Attorney From Anti Woke Civil Liberty Group Sues Judge Who Dismissed Kari Lake’s Election Contest

Attorney Ryan Heath filed a lawsuit last week in the Arizona Supreme Court against Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Peter Thompson’s ruling in Kari Lake’s election trial.

Heath, the founder of Phoenix-based “anti-woke” nonprofit called The Gavel Project, filed a Petition for Writ of Mandamus, demanding an order to remove Hobbs from office and vacate Thompson’s December 24, 2022 ruling, “confirming the election of Katie Hobbs as Arizona Governor-Elect Pursuant to A.R.S. § 16-676(B)[,]”

Heath’s petition argues that Thompson set the burden of proof too high, requiring Lake’s attorneys to prove that election misconduct by officials was intentional and intended to affect the outcome of the election, which they did. Heath also contends that it would have been “physically and mathematically impossible” to verify the more than 1.3 million images and mentions similar the chain of custody issued raised in Kari Lake’s lawsuit and Maricopa County Superior Court Trial.

This is separate from Kari Lake’s ongoing lawsuit, which she says will go to the Supreme Court sooner or later.

The Gateway Pundit reported yesterday that Kari Lake’s appeal against Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Peter Thompson’s dismissal of her lawsuit to overturn the 2022 Midterm election was scheduled for conference on February 1.

The Court agreed to hear her case ‘on the merits‘ and at an expedited pace.

Kari joined Steve Bannon’s War Room yesterday to give this update and explain more about her legal battle.

Judge Peter Thompson dismissed the lawsuit on Christmas Eve, despite the evidence of massive voter disenfranchisement targeting Republicans and obviously false testimony by County Elections officials.

Heath reportedly filed a Petition in the State Supreme Court against Peter Thompson, demanding that “Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Peter Thompson vacate his ruling and award the election to Lake.”

As reported by Rachel Alexander with the Arizona Sun Times,

Ryan Heath, an attorney who started The Gavel Project to engage in lawfare against woke ideology, has filed suit against the judge who dismissed Kari Lake’s election lawsuit. Submitted on Monday, the writ of mandamus demands that Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Peter Thompson vacate his ruling and award the election to Lake.

As reported by Rachel Alexander with the Arizona Sun Times,

Ryan Heath, an attorney who started The Gavel Project to engage in lawfare against woke ideology, has filed suit against the judge who dismissed Kari Lake’s election lawsuit. Submitted on Monday, the writ of mandamus demands that Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Peter Thompson vacate his ruling and award the election to Lake.

Heath told The Arizona Sun Times he doesn’t really know where Thompson came up with the high bar he required Lake’s attorneys to prove in order to overturn the election. Thompson required showing by clear and convincing evidence that the misconduct was intentional and meant to change the election, was performed by one of the appropriate people in charge, and that it changed the election.

Heath said this was the wrong standard. He added the judge should have relied on Reyes v. Cuming, a 1997 Arizona case involving similar circumstances, where signatures on the envelopes were not compared to the voter registration list, which violated a non-technical statute.

Heath’s writ of mandamus, which is a type of lawsuit seeking to order a public official to do their job, focused on the problems with signature verification. He reviewed the minimal amount of time signature verification workers were given to compare signatures on each ballot envelope with the signatures in the system. He argued that “it was physically and mathematically impossible for them to have engaged in the statutorily mandated task of verifying signatures.”

He said it would take 30 seconds to verify a signature, but the signatures were verified at a rate of one in less than a second — 0.975 seconds.

He declared, “[I]t is physically impossible for human beings to pull off any meaningful comparison with any reasonable accuracy.”

Heath included testimony from signature verification workers who reported rejection rates in the 25 to 40 percent range. One of those workers reported that instead of curing those mismatched signatures as required by A.R.S. 16-550(A), about 90 percent of them were approved anyway. Reviewers were allowed to put stickers on ballots showing they were approved with no oversight; there was no record of who placed the sticker on them.

That statute was also implicated in Reyes. Although the trial court in Reyes brushed off the statutory violations, allowing one of the candidates, Yuma County Supervisor Republican incumbent Clyde Cuming, to remain in office, the Arizona Court of Appeals reversed that decision and placed his Democratic opponent Marco Reyes in office a year later. The court stated that the “non-technical” statutes advance the constitutional goal of “setting forth procedural safeguards to prevent undue influence, fraud, ballot tampering, and voter intimidation.” The court added, “election statutes are mandatory, not ‘advisory,’ or else they would not be law at all.”

The court went on, the “purpose of A.R.S. 16-550(A) is to prevent the inclusion of invalid votes. … [t]o rule otherwise would ‘affect the result or at least render it uncertain.’” The opinion cited Miller v. Picacho Elementary School District No. 33, “Miller established that an election contestant need only show that absentee ballots counted in violation of a non-technical statute changed the outcome of the election [or rendered it ‘uncertain’]; actual fraud is not a necessary element.”

Heath noted that gubernatorial winner Katie Hobbs’ margin of victory over Lake was only 0.668982 percent, which was very similar to the margin of difference in Reyes, 0.62179 percent. In races that close, the results have often been overturned due to voter disenfranchisement, voter fraud, or other reasons.

He noted how Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer testified that “Maricopa County’s MCTEC [Maricopa County Tabulation and Election Center] facility ‘received 120,000 more early ballot drop-offs on election night than the office had ever seen before.’”

Richards admitted that the number of ballots dropped off at MCTEC was not actually counted; there was merely an estimate made. Heath said there is “a large discrepancy between, on the one hand, the total number of mail-in ballot packets submitted by Maricopa County electors on Election Day that were physically processed at MCTEC and, on the other hand, the total number of mail-in ballot packets purportedly received by Runbeck.”

The lawsuit also cited violations of the U.S. and Arizona constitutions. The election violated the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment Equal Protection Clause since “all persons similarly situated should be treated alike.” The Arizona Constitution has a similar clause, including the Privileges and Immunities Clause. It states that “no law shall be enacted granting to any citizen, class of citizens, or corporation other than municipal, privileges or immunities which, upon the same terms, shall not equally belong to all citizens or corporations.”

Additionally, Article II Section 1 of the Arizona Constitution provides that “[a]ll elections shall be free and equal.” Heath contends that the Equal Protection Clause was violated due to improper counting of many of the mail-in ballots. He cited Chavez v. Brewer, which held that “Arizona’s constitutional right to a ‘free and equal’ election is implicated when votes are not properly counted,” and ruled that one need only “establish that a significant number of votes cast [in the challenged manner] will not be properly recorded or counted.”