Arizona Election Lawsuits Crumble in Court Ahead of Kari Lake Ruling

Two election lawsuits filed by former GOP candidates have been tossed by Arizona judges as Republican Kari Lake awaits a decision on her suit challenging the results of November's election.

Lake, ex-gubernatorial candidate for Arizona, filed a lawsuit this month against Democratic Governor-elect Katie Hobbs and other state election officials, challenging the midterm results in which Lake lost to Hobbs by just over 17,000 votes.

A state judge dismissed eight out of the 10 counts in Lake's lawsuit this week, but permitted the remaining counts to proceed to trial, both of which relate to accusations of ballot print malfunctions that Lake's legal team allege led to hundreds of thousands of illegally cast votes. The two-day trial wrapped up on Thursday, and Maricopa County Judge Peter Thompson has yet to announce when he will make a final ruling.

On Friday, however, Mohave County Judge Lee Jantzen ruled against a lawsuit filed by former GOP candidate for Arizona attorney general, Abraham Hamadeh, who like his fellow Republicans had challenged the midterm election results on claims of voter fraud, reported the Associated Press (AP).

Hamadeh, who lost to Democrat Kris Mayes by a mere 511 votes, according to AP, failed to gain enough additional votes in his favor after inspecting a sample of completed ballots.

The 2,300-ticket sample inspected by Hamadeh and his legal team, as part of the litigation, had given him a net six-vote gain. However, both Judge Jantzen and Hamadeh's attorney acknowledged that the increase was not enough to fill in the gap between the GOP candidate and Mayes, reported AP. The final result of Arizona's attorney general race is subject to an automatic recount due its closeness.

Last week, former GOP candidate for secretary of state, Mark Finchem, also had his election suit dismissed, by Maricopa County Judge Melissa Julian, who wrote in her decision that none of Finchem's allegations against Hobbs, the state's outgoing secretary of state, "constitutes 'misconduct' sufficient to survive dismissal."

Finchem had challenged Hobbs and his Democratic opponent, Adrian Fontes, who beat Finchem by over 100,000 votes in November's election. In Julian's dismissal, the court confirmed Fontes as the secretary of state-elect.

Finchem and Hamadeh have not conceded to their opponents, however, as both Republicans were still pushing claims of voter fraud alongside Lake on Friday. Hamadeh posted to his Twitter account that "thousands of voters were disenfranchised" in the election, arguing that he and his team were not given sufficient time to review the sample ballots.

"Election Day in Maricopa County was a disaster," he wrote. "Election officials failed democracy. My team will await the results of the recount before deciding our next steps."

When asked for comment, Lake's communications director Ross Trumble directed Newsweek to a tweet from Thursday, where Lake told reporters following the end of her trial that she was "so incredibly proud of our amazing attorneys and staff that put this amazing case together."

"We proved without a shadow of a doubt that there was malicious intent that caused disruption so great, it changed the results of the election," Lake said.

Legal experts previously told Newsweek, however, that Lake's team had not proven that there was intentional wrongdoing by election officials during the trial hearing.

"The law requires actual evidence of intentional wrongdoing," former federal prosecutor Neama Rahmani said. "At worst, election officials made a mistake in printing the ballots, but those mistaken ballots were still counted. That type of harmless error is not enough to meet the high bar necessary to overturn an election."

Newsweek has reached out to Finchem and Hamadeh for comment.