The Arizona Republican Party (AZGOP) submitted a joint Amicus Curiae brief on Thursday with the Georgia Republican Party and the Republican State Committee of Delaware supporting Kari Lake’s and Mark Finchem’s Petition for Certiorari with the U.S. Supreme Court. The pair are appealing the lower courts’ decisions against their lawsuit challenging the use of electronic voting machine tabulators in elections. Under the new leadership of AZGOP Chair Gina Swoboda, who has a lengthy history in election integrity work including heading the Voter Reference Foundation, the AZGOP is heavily focused on election integrity.
Authored by attorney William J. Olson (pictured above), the brief argues that the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals erred by dismissing the case claiming Lake and Finchem lacked standing. The court affirmed the trial court’s granting of the defendants’ motion to dismiss, asserting that the pair lacked standing because “speculative allegations that voting machines may be hackable are insufficient to establish an injury in fact under Article III.” The complaint emphasized that the lower courts “conflated standing with merits, twisting the standing rules to require much more — that the complaint prove facts sufficient to grant relief.”
Lake and Finchem filed the lawsuit prior to the 2022 election. They are again candidates; Lake is running for the U.S. Senate and Finchem is running for the Arizona Senate. The brief noted that the two “filed a motion to expedite, as the serious election problems that occurred in 2022 are being repeated, with the 2024 general election now only seven months away.”
The amicus brief pointed out a new trend since the 2020 election of courts refusing to grant standing in election cases. “In the short time since the 2020 election cycle, many of this nation’s federal and state courts have implemented a major modification in this Court’s standing jurisprudence which severely limits the election challenges they are willing to consider on the merits,” the brief said. “These recent decisions, requiring plaintiffs in election challenges to meet unreasonable standards to demonstrate standing, violate a basic duty of the federal courts.”
Read the rest of the article at The Arizona Sun Times
Subscribe to email updates from the Arizona Sun Times