem partisans elected in 2015 are up for new terms in 2025. That’s another off year election, and the PA GOP won’t be caught sleeping again. (They had better not, though all of the Trumpian nonsense in the PA GOP in 2022 doesn’t exactly inspire confidence. Mastriano for SC, or anything similar, will go down in flames and we’ll be stuck with woke judicial tyranny for another decade.)

    The hour is late, but all is not lost.

39. Put forward a bill saying ID is racist, so no longer will ANY ID be required for ANYTHING and let the Supreme Court chew on that. No more state issued marriage licenses would be one after effect. And a whole lotta bounced checks and general pandomonium. If they want chaos, we’ll give it to them.

40. om – The DOJ is limited by the federal judiciary. Garland can file baseless complaints and hold fancy press conferences every day of the week if he wants to. The whole thing is political theater. Those suits are going nowhere in federal court. Federal courts have been very skeptical of progressive “theories” on voting procedure, even before Trump and certainly after. Thankfully, Republicans like Kemp and DeSantis have learned to just ignore the noise instead of preemptively capitulating.

    Credit to Trump for his judges, but what he gives with one hand he takes away with the other. The half-dozen or so Senate seats that he’s kissed away in the last two cycles with his antics and horrible candidates really hurt. We’re headed towards a scenario now with activist progressive circuit courts of appeal and a solidly conservative Supreme Court. That is not an equilibrium that will hold. It is vitally important for the GOP to take the WH and Senate in 2024. And frankly, on judges, pretty much any Republican is light years better than pretty much any Democrat, especially now that Roe is gone.

41. You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him think…

42. Related:
    “EAC is faking certification documents”
    https://twitter.com/GAballots/status/1607194221274107904
    https://electionoversight.substack.com/p/invalid-eac-certification
    + Bonus
    https://twitter.com/themarketswork/status/1607173653246128131
    (Remember Christopher C. Krebs?)
    H/T Jeff Carlson twitter feed.
    https://twitter.com/themarketswork

43. There are two SOLUTIONS and both are simple:
    1. A law that requires any and all mail ballots to be counted FIRST before any in person votes are counted; and/or,
    2. Republicans need to mail-in and stuff drop boxes with 2 million ballots—more ballots than the population of the state. That will provide documentary proof they are fraudulent and void all such alleged votes.

44. This is how it’s done:
    “Arizona Gov.-elect Katie Hobbs demands legal sanctions against Kari Lake for election lawsuit”—
    https://justthenews.com/government/state-houses/governor-elect-katie-hobbs-demands-legal-sanctions-against-kari-lake-ariz

    File under: Electoral Transparency, Inc.

45. Moses:

    Here is a better solution.

    1. No mail in ballots allowed, other than from US Military stationed away from their homes.
    2. Only paper ballots allowed, presented in person (only after proper ID presented) at the voting venue, and dropped into “the box” directly by the voter.
    3. All vote counting is to be observed by All interested parties.

    The above is the procedure used in several nations of Western Europe; it is understood there that this is the only way to minimize and/or prevent voting fraud.

    The reason we have massive vote fraud in the USA is because one of the major political parties is supporting, promoting and FUNDING it, using any and all means – legal, illegal, intentional, “unintentional.”

    The courts are not the answer, because the vote rigging is always done in a manner that can be shown not to be “illegal” (that is, rising to the standards of what a court of law would consider illegal) or in such a way that it is very difficult if not impossible to prove.

    How does one prove that a very convenient string of “irregularities” that seem to occur EVERY election at the SAME voting venues affecting MOSTLY Republican voting districts, and that can reasonably be considered the result of innocent human error or random technical issues , is the result of intentional fraud??
    How many “coincidences” are necessary to be observed before it becomes clear that something is afoot?

    Intelligent people / agencies intent on committing fraud can always figure out a way to make it appear it is not fraud or structure the fraud in such a way that a court can always find reasonable doubt as to a claim of fraud.

    Atop of this, add that the “losing” side (e.g., the national republican party) ALWAYS agrees that the voting is on the up and up and if a Kari Lake files a suit you can rest assured the national Republican will do what they are best at; nothing at all.

    Why republican state legislatures REFUSE to look at voting procedures in their respective states is simply baffling

46. concerned conservative™ continues to bring
    The Great Orange Whale into the thread, for reasons? Has the concerned conservative™ noticed that the Federal judiciary is not a uniform impartial body? If it were such a thing shopping cases to specific circuits wouldn’t be a feature.

    That horse doesn’t want to be lea
    d, much less encouraged to drink.

47. Barry Meislin:

    Hobbs’ request for sanctions against Lake was dismissed, fortunately.

48. Expose Big Brother. Can’t beat him if we don’t even speak his name.

    America has the worst election integrity in the world. It’s deliberate. Every single honest person in the USA should say that every day. Make Democrat voters own their fraud. They are knowingly supporting fraud. They are knowingly pushing the country toward violence. Eventually, war is inevitable.

    Make the vile Democrat voters own their sh%t!

    There is no excuse for the worst integrity in the world. None. Make them own it. Make every single one of them declare their support for the fraudulent system their politicians have created. Make them say they (acknowledge in their heads) understand the violence they are fomenting.

    Big Brother is here. We can only hope to beat him by exposing him to those who support him. If we don’t do it soon, it won’t ever matter.

49. Yes, but the intimidation/propaganda aspect of it lingers (with echoes and reverberations of Jan. 6)…which is, of course, the whole point.
    (Lucky for her the judge decided to fulfill the role of a genuine judge—It could well have been otherwise.)
    I guess the point is, how many are as courageous as Kari Lake?

    File under: “How dare you believe we stole an election! Are you so perverse, so stiff-necked, so evil that you can’t find it within your soulless soul to subscribe to UNITY? You are indeed lost. We will pray for you…but meanwhile you can think about it in the confines of a quiet cell until you see the light…viz. that we stole this election fair and square and there is NOTHING you can do about it.”

50. Bauxite:

    I’m well aware of what’s happening in those states. However, the danger remains, particularly in swing states (NC is still not a really a swing state). My point remains, which is that generally, once voting rules are changed to favor the left and to favor fraud on the part of the left (which controls almost all large cities), all bets are off and things may be uncorrectable. The fact that they’re about to be corrected in NC doesn’t negate that.

51. Barry Meislin:

    Yes, Hobbs is a nasty piece of work, and definitely desirous of intimidating the opposition. In other words, a leftist.

52. Election fraud is just a small part of the fascism that rules us.

    Big Brother is here:

    – weaponization of NSA spying for partisan Democrat purposes
    – Hillary whitewash (one of many examples of weaponized Justice)
    – Russia collusion coup and abuses of power
    – impeachments
    – Twitter file censorship as part of all Big Tech message propaganda
    – Zuckerberg and Soros funding of socialist takeover in state and local offices. See also leftist billionaire group created by Soros.
    – rampant election fraud for many years
    – Covid fascism (countless examples)
    – K-12 propaganda
    – University propaganda
    – Rampant academic research fraud in all disciplines
    – News media monolith becoming full-time Pravda
    – use of federal budget to fund communist activist groups posing as charities
    – use of federal budget to provide millions of government jobs at local, state and federal levels which employ Dem foot soldiers
    – massive arming of foot soldiers in bureaucracies with ammo and weapons
    – politicization of military leadership and academies

    The takeover of America is nearly complete. They have finished preparing the foundation. The blatant stealing of elections and the imprisonment of political prisoners are late game moves.

    Most Democrats are simply fellow travelers. But Soros and his henchmen know exactly what they are doing. Obama publicly declared himself a Marxist revolutionary in college. His primary influences growing up were Soviet spies. He surrounded himself with radicals in college, in law school, and in Chicago. His mentors were radicals bent on overthrowing America who committed violent acts and tried to wage war to do so. Obama has never disavowed his radicalism or his radical associates.

    One former radical who knew Obama in college and is now a college professor explained that every former radical he knows has a story of the transformative, “come to Jesus” experience of breaking with the revolution. Obama doesn’t have such a story. He doesn’t seem to have ever had one. His behavior in office and after is consistent with someone still pushing for a radical ‘fundamental transformation’ of America.

    Most Democrat politicians are simply in it for the graft. It’s a crime family posing as a political party. This isn’t unusual. Nearly all political parties around the world are crime families. So the Democrats going along with the abuses of power and stolen elections are merely solidifying their hold on the sources of their wealth. Useful idiots.

53. An “interesting” development:
    (AKA, it’s always “interesting” when Democrats get rip-snorting righteously indignant!)
    “Democrats are on the warpath, demanding George Santos resign for inflating his past accomplishments and backstory.
    “Oddly enough, they have no desire to apply that standard to their own standard-bearer: Joe Biden.”—
    https://twitter.com/bonchieredstate/status/1607778566930042880?cxt=HHwWgMDQ9dKF_c8sAAAA
    H/T Hans Mahncke twitter feed.

54. Hobbs will be a disaster for AZ. She is already promising to reverse the school voucher program which hopefully is immune to the teachers’ union pressure. She will reverse the rather weak Ducey efforts to strengthen the border. The Maricopa County GOP is 100% McCain followers and Lake made a mistake early on by telling them she didn’t want their votes. I suspect anti-Trump malice by the McCainiancs in Phoenix. I disagree that Trump selected “horrible” candidates this election. The alternatives looked to me to be more Romneys.

55. It is hard to convince mavericks to cooperate in a concerned coalition?

    Shocked!

    Romney, another concerned conservative? No longer an extreme conservative.

56. How about an explanation about 19 inch ballots that actually meant something? Like does that mean the machine can’t read them? She pointed out weird things but proving how the voting total were inaccurate against her she did not. And I am very sympathetic to Kari Lake.

57. The 20 inch ballots wouldn’t fit in the scanner, it is alleged. No scan, no vote, sorry about that, unintentional of course. They worked so hard, and it worked. Nothing that could be proved. Move along.

58. Regarding the 19-inch ballots, I understood they were automatically thrown out (i.e., not recognized by the counting machine) because they were not standard size. In Maricopa County.
    After all, the rules is the rules…right?
    (Which means…how many votes were thrown out? Do we know? Do we care? And of course, Door #3: “Not enough to make a difference”(TM)…)
    In Maricopa County…because as far as I know this “mistake” ONLY occurred in Maricopa County (though if the Democrats were smart they would have made sure that such “mistakes” occurred in other counties as well, if in smaller numbers…and they’re plenty smart).
    I could be wrong about this. Either I didn’t understand the information I read, or I didn’t read all the information available…or not ALL the information WAS available.
    Be interesting to find out how many 19-inch ballots WERE tossed, wouldn’t it?
    Also be interesting to find out how many of THOSE that WERE tossed were for Lake. (Wwouldn’t it?)
    From what I read, from a sampling of those ballots tossed, 45% were for Lake.
    And who knows if that’s accurate?
    OTOH, what’s a measly 45% of tossed Republican ballots in the larger scheme of things? (I guess one could ask…)

59. As far as I can tell, Maricopa County violated several Arizona election laws. Even if the judge had ordered a new election because of the illegalities, would the re-do be any better? What they have there is a completely fractured electoral system.

60. Still think no matter how many laws were broke, ( just as in 2020 in the key 5 states ) no one will take on the case, they will all find a way to dismiss them.
    And as been said up thread, every time a Leftists take over its done for.

    https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/12/the_end_of_free_elections_.html

61. Kate:

    Revenge of the Maricopa County maverics.

    Nose and face, some reassembly required.

    But they showed the rest of the country! Tools.

62. om, this is so very sad. I grew up in Maricopa County. Barry Goldwater is assuredly spinning in his grave.

63. The problem with the ballot size. The 2022 election used 20″ length paper, because of the number of issues on the ballot. Previous elections have used 18″ or 19″ paper.

    From an article in October, 2022 on VoteBeat Arizona website: “This year’s ballot is the longest yet, at 20 inches. In recent years, primary and general election ballots have been 18 or 19 inches.”

    Was the mixup in paper length intentional, or incompetence?

    To get the ballot printed on 19″ paper required using the ‘print to fit’ setting on the printer, which proportionally reduces all of the text to fit on the smaller sized paper.

    The problem with that is that reduces the spacing of the registration marks on the paper that the tabulator has to see to read the ballot. The tabulator couldn’t read the ballot.

    The ballots weren’t rejected, but as I understand the testimony during the trial, the ballots were copied onto a new ballot and tabulated at the Maricopa vote center.

    So I think the ballots were eventually tabulated, just not at the precinct level.

64. Good analysis of testimony:
    https://www.uncoverdc.com/2022/12/28/the-kari-lake-decision-is-a-travesty-heres-one-reason-why/

65. Ray SoCa, according to this story, the issue was 19″ ballot images printed on 20″ paper, not fitting a 19″ ballot image on 19″ paper.

    I listened to the testimony and thought the issue was making a ballot image designed for 20″ paper fit on 19″ paper.

    The story is absolutely correct that had you used the shrink to fit setting printing a 20″ ballot image on 20″ paper wouldn’t have done anything.

    And there is no way a tabulator could read a 19″ ballot image on either 19″ or 20″ paper, and the setting would have to be like print a 95% image.

    I guess I’m going to need to watch the testimony again.

66. Disregard my comment at 7:53 pm. I re-watched the testimony.

    As the link Ray SoCa provided the issue was 19″ ballot images on 20″ paper.

    The expert witness Parihka? testified he was provided 348 ballots from six voting centers. He examined 323 ballots (ran out of time). Of those 113 were spoiled or duplicated. Of those he started to testify that 48 of those were 19″ ballot images on the 20″ paper. This was objected to and that part of his testimony was stricken.

    He then testified he examined 15 duplicated ballots (the originals) and 14 of them were the 19″ image and one was a torn ballot.
    He testified that he examined the original, which had a ballot id, but did not examine the actual duplicated ballots. He said by law the original of a duplicate and the duplicated ballot (which both would have an id sticker on them) are to be kept together (“easily relatable”) but weren’t. He testified that a Maricopa official said it would take days to find the duplicated ballot.

    He reiterated many times that the reduced ballot image could not be an accident.

    Hobb’s attorney tried to drive the point home that the duplicated ballot would eventually have been tabulated, but it is interesting that Maricopa county didn’t provide that duplicated ballot for inspection.

    He did say the paper jam problem was related to the 19″ ballot image– the machine would indicate a paper jam because of the reduced image size.

67. With regard to the accusations that “the GOP doesn’t care and has made little effort to fix things,” the problem isn’t with legislative efforts, successful or not.

    The issue is in the arena of public opinion, and the GOP’s efforts–or better put, their lack thereof.

    We’ve seen this time, after time, after time. The response to complaints about election irregularities–not from Democrats, mind, but from Republicans–is:

    “Trump lost. Get over it.”

    “Lake lost. Get over it.”

    “Candidate X lost. Get over it.”

    And that’s it. The complaints are dismissed out of hand, without even examining what is being claimed. They are publicly and instantly assumed to be baseless conspiracy theories, formed of whole cloth from the blind allegiance of brainwashed devotees who can’t conceive of their favored candidates possibly losing.

    And in so doing, these Republicans are preemptively undercutting and sabotaging any efforts they might later make to reform voting laws, because they are publicly denying that there were any problems that needed to be fixed by new legislation to begin with.

    They might “show the flag” by introducing legislation, but they’re not doing anything to rally the public behind them and get the legislation passed. They’re not even trying. It’s a half-baked job, at best.

    (The issue is only exacerbated because of the open hostility with which many of these Republicans have viewed these candidates. There are suspicions–well-founded, in my opinion–that they are deliberately overlooking and minimizing the problems in these elections, specifically because of which candidates were victimized. That the GOP “establishment,” for lack of a better term, is more than happy to meekly submit to a crooked loss, if it rids them of a politician they would rather not deal with.)

68. Here is Arizona lawyer Robert Gouveia’s analysis of Judge Thompson’s decision. It begins around minute 5 and goes for about an hour. He analyses how the testimony failed to establish the high bar set by the law and the judge.

    There is not much to hope for any success on appeal, given the nature of the malfeasance. I’m not a lawyer, but I wonder if they can argue the judge incorrectly threw out the signature verification process failing to follow the law. The judge ruled the claim Lake made was about the process not the application.
    I’ll keep harping on this. Until a judge allows access to the envelopes and the signature verification, there isn’t any actual way to prove any particular votes were invalid.

    Gouveia points to some failings of the Lake lawyer’s. Example, they never identified who was responsible for changing the printer settings.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CrXiWJNBx08

    Gouveia suggests that a lower standard of proof might help, such as “Res ipsa loquitur” (Latin: “the thing speaks for itself”) would make it easier to make a case that malfeasance throws the results into question. The problem with that is there would never be an election decided– as every election of significance would be held without a stream of legal challenges.

    The only real (and this is a pipe dream) that the courts decide the very nature of mail-in ballots is so fraught with errors– intentional or not– that the process itself isn’t fair to the voters.

69. More on the 19″ ballot images.

    Lake’s expert witness Clay Parikh examined 323 random ballots, which included 113 spoiled and duplicated ballots. 48 of them were 19″ ballot images.

    This is in stark contrast to what Maricopa officials say.

    “Ultimately, only 2,656 of the 16,724 ballots that couldn’t be scanned at vote centers on Election Day had to be duplicated in order to be tallied, according to county data.

    Somebody is lying.

    Add to that the fact that Parikh never saw the duplicated ballots, which were required by law to be kept with the ballots that couldn’t be tabulated at the precinct level, just adds to the skepticism that there wasn’t malfeasance in the election process.

    https://arizona.votebeat.org/2022/12/23/23524557/arizona-kari-lake-governor-election-small-ballots

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