The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to consider a request by Republican U.S. Senate candidate Kari Lake to ban the use of electronic vote-counting machines in Arizona.
Lake and Republican former secretary of state candidate Mark Finchem filed suit two years ago, claiming the machines that count votes were vulnerable to hacking and manipulation.
U.S. District Judge John Tuchi in Phoenix ruled that Lake and Finchem lacked standing to sue because they failed to show any realistic likelihood of harm. He later sanctioned their attorneys for bringing a claim based on frivolous information.
When the lawsuit was initially filed in 2022, Lake was a candidate for governor and Finchem was running for secretary of state. They made baseless election fraud claims a centerpiece of their campaigns. Both went on to lose to Democrats and challenged the outcomes in court.
Lake is now the GOP front-runner for the U.S. Senate in Arizona. Finchem is running for state Senate.
Lawyers for Lake and Finchem had argued that hand counts are the most efficient method for totaling election results. Election administrators testified that hand counting dozens of races on millions of ballots would require an extraordinary amount of time, space, and manpower, and would be less accurate.
The Supreme Court's decision not to take the vote-counting case marks the end of the road for the effort to require a hand count of ballots. No justices dissented when the court denied their request.
Material from The Associated Press was used in this report.
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