Federal court hands major loss to Arizona Republican election deniers

Arizona Republicans Kari Lake and Mark Finchem — who both ran in 2022 for Governor and Secretary of State, respectively — just had their case challenging the use of vote tabulation machines dismissed by a federal appeals court.

The Arizona Daily Star reported that a three-judge panel for the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the case brought by Lake and Finchem lacked any evidence to back up claims that their constitutional rights were violated. Notably, the panel stated in an 11-page opinion that both Lake and Finchem "conceded that their arguments were limited to potential future hacking, and not based on any past harm."

"[E]ven assuming Plaintiffs could continue to claim standing as prospective voters in future elections, they had not alleged a particularized injury and therefore failed to establish the kind of injury Article III requires," the ruling read. "None of Plaintiffs’ allegations supported a plausible inference that their individual votes in future elections will be adversely affected by the use of electronic tabulation, particularly given the robust safeguards in Arizona law, the use of paper ballots and the post-tabulation retention of those ballots."

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This is not the first loss both Lake and Finchem have had in the courts. In March, Finchem, who lost the 2022 race for Secretary of State by more than 120,000 votes, was sanctioned by Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Melissa Iyer Julian for bringing a "groundless" case before her court.

"None of Contestant Finchem’s allegations, even if true, would have changed the vote count enough to overcome the 120,000 votes he needed to affect the result of this election," Julian wrote. "The Court finds that this lawsuit was groundless and not brought in good faith."

Lake, for her part, was sanctioned in May for making "false factual statements" before the court regarding her loss to Democrat Katie Hobbs in the gubernatorial race. Her legal team was ordered to pay $2,000 for falsely stating that 35,000 ballots in Maricopa County — which houses approximately 60% of Arizona's registered voters — were improperly added to the total count.

Both Lake and Finchem continue to stand by their false claims that former President Donald Trump was the winner of the 2020 presidential election. As a state lawmaker, Finchem sponsored several resolutions attempting to decertify Biden's electoral college victory in Arizona. Lake, who is currently running for the US Senate seat currently occupied by Senator Kyrsten Sinema (I-Arizona), still has yet to officially concede that she lost in 2022.

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