Ninth Circuit delivers another blow to Kari Lake’s election fraud claims

PHOENIX (CN) — Onetime Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake’s baseless claims of election fraud took another hit Monday morning when a Ninth Circuit panel affirmed the dismissal of a 2022 lawsuit aiming to ban electronic voting machines.

Despite the former Fox News anchor’s claims that electronic voting machines are susceptible to hacking, a three-judge panel found that Lake’s speculative claims were insufficient to establish injury.

“Plaintiffs’ candidacies failed at the polls, and their various attempts to overturn the election outcome in state court have to date been unavailing,” the panel wrote in its Monday order.

In the first of multiple suits the gubernatorial silver-medalist has filed over Arizona’s 2022 election, Lake and then-secretary of state candidate Mark Finchem sued the state and county officials to ban the use of electronic voting machines in the midterms. 

The candidates claimed in their April 2022 complaint that electronic voter machines are susceptible to hacking by nongovernmental actors intending to influence election results. They said the machines have a history of failure both in Arizona and abroad, arguing that hand-counting paper ballots is the only reliable and trustworthy method.

They also contend Dominion Voting Systems, a voting software company used by Arizona, lied and ignored a state legislative subpoena inquiring about the data relating to the 2020 presidential election in Arizona. Dominion wasn’t named as a defendant. 

Republicans endorsed by former President Donald Trump have attacked Dominion since the November 2020 election, claiming without evidence the company rigged its software to flip votes for Trump to now-President Joe Biden. Dominion has filed nearly a dozen defamation lawsuits over the claims, including one against former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani.

Attorneys defending state officials said the plaintiffs’ claims were purely speculative.

“You found no evidence of malware or viruses that had infected those systems, correct?” an attorney asked cybersecurity professional Benjamin Cotton in the July 2022 trial.

“Correct,” Cotton replied.

U.S, District Judge John Tucci, a Barack Obama appointee, agreed, dismissing the case a month later for lack of standing and failure to state a claim.

He later hit attorney Alan Dershowitz with a $12,220 sanction for bringing false claims into his courtroom.

Lake appealed the dismissal in September, but found no greater success with the court of appeals. 

“We agree with the district court that plaintiffs’ speculative allegations that voting machines may be hackable are insufficient to establish an injury,” the panel wrote.

Lake claimed that, when not in use, the stored machines are susceptible to remote access. But the panel found state law requires the machines to be stored in such a way that remote access would be impossible.

The panel acknowledged experts in Lake’s case who claimed that the machines are hackable, but reminded that neither she nor her legal team presented evidence of past interference.

“And, on appeal, counsel for plaintiffs conceded that their arguments were limited to potential future hacking, and not based on any past harm,” the panel wrote. 

The panel ruled that Lake and Finchem lost legal standing for their claims as candidates when they lost the election, and lack standing as citizens for their failure to either a past injury or injury that is “imminent or substantially likely to occur.”

Despite the blow, Lake’s election challenges are likely to continue.

Lake lost a trial in May over her claim that Maricopa County failed to conduct proper signature verification on mail-in ballots in 2022, allowing thousands of fraudulent votes to swing the election in favor of now-Governor Katie Hobbs.

Hobbs won by more than 17,000 votes. 

A Maricopa County judge initially dismissed the case, but the Arizona Supreme Court remanded just one of the eight initial claims to the trial court.

Also in Maricopa County court, Lake awaits a verdict in a third election case. Lake seeks access to the 1.3 million early voter ballot envelopes mailed in in 2022 to verify the signatures herself and hopefully prove her claims of fraud. The two-day trial concluded in September.

Lake announced her campaign for U.S. Senate on Oct. 10, saying after a campaign rally that she intends to continue her election challenges while running. 

Her attorneys didn't respond to a request for comment about the ruling by press time. The Arizona Attorney General's office declined to comment.

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