Why A Border Crisis Became An Election Fiasco In Arizona

Read an overview of the disgrace that Arizona's political and legal system has become, and what the likeliest explanation is. And why that answer matters to everyone in the United States.

It was to no one’s surprise that an Arizona judge, Peter Thompson, dismissed Kari Lake’s election lawsuit regarding the rampant malfeasance and fraud that turned her clear victory into an allegedly narrow defeat in the state’s gubernatorial election. But the fact it wasn’t a surprise doesn’t make it any less of a complete failure of the political and legal process. Let’s briefly recap…

*On Election Day, no less than 60 percent of the machines in Maricopa County failed, creating wait times of hours.
*This is a problem that affects each side unequally. Republicans are more apt to vote on Election Day, while Democrats are more comfortable with early voting and mailing their ballot in.
*The machines had conveniently worked just fine throughout the early voting period as Democrats went to the polls.
*The breakdowns occurred immediately when Election Day began, meaning that the problem could not have been raw volume overwhelming the system midday. It just so happens that as soon as Lake supporters were starting to vote, the machines broke down.
*The Lake campaign requested that polls be kept open an hour longer than normal, to allow them to make calls to their voters and try and get them back out. Because, you know, normal people can’t wait in line hours on end on a workday. A judge denied this request—one that is routinely (and correctly) given when there is bad weather or long lines in urban centers.
*To give all of this further context, keep in mind two things. Maricopa County is the largest county in the country, so we’re talking about a lot of votes. The culture of the state is that most people vote early in the day. Furthermore, the election was being overseen by the Secretary of State—who just happened to be Democratic nominee Katie Hobbs.

This is actually just the tip of the iceberg. But I’m just going to stop here, because all of this is more than enough to say that Kari Lake not only would have won a properly run election, she probably does it by about 4 percentage points.

I’m also going to stop here because none of this is disputable. Those of us that watched election coverage on during the day on November 8, saw all the footage from Maricopa County. We saw that county’s officials—people who had organized an anti-Lake PAC in their spare time—going to the microphone to issue perfunctory apologies for all the mess. In 2022, they were audacious enough to put their fraud on television for all to see.

It was a pleasant surprise when Judge Thompson actually agreed to hear Lake’s lawsuit, even if he only agreed to hear evidence on two of the ten charges her campaign brought. But that was enough. In the trial, which took place on December 22-23, testimony revealed the following…

*Maricopa County changed the settings on their printers the morning of the election, making subtle changes in the paper size that caused the machines to not work correctly.
*Maricopa County failed to follow their own chain of custody procedures for voting .
*At closing arguments—the time when you presumably fire your best shot, Maricopa County argued that this was really the fault of the Lake supporters because, by waiting until Election Day to vote, they were more vulnerable to machine breakdowns, since they couldn’t come back another day.

So, there you have it. It’s our fault if we want to vote on Election Day. And if we do, it’s no longer the county’s job to have a functioning system. That was their best argument.

All of this has to be understood in the further context of how the Lake campaign was given an inappropriately high legal bar at the outset of the trial. Arizona election law requires, that if, the law is violated in the running of an election—and Maricopa County officials admitted under oath that it was—then the remedy is a new election. New elections, while obviously rare, are not unheard of, and this list shows several done for reasons far less egregious than what was done to the Lake majority in the state of Arizona.

Yet, Judge Thompson gave the Lake campaign a new hurdle to clear—to not only prove that the law was violated, but to show that it was done intentionally. To the immense credit of the Lake legal team, they still did this by any reasonable measure. If you doubt this, try and figure out how to change the settings on your printer. Then imagine this being done at a large number of machines across the biggest county on the country, all in violation of election law, and all right on the morning when everyone in the world knows the Lake voters will be showing up.

Does all this—and more, because again, I’m just focusing on the surface—meet the standard of proof “beyond a reasonable doubt”? Keep in mind this standard doesn’t require that one literally witness the crime in action, but simply that all alternative explanations be unreasonable. The “intentionality” requirement, in addition to being wrongly introduced as a burden of proof, was likely done to ensure Judge Thompson had some kind of an out in the event the case against Maricopa County was as overwhelming as it proved to be.

But what other reasonable explanations are there? Maybe it’s that the county office is filled with large numbers of extremely dumb and incompetent people. Is that possible? Sure. But is it reasonable to assume that levels of mass incompetence all curiously break out right at the time it’s most inconvenient for the candidate that County officials and her Secretary of State opponent clearly have it in for? No, I don’t think that’s reasonable.

Does Judge Thompson Deserve The Benefit of the Doubt?

Judge Thompson, in his ruling, said that we should presume that election officials are telling the truth. If they say they didn’t break the law, then they didn’t, at least according the judge. That’s quite the benefit of the doubt, well beyond what even the generous standards of American jurisprudence—the need to be proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt—would call for. It bears this follow up question—does the judge himself deserve the benefit of the doubt?

That is, should we presume that this judge, and others, are all competent and free of outside influence? Should we presume their decisions are based on the law, and—even if we disagree—that it’s a difference of opinion on which reasonable minds might differ?

Unfortunately, I no longer think so.

I don’t believe for a second Judge Thompson really believes what he shoveled out. We can start with everything that was covered above. Then, let’s consider when he issued the ruling. Even though the trial concluded at the end of December 23, and he had several days to make his ruling, he still chose to issue it on the afternoon of Christmas Eve.

Judge Thompson issued this ruling at the time when most people were highly unlikely to hear about it. They’d be getting ready for Christmas Eve parties. Even if they did hear about it, they wouldn’t want to think or talk about it too much on such a joyous night.

If Judge Thompson had really made a ruling he was proud of, wouldn’t he have wanted to put it out first thing Monday morning. He would have been on the national news, on outlets that all—including Fox—are universally anti-Lake. If the people of Arizona really voted for Katie Hobbs wouldn’t they also be thrilled by this ruling?

But, of course the people of Arizona didn’t pick Hobbs—in fact polling indicates that 70 percent of Arizonans believe their election was illegitimate. Even with the 53-54 percent that are Lake supporters, that’s still a solid 16 percent that includes Hobbs-backing Democrats.

Thus, we have a ruling that no reasonable person would reach based on a clean application of legal principle, issued at a time when people were least likely to hear about it or react to it. Clearly, the judge was not proud of what he had done.

So, what’s our takeaway here? Am I saying the judge is corrupt? Well, Catholic moral doctrine obligates me to give people in all circumstances the benefit of the doubt as far as is reasonable. Therefore, let’s consider…

*We’ve covered that it’s not reasonable to think this was just a difference of opinion. You just have to buy into or ignore far too much.

*Nor is it reasonable to defer to the judge because he knows better. Yes, I realize he has his law degrees and years of experience. I counter with only the daily experience of writing 3,000-plus words of legal content every business day. But you don’t need legal experience or a law degree to know that this ruling was wrong. The only use for all of Judge Thompson’s credentials in a case like this are that they help you come up with whatever excuse you’re going to use for not doing the right thing.

If this were some arcane question of legal procedure, the judge could be deferred to. Not on a fiasco that we all watched on television and then saw confirmed in open testimony by Maricopa County’s own witnesses.

But before we jump to the corruption conclusion, there are some kinder interpretations of his failings in this case. We can always start with fear of the backlash from corporate media, an understandable—if cowardly—response. There’s also fear of something a little darker, something that goes to the heart of why Arizona’s official apparatus went to such great lengths to keep Kari Lake out of the governor’s chair.

Why Arizona Matters

Ask yourself—what is it that makes the state of Arizona unique? And what it is that makes the governor’s chair specifically pertinent?

The answer to that question is human trafficking.

Since President Trump left office, the border has become completely wide open, with no regulation or enforcement being done. This has been a financial boon for the human trafficking cartels. The Department of Homeland Security recently reported that the cartels income has exploded over the last two years. Either the government regulates the border or the cartels will run it. Right now, it’s the latter.

With no support for border control at the federal level, states are having to pick up the slack. Texas governor Greg Abbott recently declared a state of emergency at his own border, no longer wiling to wait for the feds to act. Where did Abbott get this idea? Why, he got it from Kari Ann Lake.

Lake vowed that as soon her hand came off the Bible from taking the oath of office that there would be a state of emergency declared and Arizona would act independently to secure its border.

Now, let’s say you’re the cartels. You’ve lost the Texas border and that state is Red enough that you can’t even steal that election. You control California, but that’s a pretty small sliver of land. The Arizona border is the piece of territory you need. Does it not follow that you will do everything in your power to keep control of that turf? If you’re a soulless, cold-hearted human being—and if you’re a cartel leader, that’s exactly what you are—then there is nothing you won’t do. Stealing an election in full view of a national television audience is probably the least of your sins.

As if this story couldn’t get any worse, the Democratic candidate for Secretary of State, Abe Fontes, is a lawyer for the cartels. Yes, it has come to this. A mob lawyer is, absent Divine Intervention, going to be sworn in to oversee elections in Arizona on January 5.

Thus, we return to Judge Thompson. Do we think it’s at least possible that the cartels might have had a little chat with him? Nothing too forward—just a wink and a nod letting him know what had to be done. Does that sound reasonable?

I think it sounds more reasonable than thinking the judge really believes this ridiculous ruling he put out. I think it’s a kinder interpretation than assuming he’s on the take, or assuming that he’s scared of a few nasty commentaries in the media. What’s more, I not only find it reasonable, I find it frighteningly likely.

It’s Time To Stop

At the top of this article, I said it was to no one’s surprise—including me—that Lake’s lawsuit was dismissed. Just stop and think about what that means. It means a human trafficking cartel now has an openly established partnership with a state government, that to get it they stole in election in broad daylight, dared judges and other public officials to stop them, and no one did. And no one is even surprised by that. Where does that mean we’re at as a country? It means we’re up a certain creek.

It also means that the framework by which we view American politics has to change and it has to change to now. The standard Republican vs. Democrat, or even liberal vs. conservative narratives that dominate media conversation and our own perceptions are simply wrong. At the very least, they are outdated. And quite frankly, I’m wondering if they were ever true to begin with.

Nothing about cartel-controlled government has the slightest thing to do with political philosophy. It’s about greed and control by any means necessary. They need political officials who will play ball. Katie Hobbs will play ball. Her Republican predecessor, Doug Ducey, played ball. The entire John McCain Republican Machine in Arizona played ball.

The McCain Machine’s anointed candidate in this year’s GOP primary, Karrin Taylor Robson, would have played ball and might have been allowed to win. At the very least, she would have been an acceptable alternative presented to the public to foster the illusion that the people of Arizona were really in charge of their own government. But Kari Lake wouldn’t play ball. She was an outsider. She had the heart of the people. She had to be stopped.

And it’s time for all of us to stop. To stop buying into the liberal vs. conservative narratives presented to us. Kari Lake gets this better than most anyone in politics. At one point in the campaign she told an audience that politics in America had stopped being about left vs. right. “It’s about up vs. down”, she said. After the events of November 8 in Maricopa County, and the cover-up that ensued, I don’t see how that can be denied any longer.

If a nation is like a family, ours is very much a dysfunctional family right now. A trait of dysfunction is to walk around insisting that everything is fine, or at least could be fine with just a few tweaks. But we are not fine. We’re anything but. Now, we have a human trafficking ring with their own government within our borders.

This is a bleak outlook, but to believe in the existence of God, the redemptive power of Christ, and the intercessory power of His Mother means to never give in to despair or hopelessness. To that end, I want to offer a passage from one my favorite prayers. It’s called The Surrender Novena, and it’s based on the words of Christ to an Italian mystic, Father Dolingo Ruotolo. Each day has the words of Our Lord inviting us to give all our troubles to Him. When faced with seemingly intractable opposition like we are in Arizona, reflect on these words, imagining Jesus speaking directly to you…

“You want to direct everything, see to everything and you surrender to human strength—or worse, to men themselves, trusting in their intervention. This is what hinders my words and my views.”

To put it in basketball terms, it seems as though Christ is telling us to give him the ball and then clear the lane. If He wants to give the ball back to us for some task, He will. Otherwise, we need to just let Him go to work, trusting in His Plan, and—perhaps more annoyingly—His Timetable. Pray for Arizona. Pray for Kari Lake, who has more guts than the entire Republican Establishment combined. And pray for the United States, whose political system is quite clearly not what we thought it was.

VIDEO: Reflections on the Second Coming of Christ
In this video discussion, Dan Flaherty, John Tuturice and Bob LeBlanc share Advent reflections on preparing for Christ’s arrival, both in the short-term and on The Last Judgment.