PHOENIX (AP) — The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to consider a request from Republican U.S. Senate candidate Kari Lake to ban the use of electronic vote counting machines in Arizona.
Lake and former Republican candidate for secretary of state Mark Finchem filed a lawsuit two years ago, repeating unfounded claims about the security of the machines that count votes. They relied in part on testimony from Donald Trump supporters who led a discredited review of the Maricopa County election, including that of Doug Logan, the CEO of Cyber Ninjas, who oversaw the effort described by supporters as a “forensic audit.”
U.S. District Judge John Tuchi in Phoenix ruled that Lake and Finchem lacked standing to sue because they failed to demonstrate a realistic likelihood of harm. He then sanctioned their lawyers for filing a complaint based on frivolous information.
When the lawsuit was initially filed in 2022, Lake was running for governor and Finchem was running for secretary of state. They have made baseless claims of voter fraud a centerpiece of their campaigns. Both lost to Democrats and challenged the results in court.
Lake is now the Republican Party’s front-runner for the U.S. Senate in Arizona, where she has at times tried to reach out to establishment Republicans turned off by her focus on allegations of fraud in past elections. Finchem is running for state Senate.
Lawyers for Lake and Finchem argued that hand counting is the most efficient method for tabulating election results. Election administrators testified that manually counting dozens of races on millions of ballots would require an extraordinary amount of time, space and manpower, and would be less accurate.
The Supreme Court’s decision not to rule on the vote count marks the end of efforts to require a manual count of ballots. No justice dissented when the court rejected their request.
Meanwhile, Lake has refused to defend herself in a defamation lawsuit filed against her by a top Maricopa County election official. She had accused County Clerk Stephen Richer, a fellow Republican, of rigging the 2022 gubernatorial election against her.
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