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Two Republican candidates in Arizona are trying to keep former President Donald Trump's election fraud conspiracy theories alive with a new lawsuit that would send the state’s electoral process back to a bygone era.
The lawsuit, filed Friday by gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake and Arizona secretary of state candidate Mark Finchem, seeks to bar the state from using electronic voting machines in the November midterm election. Mike Lindell, the pillow-pushing, pro-Trump conspiracy theorist, told Insider he's bankrolling the lawsuit.
Lake, a former anchor for a local Fox affiliate, and Finchem, a state representative who was pictured outside the U.S. Capitol during the Jan. 6 attack, have both pushed baseless claims of widespread fraud in the 2020 election.
The lawsuit seeks to make only paper ballots in Arizona elections valid, claiming Arizona’s “voting system does not reliably provide trustworthy and verifiable election results.” It also targets Dominion Voting Systems, the voting machine company suing Lindell over his unfounded claims that the company rigged the 2020 election.
Of course, allegations of widespread fraud in the 2020 election have been undercut time and time again by investigators, including some Republicans officials.
A GOP-backed firm known as Cyber Ninjas was hired to “audit” (see: access scores of personal voter data) the results of the 2020 election in Arizona’s Maricopa County, the most populous county in the state. The group confirmed Joe Biden won — and by hundreds more votes than previously announced.
A more recent review by Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich, a Republican who’s been targeted by conservatives for not fully endorsing Trump’s election fraud lie, found no evidence of mass voter fraud in Maricopa County. Brnovich released a report detailing his findings earlier this month.
Lake and Finchem are taking cues from their dear leader Trump in pushing this ridiculous lawsuit that seemingly has no chance for survival. During a rally Saturday in Ohio, Trump called for elections with only paper ballots as part of his effort to sow doubt about election integrity and restrict voter access.
In an interview before the rally where Trump delivered that deranged diatribe, Lindell touted the lawsuit Lake and Finchem filed in Arizona as “historical” and claimed it would “get rid of the machines once and for all.”
The lawsuit seems unlikely to prevail, but it exemplifies how desperate Trump-backed candidates are to bend the knee and help the former president push his lies about election fraud.
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