'A series of assumptions': Arizona lawyers weigh in with brutally honest opinions on Kari Lake’s defeat

23 December 2022

As Arizona Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake continues to push conspiracy theories to explain her election defeat, lawyers in the state are fighting back against her claims with brutally honest opinions about the election.

In short, many believe that Lake's loss was not only legitimate but warranted. Speaking to HuffPost, legal experts have weighed in with their assessments in the wake of Lake's flurry of unfounded claims of voter fraud.

Per the news outlet, state lawyers in Arizona argue that Lake failed to "offer evidence to back her claims of widespread, intentional misconduct on Election Day at her two-day trial challenging her loss to Democrat Katie Hobbs in Arizona governor’s race."

According to Abha Khanna, a lawyer representing Democratic gubernatorial candidate Katie Hobbs, Lake also "never established her claim that printer problems at Maricopa County polling places were intentional acts that would have changed the race’s outcome had they not occurred."

Khanna also criticized Lake's unfounded claims saying, “What we got instead was just loose threads and gaping plot holes. We know now that her story was a work of fiction."

However, one lawyer defending Lake argues that election officials attempted to downplay her concerns about the printing issues in Maricopa County. “This is about trust, your honor,” Kurt Olsen said. “It’s about restoring people’s trust. There is not a person that’s watching this thing that isn’t shaking their head now.”

Lake also claims that her attorneys managed to provide substantial proof of her arguments. “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. “We provided expert testimony. We provided experts. The other side brought in activists to try to save face. They admitted that they’ve known about these ballot problems.”

Although Lake's witness Richard Baris, who worked as a pollster conducting exit polling in the state, claims that technical problems at polling locations could have impacted the outcome of the election, Kenneth Mayer, a University of Wisconsin-Madison political science professor argues that Baris’ claim was “a series of assumptions and speculation.”

Per the news outlet: "Baris claimed that 25,000 to 40,000 people who would normally have voted actually didn’t cast ballots as a result of Election Day problems — and that the voters that day were more likely to support Lake. Baris said his estimate was primarily influenced by the number of people who started answering his exit poll but didn’t finish the process."

Despite Lake's claims, Hobbs won the Arizona governor's race by a little more than 17,000 votes and is scheduled to take office on January 2, 2023.

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