BREAKING, Enough's Enough: Lake-Finchem Suit To Hand Count DISMISSED; Judge Blasts: "...only conjectural allegations of potential injuries" (READ Order)

(UPDATE, 11:30am: We have added Lake/Finchem Response to sanctions motion, bottom.)

Arizona will count the paper ballots with machine tabulators for - and, against - candidates Kari Lake and Mark Finchem. Just as we have for all elections in recent memory.

U.S. District Court Judge John Tuchi gave the Republican candidates (for Governor and Secretary of State, respectively) several opportunities to prove why he should force a hand-count of millions of ballots and many different races, but he finally said enough is enough and dismissed their case today.

In concluding his 21-page dismissal order, he boiled it down to a number of defects, only agreeing that citizens' right to vote "is precious": "Plaintiffs’ First Amended Complaint is dismissed in its entirety. While the Court agrees with Plaintiffs that the right to vote is precious, and should be protected, Plaintiffs lack standing because they have articulated only conjectural allegations of potential injuries that are in any event barred by the Eleventh Amendment, and seek relief that the Court cannot grant under the Purcell principle."

A Motion for Sanctions - filed by Maricopa County - against Lake, Finchem and their attorneys (including the nationally-known Alan Dershowitz) is still pending. Lake and Finchem filed their Response earlier this week. It spends a lot of space denying that the now-dismissed Amended Complaint misleadingly gives the impression that Arizona does not use paper ballots. However, their many allusions to paper ballots includes this quote: "Billions of federal dollars were spent to move states, including Arizona, from paper-based voting systems to electronic, computer-based systems."

This article was reported by AZ Law founder Paul Weich. Paul was running for a seat in Arizona's House of Representatives.

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