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Notes -
Kari Lake's election challenge is back in the news.
She won a surprising victory in the Arizona Supreme Court. Her case is still a long shot, but it's a massive loss for the Maricopa County election officials.
The count she won on was about ballot signatures. She was arguing that Maricopa County wasn't following the laws relating to signature checks. Lower courts were playing games with her claims, and pretended she was arguing about the laws relating to signature checks instead. On that basis they dismissed her claims under the "laches" doctrine, saying she should have brought them before the election. Of course it would be impossible to argue that Maricopa County wasn't following the laws relating to signature checks before the checks happened. So the ruling is embarrassing for the judge and the appeals courts. They were expecting that no one would call them out.
The signature check issue is very important for 2024. Election officials across the country have clearly been applying two different standards. Prior to 2020 there were very strict checks on signatures overseas and other absentee ballots. Signature checks on petitions to get on the ballot were and are also quite strict. We know this because of the rejection rates.
Based on traditional rejection rates, strict signature checks would have likely changed the results in 2020.
Of course there are huge ethical issues related to throwing out that many ballots. I'm not arguing there aren't.
But I do think there should be much more transparency about what the standard is and what's happening. Election officials across the country managed to block independent signature inspections in all major election investigations in 2020. There are claims of straight lines being accepted as valid.
It'll be interesting to see what happens.
It’s all so tiresome. On the one hand Dems cheating wouldn’t exactly shock me, but every single time the GOP candidate does so much stupid shit that I can’t possibly trust anything they say. Kari decided that the best way to get votes in godamn Arizona would be to shit on John McCain and tell his supporters they weren’t welcome. I mean wtf? If dems stole this one, they stole it fair and square.
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