On Friday, Arizona Republican and former gubernatorial hopeful Kari Lake praised an Arkansas county court after it ruled that electronic voting machines would no longer be used in future elections, returning to paper ballots exclusively, as they hope to boost election integrity and voter confidence in outcomes.
Lake posted a tweet supportive of the ruling, saying, “Americans in EVERY state and EVERY community must demand honest elections. No electronic voting machines, replace election month with election day and paper ballots that are hand-counted in small precincts. We demand honest & transparent elections NOW!”
Lake also included a link to a report from KARK detailing the ruling, which wrote, “Officials with the Arkansas Voter Integrity Initiative Inc. (AVII) said the vote was in response to AVII CEO Colonel Conrad Reynolds’ push for election computers to be removed from Arkansas elections. The decision will now require votes to be hand counted.”
The article quoted Reynolds, who said, “The machines do not read the names on the ballots, instead, they scan barcodes, which humans cannot read,” adding, “They also utilize proprietary software that we are not allowed to examine. This all means voters cannot verify that their vote is being counted properly as mandated by state law.”
An attorney with AVII did, however, note that Arkansas state law states that each county has the right to choose its own voting process.
“It’s time we take back and return to having elections we can have faith in – with transparency and integrity,” said Cleburne County Justice of the Peace Jacque Martin, who voted in favor of moving back to paper ballots.
Lake, meanwhile, has been involved in several lawsuits as she attempts to shift the outcome of the midterm elections in her favor. On Thursday, the Arizona Court of Appeals agreed to expedite consideration of a lawsuit filed by Lake that alleged that enough voting irregularities appeared during the November election that the outcome was altered.
On January 9 “the court ordered a reset of ‘the matter for conference on February 1, 2023,’ and agreed with Lake’s arguments that her challenge should be handled as a ‘special action petition.’ The court date was reportedly scheduled for March,” The Epoch Times reported.
“Lawyers for Democrat Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs, the state’s former secretary of state, [have] until Jan. 17 to respond and argue why Lake’s challenge should be rejected, according to the order,” the Times reported. “Lake had petitioned both the state’s Appeals Court and Supreme Court after a Maricopa County judge rejected her case after a two-day trial in December.”
In an interview with the Salem News Channel on Friday, Lake also claimed that her legal team has “three whistleblowers in the signature verification department in Maricopa County who said that they were rejecting tens of thousands of signatures to the tune of up to 130,000 ballots that were being rejected for bad signatures, and somebody above them was sending them on through to be counted anyway.”
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