The case involved a rural county commission race in Screven County, where several candidates filed a lawsuit alleging incorrect ballots were issued to at least two dozen voters, potentially altering the outcome of a county commission race decided by just seven votes, The Georgia Virtue reported.
Several voters, it was later found, had been assigned ballots to districts they did not live in, meaning voters of a certain district were effectively disenfranchised from the vote in their home districts—an argument Lake made after up to 1,000 Arizona voters were provided with incorrect ballots in early voting in the fall.
The judge ultimately ordered a new election in Screven County—something Lake has been pushing for in Arizona after alleging, and failing to prove, instances of rampant fraud and irregularities in her own election.
“WORTH NOTING,” Lake wrote on Twitter, without saying why.
Screven County has just over 14,000 residents; Arizona has nearly 7.3 million. The ballots in question were just several doors away from the district boundary; Lake’s race was statewide, and had no resemblance to the dynamics seen in a rural county commission race about 2,000 miles away. Screven County was also decided by seven votes; Arizona by more than 17,000.
But the Screven County case also had something Lake’s case did not: evidence that the issues reported there had a tangible impact on the outcome of the election.
While Lake’s attorneys claimed in court that a printer malfunction caused some ballots not to be counted by machine, ballots that were submitted were ultimately counted by hand, and did not have any impact on people’s ability to vote.
Lake also failed to prove that the mishaps on Election Day were malicious and intentional, nor were her attorneys able to demonstrate that any of the issues she presented were significant enough to impact the election in any way.
The case in Screven County, however, did, and a judge needed only 17 minutes to determine that the apparently accidental distribution of ballots might have caused an incorrect outcome.
According to the law there, a new election is warranted if the number of illegal votes exceeds the margin of the results, or if it is proven there were systemic irregularities in the election process determined to be “sufficiently egregious” to cast doubt on the result.
In this case, plaintiffs challenging the elections process identified more than 20 illegal votes that were cast for the wrong candidate, a margin wide enough to be considered “sufficiently egregious” and cast doubt on the result. Lake’s attorneys failed to prove that a similar situation occurred in Arizona.
Newsweek reached out to Lake’s team for comment.
