OPINION | This article contains the author's opinion.
Republican Kari Lake has made her next major move by filing a brief at the Arizona state Supreme Court.
Lake says there are 35,563 unaccounted-for ballots that showed up in Maricopa County’s final total in November’s election.
The Arizona Supreme Court recently ruled that signature verification laws for mail-in ballots were not followed by the county in the 2022 election to the trial court for consideration.
This specific number is significant because it exceeds Hobbs’ approximately 17,000 vote margin of victory.
Lake’s brief states, “The record indisputably reflects at least 35,563 Election Day early ballots, for which there is no record of delivery to Runbeck, were added at Runbeck, and that this issue was properly raised.”
“Not only should Respondents’ request for sanctions be denied, but Lake respectfully requests leave of the Court to treat this response as a motion for reconsideration of the Court’s denial of review on this chain-of-custody issue,” it continues.
“[T]he number of early ballots recorded on the Runbeck Receipt of Delivery forms dated November 8-9, 2022, totaled 263,379 ballots,” Lake’s brief added.
“Maricopa admitted in its answering brief on appeal that instead of counting each ballot when the secure ballot transport containers were opened at MCTEC as required by the [Election Procedure Manual], on Election Day, Maricopa simply sorted the early ballots, placed them in mail trays, and delivered them to Runbeck to be scanned and counted.”
“Thus, Maricopa readily admits not knowing precisely how many ballots were transferred to Runbeck on Election Day, November 8, 2022 through November 9, 2022.”