US Supreme Court Will Not Hear Kari Lake’s Fringe Voting Machines Case
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Supreme Court today declined to hear election denier and U.S. Senate candidate Kari Lake’s (R) fringe voting machines lawsuit.
This marks the end of the road for a conspiratorial lawsuit — brought by Mark Finchem and Lake, two election deniers running for office in Arizona — that was originally dismissed in August 2022 for having claims that were “vague,” “speculative” and ultimately amount to “conjectural allegations.” The duo was later sanctioned for making false and misleading statements to the court.
The Supreme Court’s rejection of the case comes after the Arizona, Delaware and Georgia Republican parties filed a “friend of the court” brief asking the Court to hear Lake out, arguing that courts set too high of a standard for election challenges to proceed.
In their lawsuit, Lake and Finchem alleged that Arizona’s use of electronic voting machines violated their right to vote under the U.S. Constitution and Arizona law because the machines are “inherently vulnerable” to cyberattacks and voter fraud and could not be relied on to yield objective and accurate vote tallies.
The district court and 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Circuit both dismissed the lawsuit finding that it lacked standing. From there, with help from Mike Lindell of MAGA and MyPillow fame, the election deniers appealed up to the U.S. Supreme Court. Lake and Finchem asked the Supreme Court to both hear their challenge to Arizona’s use of electronic voting tabulators as well as potentially “order ‘do-over relief” for the 2022 midterms. Both Finchem and Lake contested the results of that election in their respective races.
Their arguments in the voting machines lawsuit were based on meritless claims of fraud throughout the 2020 election and centered on the use of Dominion voting machines, a major focal point of “Big Lie” proponents following the 2020 election. Lake and Finchem argued that because electronic voting machines “created unjustified new risks of hacking, election tampering, and electronic voting fraud,” every vote should instead be counted by hand, which would take approximately 93 days according to Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer.
Last year, Fox News agreed to pay nearly $800 million for its false claims about the 2020 election and Dominion Voting Systems. Dominion has also levied an over a billion dollar lawsuit against Lindell for his claims.
This decision is a major victory for voters in both Arizona and across the country as Lake’s lawsuit based on the “Big Lie” has once again been dismissed.