Kari Lake withdraws appeal in public records lawsuit over Arizona ballot envelopes
U.S. Senate candidate Kari Lake has withdrawn her appeal of a ruling barring her from inspecting approximately 1.3 million ballot envelopes from the 2022 gubernatorial election she lost to Gov. Katie Hobbs.
As first reported by ABC15, an attorney for Lake filed a motion Monday to withdraw her appeal of the Maricopa County Superior Court judge’s November ruling. A spokesperson for Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer confirmed the motion was filed.
A spokesperson for Lake could not immediately be reached for comment.
The public records lawsuit was separate, albeit related to, Lake’s ongoing, unsuccessful legal challenge to her 2022 loss to Hobbs. Lake’s attorneys argued that she needed the ballot envelopes — and the signatures signed by voters on those envelopes — to determine if they match a voter’s original signature kept on file by the state.
At trial in September, Lake attorney Bryan Blehm tried to call witnesses who he said would testify about alleged irregularities in the signature-verification process used to examine ballot envelopes.
But Maricopa County Superior Court Judge John Hannah ruled that was irrelevant to the fundamental question at hand: whether the ballot envelopes are a public record.
Richer, a Republican like Lake, argued Arizona’s public record laws exempt ballot signatures from disclosure, and testified that releasing those signatures to the public would have a “chilling effect” — some people may choose not to vote, he argued, if they thought their signatures would become available via a public records request.
Hannah largely agreed, finding in his ruling that the privacy interests of voters outweighed the benefit of allowing the public to view those signatures.
