An Arizona judge on Wednesday denied 2022 Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake's request to review ballot envelope signatures, concluding it "would have a corrosive effect on public confidence in the electoral process."
In September, Maricopa County Superior Court Judge John Hannah presided over a
two-day trial to decide whether Lake's legal team could have access to review the ballot envelope signatures for the 2022 general election in the county.
Lake lost the race to Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs by less than 1 percent of the vote.
Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer denied the GOP candidate's request in April, prompting her to go to court.
In a
post on the X social media platform in September, Richer said he was defending voter privacy and election security by not releasing the ballot envelopes for Lake to review.
"I believe these envelopes are not public record according to state statute. And I believe that making them public would have a chilling effect on voting, would weaken the security controls on early voting, and would open the door to voter harassment," he wrote.
Lake responded at the time, "Professional Victim @stephen_richer is lying again. We're not asking these signatures to be made public. We are asking to review them to assess whether they are legitimate or not. We have a STRONG reason to believe they're not. Clearly, so does Stephen."
However, Hannah sided with Richer, noting a
court ruling in May concluded no convincing evidence had been presented at trial that Maricopa County did not follow the signature verification process required by law.
In his Wednesday ruling, the judge conceded that the ballot envelopes are public records but said the "best interest of the state" exception applies.
"The Recorder uses the private identifying information in his possession, including voter signatures, for the purpose of verifying early ballots," Hannah wrote. "As a matter of election administration, the public release of that private information, including voter signatures, undermines the verification process.
"Unauthorized people could use the information to impersonate real voters. 'Voter impersonation' fraud is exceedingly rare at present, in part because it is difficult to scale up that kind of activity enough to make a difference in an election.
"A key barrier is that potential bad actors have no large-scale source of sample voter signatures from which to create fraudulent ballots that might survive the signature verification process and get counted."
Further, he agreed with Richer that releasing the information could lead to "voter harassment." He cited testimony about canvassers going to voters' homes to confirm who lived at the address and whether they had voted.
Hannah relied on Richer's testimony that this conduct could have a "chilling effect" on voters participating in mail-in voting.
The judge concluded that "the broad right of electoral participation outweighs the narrow interests of those who would continue to pick at the machinery of democracy."
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