Lake v Hobbs Trial is Done & Judge’s Ruling Pending. What Did We Learn?

I watched most of the trial via live stream and followed a few local Twitter live-tweets of the trial (shout out to @Arizonaslaw and @Garrett_Archer for excellent blow-by-blows), and read the pleadings and motion practice.

My conclusions as a retired trial attorney are that Lake utterly failed to meet the burden laid out clearly by the Court.

On Count 2: “Illegal Tabulator Configurations“, the Court sought evidence that the printer malfunctions caused by this individual directly resulted in identifiable lost votes for Plaintiff; and that these votes would have affected the outcome of the election.

Plaintiff failed to provide sufficient evidence on Count 2. There was no evidence proferred that the printing issues resulted in any lost votes. The testimony was clear and convincing that any ballots that were too faint or improperly sized to be tabulated in the polling place were identified, transferred to a processing center where the voter intent was determined by a board including both parties, and the affected ballots were recreated and scanned successfully. Given that there is no evidence of votes lost, this issue could not have affected the outcome.

The Plaintiff also sought to establish that the delays caused by the printer errors resulted in suppression of voter participation due to wait times and media coverage of the same. The entirety of that evidence was based on a flawed statistical analysis and polling asserting that tens of thousands of voters were kept from the polls, the majority of which could be presumed to have been inclined to vote for Lake. That chain of reasoning is plausible, and it might have even happened to some degree, but that’s not proof of votes affected by the errors.

No judge is going to grant an election contest on the basis of such speculative opinion evidence, but equally importantly, the evidence was strongly contested by a much more qualified expert for the Defense that there was no such effect. At best, the evidence is a wash and I predict the judge will give any of it little weight in deciding this case.

I predict the Judge will find the Plaintiff failed to meet the burden of proving this count, as the printer issues did not affect any votes other than those possibly discouraged from voting, which is highly speculative as to their number and inclinations.

If a Judge were to uphold an election contest on this basis alone, ANY disruption that could have the effect of discouraging a substantial number of people from voting  – when compared to the margin of victory – would be enough to overturn an otherwise free, fair, and secure election. Not. Going. To. Happen. That way lies chaos.

On Count 4: “Ballot Chain of Custody“, hereafter “CoC”. the Court sought evidence that whether such lack of compliance on this subject was both intentional and did in fact result in a changed outcome.

Plaintiff also failed to provide sufficient evidence on Count 4. The evidence presented was thrid hand, mostly hearsay in nature, and not from the actual witnesses to any CoC compliance issues.

Evidence presented by Plaintiff was that possibly as many as 50 (fifty) ballots from friends and family of Runbeck employees were “injected” into the hundreds of thousands of ballots processed by that contractor. There was no evidence presented that those “injected” ballots were not, in fact, legal and valid votes, just that they did not comply with CoC requirements. As to these 50 or so “injected” ballots of friends and family of Runbeck, that number could not have possibly “changed the outcome” of the election.

There was also Plaintiff’s testimony that some indeterminate number of unknown ballots could have been “added” to those ballots processed by Runbeck during their processing. This speculation mainly stems from a query regarding a difference in a batch estimate versus an actual count that was commented on by Recorder Richer. Given that there is no evidence that such alleged “added” ballots actually existed at all,, the number of such “added” ballots, and for whom those alleged “added” ballots voted, no reasonable trier of fact could conclude that these mystery ballots were “intentional” nor that they “changed the outcome”. There was opposing expert testimony opining that no such discrepancy in fact ever existed and that such “added” ballots could not possibly have been created and gone undetected through tabulation to affect the count.

Again, given even the most generous view of the Plaintiff’s evidence on Count 4, I think the judge will also find the evidence on this count unpersuasive. Given the most generous consideration of the Plaintiff’s evidence, all this is proven is that, while nobody can disprove that incomplete or flawed CoC documentation could allow a bad actor could have added any number of ballots to the count, it is a nearly impossible task to create such “added” ballots only for verified eligible voters, who didn’t otherwise vote in the election, and that are the correct ballot style for each voter’s location, and that pass all verification steps before and including tabulation, in numbers sufficient to affect an election. It is absurd supposition piled upon absurd foundations to believe that because Defendant can’t prove that such ballots didn’t exist (proving a negative is canonically impossible) one can overturn an election because there MIGHT have existed ballots in number sufficient to affect an election.

Once again, no election would EVER be safe from an election contest ever again, no matter the elaborateness or complete adherence to CoC documentation: holes can be found in any human endeavor that would theoretically allow some sort of variance.

Regardless of any irregularities as to CoC compliance (and all Arizona Counties should probably audit and tighten up in this regard), I predict the Judge will find that the outcome of the election could not have been changed as a result of the 50 possible “injected” ballots without proper CoC compliance, nor by the theoretical existence of an indeterminate number of “added” ballots, the creation and counting of which is, let’s just say, highly improbable.

Having failed to provide sufficient evidence on either Count on which the Court predicated the contest, I predict the Judge will dismiss this contest, and decline to provide any requested relief to the Plaintiff.

I suspect it is possible the Judge will at least entertain briefings on whether there should be sanctions against the attorneys and Kari Lake for filing this turkey in the first place. I doubt they will be granted, however. The Judge found there was  sufficient allegations made under the statute to merit a trial on the evidence. Given that, there were meritorious allegations made in the view of the Judge, thus sanctions are quite unlikely to result.

I also suspect that the MAGAverse will not be content to allow the Judge to make his ruling in peace. I expect there will be threatening and intimidating messages directed at the Judge during the pendency of his ruling, and certainly after the fact if he rules as I expect. That is the reason I have not given the name of the Judge here: there’s no reason to save the terrorists the trouble of looking at the Maricopa Courts’ docket to find that information. Such behavior is utterly unacceptable and, if it happens, should be investigated, prosecuted, and punished to the fullest possible extent.  The legitimacy of our system of justice, both de facto and de jure, requires independent reason and judgment, free of fear or favor.