The U.S. Supreme Court has rejected a request by Republican U.S. Senate candidate Kari Lake and former Republican secretary of state candidate Mark Finchem to ban the use of electronic vote-counting machines in Arizona.
Lake and Finchem filed suit two years ago, repeating unfounded allegations about the security of machines that count votes. They relied in part on testimony from supporters who led a discredited review of the 2020 election in Maricopa County, including Doug Logan, the CEO of Cyber Ninjas, who oversaw the effort described by supporters as a “forensic audit.”
U.S. District Judge John Tuchi in Phoenix ruled that Lake and Finchem lacked standing to sue because they failed to show any realistic likelihood of harm. He later sanctioned their attorneys for bringing a claim based on frivolous information.
Lawyers for Lake and Finchem had argued that hand counts are the most efficient method for totaling election results. Election administrators testified that hand counting dozens of races on millions of ballots would require an extraordinary amount of time, space and manpower, and would be less accurate.
The Supreme Court’s decision not to take the vote-counting case marks the end of the road for the effort to require a hand count of ballots. No justices dissented when the court denied their request.
Meanwhile, Lake has declined to defend herself in a defamation lawsuit against her by a top Maricopa County election official. She had accused county Recorder Stephen Richer, a fellow Republican, of rigging the 2022 gubernatorial election against her.
