An Arizona judge tossed out a lawsuit filed by Kari Lake over her defeat in last year’s race for governor, ruling that she had not proven that the state’s most populous county, Maricopa, had neglected to review voter signatures on envelopes for ballots. .
The decision, issued late Monday, is the latest legal setback for Ms. Lake, a Republican who was endorsed by former President Donald J. Trump in one of the nation’s most prominent 2022 gubernatorial races.
During a three-day trial last week in state Superior Court in Maricopa County, Ms. Lake’s attorneys that election workers worked too quickly to properly review 300,000 signatures that came with ballots.
But in a six-page ruling, Judge Peter A. Thompson wrote that the process complied with state law, which requires signatures to be compared to those on public voter records, but that it does not include specific guidelines for how much time a worker must use on each ballot.
“Plaintiff’s evidence and arguments do not clear the bar,” he wrote, adding: “Not one second, not three seconds, and not six seconds: No standard appears in the plain text of the statute.”
At a news conference Tuesday in Arizona, Ms. Lake said she would appeal the sentence and that her lawyers were exploring different avenues.
“We can no longer trust the thugs running our elections in Maricopa County,” she said, later adding, “You haven’t seen the last of our case.”
The case was the latest in a series of court losses in connection with the election for Ms. Lake, who has argued, without evidence, that postal voting compromises the integrity of elections. Other claims in her lawsuit had previously been dismissed by the court.
Lake has suggested she may run again. This year, she said she was considering running for the U.S. Senate seat currently held by Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, who left the Democratic Party in December to become an independent.
Clint L. Hickman, the chairman of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, which helps oversee elections in the county, praised the judge’s decision in a statement Monday.
“Wild allegations of rigged elections may generate media attention and raise money, but they don’t win lawsuits,” he wrote. “When ‘bombs’ and ‘smoking guns’ are not supported by facts, they fail in court.”
