More on Kari Lake’s election challenge trial
There’s another fairly comprehensive summary of the proceedings at Powerline.
To me, it seems pretty obvious that this lawsuit by Lake inevitably suffers from the built-in handicap of all such suits, which is that proof is well-nigh impossible. The type of election fraud lawsuit that tends to succeed is one in which the alleged fraud is on the micro level: for example, such-and-such person submitted three ballots instead of one.
But that’s not of great import in the scheme of things in terms of election outcome, although it needs to be prosecuted in order to serve as discouragement to and punishment for the behavior. In contrast, although the sort of large-scale fraudulent behavior that Lake is alleging seems very plausible, and her lawyers have amassed a lot of evidence that it probably occurred, they cannot prove it for the very same reasons that it’s possible and perhaps even likely that it happened in the first place: for example, chain of custody problems plus a ridiculously unwieldy and complex set of procedures that seem far more bizarre than in most states. The secret ballot adds to all of this difficulty in proving anything, because the number of votes lost for candidate A versus candidate B cannot be reconstructed after the fact.
The election process needs to be made more secure and more simple. Until and unless this is done, these problems will recur. With voting, an ounce of prevention is worth ten thousand tons of cure, because there is no effective cure possible in court after the fact – unless this court really really surprises me. Courts don’t want to undermine faith in the process by invalidating it, but faith in the process is already undermined by learning about the vulnerabilities inherent in the process itself.
“Easy to game; hard to police.” That’s a comment someone made at Power Line.
I was so impressed with Clifford’s posts that I looked him up. Turns out he was a year ahead of me in both undergrad and law school at Creighton. We were both on Law Review, but I never met him.
Lake’s expert made a good case that the fraud did cost her the election. It really comes down to a question of how much courage the district judge has. In today’s world, the Dems will go crazy if he rules for Lake. His personal safety would be at risk.
I’m not sure that undermining faith in our institutions is not an object of the left. If you trust no one, then your side, even if you don’t trust them, keeping and holding power is an absolute priority. There is nothing else but the party.
The election process needs to be made more secure and more simple. Until and unless this is done, these problems will recur. With voting, an ounce of prevention is worth ten thousand tons of cure, because there is no effective cure possible in court after the fact
I agree. But that said, I highly doubt anything will change specifically in Maricopa County with regards to securing and simplifying the process. Although it is predominantly politically a Conservative county, whomever is currently holding the levers of power in terms of managing the elections is fairly corrupt. Or at least they’ve convinced themselves that stopping the election of Kari Lake (and by extension Trump, I guess?) is for The Greater Good™. Who knows? They may even consider themselves True Conservatives.
This odd size ballots to me is something important. Now either fraudulent to make people think they are voting but knew they could be chucked out or fake to try and get past scrutiny but either way not official ballots.
Nonapod:
Agreed.
In Arizona, there may be a lot of holdover McCain allies in power, who hate Trump and all his supporters.
“Courts don’t want to undermine faith in the process by invalidating it, but faith in the process is already undermined by learning about the vulnerabilities inherent in the process itself.”
Sounds like Oz…Once you begin to suspect that there’s no “great & powerful” just a “very bad man” pulling the levers & giving orders…You can never go back to believing that the system really will work itself out in the end.
And once you start to suspect that those “vulnerabilities” are put there intentionally…well then the game’s really on because soon enough you know you can’t vote your way out of the messes.
This level of poor system design and frank incompetence are hard to comprehend.
Kate,
Or it is excellent system design and highly competent operatives, whose goal is to subvert the democratic process. That may not be Occam’s razor, but it is more believable to me.
Meanwhile in Harris County, TX; the appointed Election Administrator counted 64,259 mail-in ballots, but the county’s official reconciliation report shows only 54,952 mail-in ballots were returned.
Leland…AYFKM!!
I don’t doubt your veracity…but do you have a link to that?
Neo: I don’t think it was “problems.” I believe it was intentional to keep Lake out of office.
An independent poll had her up 11 points eight days before the election. There were no blockbuster revelations between the poll and election day. It is hard to believe she lost as a result of unintentional “problems.”
If the Maricopa County situation isn’t intentional (and it looks like it is), it’s certainly contrary to Arizona election law in several respects. People should be fired and possibly prosecuted.
I believe prosecutions and jail sentences are a necessary part of the solution. But to the extent that Neo is correct about the inevitable failure of ferreting out the fraud after the fact, it’s not going to happen in any bulk sense. (Many people have been convicted for such things over the years, but the number of fraud votes involved is not substantial. And the sentences vary from very modest to near zero, which I think is scandalous.)
I’d like to think that there is some super clever, techie solution to that “ferreting out” problem, but that’s more of a hope and a wish at this point.
Given what I read about the Maricopa election problems early on, at the very least the results should be thrown out and a new election called in that county. And if that were to happen, it should be done under the auspices of a court-ordered group, and not the utterly incompetent (if you’re feeling charitable) individuals who have run it since at least the 2020 election.
That would get around the issue of, “Well we can’t be sure that a free and fair election would have gone for Lake.”
link to that
Mike Smith:
“Problems” can be intentional or unintentional. I tend to think in this case it was intentional.
No more certain design exists to destroy a republic than to convince a majority of its citizens that voting is a meaningless exercise in futility.
Thanks Leland.
Holy freaking moly.
Necks need stretching.
My worry is that if Hobbs becomes Governor, there will be no further tightening up of the election requirements here in AZ, and in particular, Maricopa County. She could, and no doubt would, veto anything along those lines, thereby guaranteeing her reelection. And with a Dem governor, I expect to ultimately get a Dem Sumpre Court here in AZ, which will entrench the election fraud, and thus, Dem power, for the foreseeable future.
I liked the Lake Complaint, and do fault the judge in tossing out so many of her claims. It shouldn’t take proof that there was intentional fraud involved – just that the election faults made it impossible to prove that the election was accurate. That the level of fraud, misfeasance, and malfeasance was higher than the margin of victory. For example, no audit trail of the mail in votes, should have resulted in throwing out all mail in votes. That’s what is called for under AZ law, but is what the Dems (and McCain GOPe) can’t allow to happen. Looking at the amount of fraud, malfeasance, and misfeasance involved, it is likely that the Dems probably stole well over a half million votes, or more in this election, as they did in 2020.
I think that
Appears judge threw out case
No one wants to be the one opening the can elections are fraught with fraud and are useless
By not opening up this can of worms on an election that was blatantly manipulated and was shown the results can’t be trusted, the judge has opened another can of worms. That the judicial system ignores election fraud, and can’t be trusted to be fair, impartial, and show courage on conservative issues.
And it’s shown the eGOP is a bunch of back stabbers, especially the ones in charge of the Maricopa Elections.
The result has further alienated and inflamed the majority of gop voters from the eGOP.
I hope this level of fraud, censorship, propaganda, lying, and intimidation is stopped.
I’m glad the case actually went to trial. That is a huge step. And who knows, may be in appeal it will succeed. My guess is the judge deliberately chose the allowed items for trial, that had an impossible hurdle to them of requiring if deliberate fraud. And without a confession, the outcome was preordained.