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The Supreme Court brushed aside a lawsuit Monday from Republican Senate candidate Kari Lake challenging the use of electronic voting machines in Arizona.
Lake, who filed the lawsuit during her failed campaign for governor in 2022, challenged whether the state’s electronic voting machines assured “a fair and accurate vote.” Two lower courts dismissed the suit, finding that Lake and former Republican state lawmaker Mark Finchem had not been harmed in a way that allowed them to sue.
Calling the precise nature of Lake’s claim “not clear,” the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals said the lawsuit was based on speculative concerns that the machines could be hacked.
Although Lake and Finchem cited “opinions by purported experts on manipulation risk” in the lawsuit, they did “not contend that any electronic tabulation machine in Arizona has ever been hacked,” the appeals court said. On appeal, the court continued, lawyers for Lake “conceded that their arguments were limited to potential future hacking, and not based on any past harm.”
The Supreme Court dismissed the appeal Monday without comment, which is common.
Lake had sued the Arizona Secretary of State and the boards of supervisors of Maricopa and Pima Counties. All three waived their right to respond to the Supreme Court appeal, a signal that they believed the litigation was frivolous.
Lake accused the Supreme Court of “institutional inertia” on election issues after intervening in the 2000 election in the Bush v. Gore case, even though the court this term is heavily involved in several appeals involving former President Donald Trump, the presumptive GOP presidential nominee.
