PHOENIX (CN) — An Arizona judge on Thursday denied defeated gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake's request to see ballot affidavit envelopes from the 2022 General Election — which she still claims she won nearly a year after the election was certified.
Lake has lodged four different lawsuits since she lost the gubernatorial race to Katie Hobbs by more than 17,000 votes, claiming everything from improper signature verification to faulty, hackable voting machines in her bid to prove the election was rigged.
Lake sued Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer this past April after he denied her public records request for the ballot affidavit envelopes of more than 1.3 million early mail-in ballots. She claims the envelopes contain fraudulent, unverified voter signatures that swung the election to Hobbs.
Those envelopes contain the name, address, phone number and signature of each voter who casted an early ballot.
More than two months after the conclusion of a two-day trial over the envelopes, Judge John Hannah agreed with the county recorder and rejected Lake’s request to inspect the envelopes.
“The public release of 1.3 million ballot affidavit envelopes signed by Maricopa County voters would undermine the process of verifying those voters’ ballots in future elections,” Hannah wrote in the order. “It would create a significant risk of widespread voter fraud where none now exists. It would expose voters to harassment and potentially force them to defend the integrity of their own votes. Some number of voters would stop participating entirely, out of fear of identity theft or concern about privacy.”
Hannah acknowledged early in his order that the ballot envelopes are indeed public record, and the government should always lean toward disclosure regarding public record.
But the public’s right to disclosure can be outweighed by “the interests of confidentiality, privacy or the best interests of the state.”
In this case, he wrote, the risk to voter privacy outweighs the public’s right to disclosure.
“After six hours on the witness stand… I was right on the law,” Richer posted on X, formerly Twitter. “Again.”
"As always, following following state and federal statute is of the highest importance to me and my team," he later added in an email to Courthouse News. That is why we have consistently won these lawsuits."
Lake argued in September that keeping the envelopes from the public view doesn’t protect privacy interests because signatures are already public elsewhere, such as on petitions, property deeds and divorce records. But the Arizona Supreme Court ruled in 1997 that the availability of information elsewhere doesn’t eliminate privacy interests.
The ruling in that case “defeats Ms. Lake’s argument that voters have no privacy interest in the signatures on the ballot affidavit envelopes because signatures are 'common currency' or because voters 'waive' the expectation of privacy when they place the signed affidavits into the 'stream of commerce,'” Hannah wrote. “An individual has a privacy interest in his or her signature precisely because the signature serves as a badge of personal identification for legal documents and in commercial transactions.”
State law also dictates that public information that becomes part of a voter’s registration record isn’t subject to disclosure. Hannah found through the two days of testimony that ballot affidavit envelopes are indeed part of a voter’s registration record.
Lake also argued that her request carries extra weight as it is for election purposes. She needs the records as evidence for her election challenge over signature verification, but a ruling has already been issued in that case. Further, she didn’t argue in that case that signature verification was done incorrectly – only that it wasn’t done at all.
“That argument failed,” Hannah wrote. “She does not get to start over with a different argument now.”
That challenge, which was shot down for the second time by Judge Peter Thompson in state court this past May, is now pending appeal.
Lake did not respond to a request for comment by press time.
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