Kari Lake will have one last chance to argue in court that her 17,000-vote loss 2022 election should be overturned — but to actually do so, she will have to prove conclusively that Maricopa County brazenly failed to verify tens of thousands of early voter signatures and that, in doing so, the county affected the outcome in the election.
And the judge in the case, who ruled late Monday that Lake can take her sole remaining claim to trial on Wednesday, made clear that the former GOP gubernatorial nominee has her work cut out for her: She must prove her allegations by “clear and convincing evidence,” something he noted she hasn’t yet done in her monthslong litigation trying to toss out the November election.
Noting that Lake’s allegation of election fraud “leaps over a substantial gap in the evidence presented,” Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Peter Thompson wrote in a ruling Monday ordering the new trial that the evidence she has presented “falls far below what is needed to establish a basis for fraud.”
