The Big Lie In Arizona: The Rachel Alexander File

The WorldNetDaily columnist has been its biggest promoter of the discredited claim that Kari Lake is the real winner of the Arizona governor's race and that it was stolen from her due to election fraud.

By Terry Krepel
Posted 2/13/2023

Rachel Alexander

The mainstream media have been saying since 2020 that Arizona is purple or even turning blue, but people in Arizona know that year was a fluke. Almost every one of the candidates endorsed in Arizona by Donald Trump are expected to win in the midterms, with even mainstream pollsters predicting so. The only one expected not to win is Blake Masters for U.S. Senate, but that's not because Trump endorsed him; a myriad of things went wrong in that race including being out-raised by a stunning amount.

But in case that didn't come to pass, Alexander -- a lover of conspiracy theories who fought to get corrupt Republican Rep. Steve Stockman sprung from prison during the COVID pandemic -- was also readying a backup plan by raising the ol' election fraud bogeyman:

Conservative activists are going all out to ensure there is little fraud in the election. They're up against a daunting task, however, as new information seeps out. Maricopa County hired 145 more Democrats than Republicans to staff the primary election, despite the fact Republicans concerned about voter fraud are applying in droves, and there are substantially more registered Republicans than Democrats in the county. "Bad" signatures were rejected 14 times more often during the primary election than during the notorious 2020 election, leading to fears that it is easy to manipulate AI to change the standard of review.

A citizens' group launched a movement to stop the use of electronic voting machine readers in the election, and so some counties are considering dropping them. Lake and Finchem filed a lawsuit to stop their use. Citizens have organized ballot drop box watching shifts, reporting suspicious activity on a new nationwide reporting app called VotifyNow. On Election Day, the app will reveal to users what problems others in their area are reporting.

Alexander pushed the Luddite argument against machine-counting of election ballots in her Oct. 31 column:

A small group of concerned Arizonans, including one brave Arizona Corporation Commission member, are trying to convince Arizona counties to switch to counting ballots by hand instead of using electronic voting machine tabulators. Concerns have heightened around the country that unscrupulous actors are manipulating algorithms in the machines to adjust election outcomes. France, a country of 65 million, counts all ballots in the presidential election by hand, and is finished counting them an hour and a half after the polls close. If a country that large can do it easily, why not some small counties? Why the intense opposition? So far, they've persuaded at least one county in Arizona to conduct a hand count.

In fact, the reason France got quick results despite hand-counting are 1) that election was only for president, meaning the ballot was a lot less complicated, 2) counting was done at each polling station instead of a central location, and 3) election rules are nationalized. She continued:

Arizona Corporation Commissioner Jim O'Connor, who is a well-respected and trusted official in the state, sent letters to county officials around the state putting them on notice that they will be violating the law if they use the machines in the election. A significant number of citizens around the country are looking into the accreditations of the labs that certified the machines before 2020 and afterward, and discovered all kinds of problems, which they believe invalidates the certifications for the voting machines.

If Alexander has to appeal to the authority fallacy and insisting that O'Connor is "a well-respected and trusted official," that's probably a reason to suspect that he really isn't. Indeed, Alexander failed to mention that O'Connor also sent out to county officials a letter promoting an anti-electronic-counting event stacked with opponents of electronic count and titled "The Rise of Truth -- The Demise of Machines." Meanwhile, here in the real world of America, hand-counting is both less accurate and more expensive.

Alexander went on to write:

More information continues to pour out about how vast the Yuma County ballot harvesting scheme highlighted in the film "2000 Mules" was, as two more operatives were just indicted. Progressive groups aggressively targeted newly naturalized citizens in Arizona to break turnout records in the primary election. And it recently came out that Maricopa County Elections rejected "bad signatures" 14 times more during the primary election than during the controversial 2020 general election.

In fact, "2000 Mules" has been repeatedly discredited, and there's no credible evidence of voter fraud in Yuma County. Also, there's nothing illegal about encouraging people to vote, as much as Alexander wants you to think otherwise. And we thought right-wingers like Alexander believed that signature rejection was a good thing since it helps to keep out fraudulent voters.

Alexander concluded by claiming:

Voters concerned about fraud in Arizona are going all out this election to ensure there is little opportunity for dishonest actions. A federal district court judge ruled on Friday that observers may watch ballot drop boxes. U.S. District Court Judge Michael Liburdi slapped down accusations that the volunteers were engaging in voter intimidation (many of the observers sit in their cars over 100 yards away where no one even notices them).

In fact, armed people wearing bulletproof vest were interfering directly with people using ballot drop boxes and also shooting videos and photos -- which is clear voter intimidation.

Alexander was back on the hand-counting kick again in her Nov. 7 column, the last one before the midterm elections:

A group of concerned Arizonans has been trying to stop Arizona counties from using electronic voting machine tabulators, but due to lawyers intervening, so far only one small county has taken any action, merely including some hand counting. And after it did, Marc Elias, one of the most powerful activist progressive attorneys in the country, swooped in with his out-of-state firm to sue the Cochise County Supervisors. He did so despite the fact Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich issued a legal opinion a couple of days earlier stating counties have the legal authority to hand count ballots.

Many of the county attorneys are going along with Elias, terrified of the Arizona State Bar coming after them, which has one of the worst reputations in the country for going after conservative attorneys. One election attorney flat out told the concerned Arizonans he would not represent them or he'd be disbarred, so they've had to represent themselves in legal proceedings.

Alexander went on to invoke her own alleged authority to paint critics of hand counting as politically motivated (as if the proponents aren't):

As the former Maricopa County elections attorney, I am appalled to see these attorneys substituting their own political agendas in place of their statutory responsibility to merely provide legal advice. Paul Rice, another member of the concerned group of Arizonans, said, "The attorneys are violating their rules of professional ethics as well as statutes by not letting the boards act independently and autonomously and supporting them in good faith."

The group has filed multiple lawsuits but gotten nowhere due to judges who I believe are more concerned about staying out of the way of the Arizona State Bar and fitting in with the cool attorneys at the best cocktail parties. The group has now made presentations to seven of Arizona's 15 counties.

Again, Alexander censored the fact that hand counting is less accurate and more costly.

Well, Arizona's Republicans lost their statewide races, so Alexander sprung the trap in her first post-election column on Nov. 14 -- though she also whined that there wasn't enough evidence to sufficiently gum up the works the way she wants:

As the former Maricopa County elections attorney, I've watched the midterm election results trickle in with disbelief. Polls across the country mostly showed a red wave, and usually in previous years when the polls tighten up and show Republicans neck and neck with Democrats, the Republicans end up winning. (I've always suspected the "tightening up" was a trick by pollsters to demoralize the right early on.) But this year, just like 2020, the results are defying polling.

There are some strange things occurring, such as how the results from the reddest batches of ballots in Arizona were widely expected to come in last – but by Saturday there were still plenty of blue batches. One election attorney told me the county is violating the law by changing the order of which ballots they are counting. Election fraud denier Bill Gates, chair of the Maricopa County Supervisors, said on Wednesday that 95-99% of the results would be in on Friday, but on Thursday he said counting would finish up the next week, with, oddly, no counting over the weekend.

[...]

Reports are coming out of suspicious activity, but without probable cause or a blatant "smoking gun," legal challenges will go nowhere. For example, at Washoe County in Nevada, the livestream cameras stopped working Wednesday night at 11:24 p.m. Officials said all staff had left the building an hour earlier and didn't return until 7 a.m., so the cameras were not restored until 7:53 a.m.

This doesn't easily translate into legal action. A judge isn't going to issue a search warrant to conduct a forensic examination of the voting machines solely based on that, and if there was nefarious activity with ballots, how would you figure out what it was, outside of a hand count, which is difficult to get ordered?

Alexander seemed shocked that one must have evidence before making a claim (which she shouldn't be, seeing as how she claims to be a lawyer). Rather than, you know, supplying evidence, she played victim by ranting that attorneys are being held accountable for making bogus claims:

The problem is no attorneys or judges licensed by state bars dare to get involved, since they're likely to get disbarred if they do; the left has so much control over state bars. One of the only election attorneys in Arizona who has the guts to get involved in these issues has been under investigation by the state bar for almost two years. The Arizona State Bar is one of the most vicious bars in the country targeting conservative attorneys. This is why the left repeatedly claims there has been no "evidence" of voter fraud in court cases.

People can rant all they want about voter fraud, but until they start cleaning up the legal system – and that means rallying around conservative attorneys under attack and conservative leaders targeted through lawfare who have been ignored and deserted since too many don't want to be associated with "losers," preferring to focus on sexier issues – no one is going to be prosecuted.

Alexander pushed the unproven narrative again in her Nov. 21 column:

The Democrats, MSM and RINOs are complaining about voters' concerns over election fraud, saying "we need to move on," "quit living in the past," and "no one cares about it as an issue; you're hurting the Republican Party to continue focusing on it." There may be a grain of truth in all of that, but it's outweighed by the fact that if we don't stop the fraud, we may never get another Republican president into office and more states will turn blue.

No one really believes deep down that Arizona rejected four top Republican candidates – three who were leading in almost every poll, including MSM polls – considering the breakdown of voter registration in the state. Republicans have a 4-point voter registration advantage over Democrats in the state as well as within Maricopa County. Republican candidates swept the rest of the races around the state, leading many to believe only those four top races, which featured all Trump-endorsed candidates, were deliberately targeted.

Again, Alexander had only conspiracy theories, not solid facts, to serve up:

One of the main theories going around in Arizona is that since bad actors knew Republicans were going to vote heavily on Election Day, they focused their efforts there instead of on mail-in ballots. They speculate that someone on the inside, likely a tech inspector, was paid a large amount of money to incorrectly adjust the settings on printers located in heavily Republican precincts the night before, after the final tests of equipment were performed, throwing in a handful of blue precincts for distraction. Well over 350% more Republicans than Democrats voted in person on Election Day in Maricopa County.

[...]

Election-fraud experts tell me it's part of a plan by Democrats to take over states one by one. First they started with states like California, Washington and Oregon. They moved on to states like Colorado and Nevada. Arizona happens to be their latest target. One election-fraud expert in California believes there are actually rather close numbers of Republicans and Democrats in that state, but due to years of election fraud there, no one bothers investigating anymore, allowing it to become rampant.

[...]

No one wants to talk about election fraud anymore because they risk being sued or even prosecuted, kicked off Big Tech platforms, or shunned by powerful Republicans with money, who are often referred to as RINOs due to their heavy conflicts of interest. In order to keep their money flowing in, these powerful players have to keep up many alliances and contracts with people who don't share conservative values. There's no easy solution there, because without funding, who's going to pay to get the conservative message out? There aren't enough millionaires and billionaires who can operate outside of those entanglements.

So many people just nod and wink and pretend there's no election fraud in order to keep their funding, labeling anyone concerned about it as "crazy" or "conspiracy theorists," which often destroys their reputations and careers and makes them question their sanity. Stories of mass election fraud, like the type "2,000 Mules" exposed in Yuma County, go ignored. The focus needs to be on figuring out how to turn this type of messaging around, vindicating those who question the obvious instead of ridiculing them.

Again, "2000 Mules" has been repeatedly discredited, and an investigation in Yuma County isn't tied to the film.

Alexander repeated her conspiracy theories in her Dec. 5 column, as well as her complaint that right-wing lawyers who tie up the legal system with bogus claims are being held accountable:

Republicans have started filing election lawsuits over the strange outcome in Arizona, since no one believes that the top Trump-endorsed slate of candidates who were almost all leading in MSM polls lost. But the left is already ahead of the lawsuits, filing bar complaints against conservative election attorneys. The scary 65 Project, which basically seeks to stamp out conservatives from the practice of law, has been selectively filing ethics complaints against these attorneys. Since state bars are almost all controlled by the left, and many states have mandatory state bars, it's a no-brainer way to push through an illegal agenda like rubber stamping voter disenfranchisement.

The 65 Project is all over conservative election attorneys in Arizona. I'm the former Maricopa County Elections attorney, and it's like a who's who list of my colleagues in Arizona. Recent state bar complaints have been filed against Alex Kolodin, Dennis Wilenchik and his son Jack Wilenchik, Lee Miller, David Spilsbury, Christopher Viskovic and Kurt Olsen, who's been heavily involved in Arizona litigation including representing GOP gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake.

Other prominent attorneys around the country they've filed complaints against (in states where there are no mandatory state bars, the complaints get filed with other types of grievance commissions) include Ted Cruz, Jenna Ellis, John Eastman, Joseph DiGenova, Cleta Mitchell of the Election Integrity Network and numerous Republican attorneys general.

Does anyone really believe that a large number of conservative election attorneys happen to all be corrupt? Of course not. The bar complaints are a horrendous abuse of our justice system. No attorneys dare stand up for those attacked because it then puts a big target on their back. Non-attorneys aren't aware of how bad the abuses have become because it's a very technical area with lots of intricate and vague rules.

To discuss just one of those lawyers, Olsen: Numerous other lawyers in Arizona have said the claims of election fraud by Lake, as represented by Olsen, lacked merit. Still, Alexander declared that "These lawyers are the last bulwark standing in the way of massive voter disenfranchisement and suppression, it is imperative not to let them hang out to dry" and pompously concluded:

If we do not stop the fraud, we will never see a Republican president again, and the left will continue toppling red states like dominoes. The RINOs can complain all they want that the Trump-endorsed candidates lost because they were too Trumpian, not because they were targeted with election fraud, but we all know history repeats itself. The left will come for the RINOs next.

Alexander began her Dec. 12 column with this wildly conspiratorial claim:

The MSM secretly distributes talking points, which often come from the DNC, instructing its reporters to include statements in articles about voter disenfranchisement and suppression of Republicans, declaring that there has never been any evidence of widespread voter fraud. If you're not a lawyer, you might buy it. But if you know just the tiniest bit about the law, it's frankly embarrassing to see non-lawyer journalists repeatedly writing this, pretending to be authoritative and objective.

Needless to say, she provided no evidence of these secret talking points -- which fits right in with her lack of evidence on other claims. And the conspiracy theories, and her cheering on of Lake, just kept coming:

Previous election lawsuits in 2020 challenging voter disenfranchisement and suppression were stymied due to other reasons, not lack of evidence. It's dishonest for the MSM to pretend otherwise. Judges found vague technicalities to throw them out, afraid of having their careers destroyed since the left dominates much of the legal system.

[...]

Trump-endorsed Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake filed a lengthy lawsuit on Friday challenging the results of the state's botched election, where thousands of Republicans on Election Day in Maricopa County ran into complications voting and, based on what they saw, doubt their votes were counted. The complaint cited extensive witness testimony regarding wrongdoing, including 90% of mismatched signatures just swept under the rug and approved instead of being "cured" to ensure they were legitimate. Other witness testimony cited a lack of chain of custody for 298,942 ballots that were delivered to a third-party voter signature verification service. That is a class 2 misdemeanor.

Just because a judge comes up with a bogus technical reason to throw out a lawsuit doesn't mean there was never any evidence produced. Some of the reasons the 2020 lawsuits went nowhere were because the election attorneys were targeted with disciplinary actions, as in Wisconsin Voters Alliance v. Pence. The attorneys were only too grateful to drop the case to avoid worse discipline. They weren't just any attorneys either, but part of the respected Thomas More Society's Amistad Project. The judge who scared them into withdrawing the case was appointed by President Barack Obama, James Boasberg. The 65 Project, which appears to exist in order to drive conservative attorneys out of the practice of law, has preemptively submitted bar complaints against many of the election attorneys filing lawsuits over the 2022 election.

[...]

All eyes are on Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Peter Thompson, who was assigned to Lake's lawsuit. Will he withstand the immense pressure and acknowledge the massive statutory violations, or will he succumb to the bullies on the left and their comrades in the MSM?

Thompson threw out Lake's lawsuit and found what little evidence Lake provided was unpersuasive. Unsurprisingly, Alexander devoted her Dec. 26 column to complaining about it:

The trial court judge in Kari Lake's election lawsuit predictably threw out her case on Saturday, putting on a sham trial that on the surface looked fair to the general public that doesn't know any better, but to legal minds was a travesty of justice. Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Peter Thompson only gave Lake two days for a trial and issued his ruling immediately afterward, even though he could have taken several days, and it was one of the biggest, most important cases in the country. Legal experts believe his decision was ghostwritten; they suspect top left-wing attorneys like Marc Elias emailed him what to say.

The standard should have been whether voters were disenfranchised, not all the additional hoops Thompson added. If inner city blacks had been disenfranchised, Thompson would not have added all those extra requirements – he would have made the law fit. Robert Gouveia, a rare attorney who isn't afraid to speak up and who describes himself as watching prosecutors, judges and politicians, said the standard should have been whether there was voter suppression.

Instead, Thompson said Lake had to show an extremely vague, high bar in order to prevail, that an election official intentionally caused the printer changes in order to change the results of the election, and that it did affect the outcome. He explained away many of the disturbing election anomalies as accidents or mere coincidences. He ignored the vast majority of them; in a show of arrogance, his opinion was less than eight pages long.

Thompson completely ignored all the voters who saw the long lines and gave up trying to vote, as if they didn't count. Considering probably well over half of the voting locations in Maricopa County were affected, not to mention they were almost all in heavily Republican areas, this was no small disenfranchisement. Many voters have come forward and told how they were unable to vote for this reason or similar, such as a man who couldn't find parking in time due to the overcrowded parking lot.

(Lake retweeted Alexander's bizarre and possibly libelous assertion that Thompson's ruling was "ghostwritten" by "left-wing attorneys like Marc Elias" -- which Lake deleted shortly thereafter, presumably after realizing that insulting judges and falsely accusing them of ghostwriting opinions is perhaps not the best way to encourage one to rule in your favor.)

Alexander clung to the dubious election fraud narrative in her Jan. 2 column:

Distrust in the justice system over its refusal to stop voter disenfranchisement is spiraling after Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Peter Thompson dismissed Kari Lake's lawsuit challenging the results of Arizona's botched midterm election, where Democrat Katie Hobbs was declared the winner. Hobbs was losing in almost every MSM poll and didn't bother to debate Lake, prompting one of the most prominent progressive journalists in the state to denounce her hiding in her basement as "political malpractice." Hobbs was such an unremarkable candidate that she has only 177k Twitter followers to Lake's 834k followers, over 400% fewer.

The Republican Party has a 4% voter registration over Democrats in both Maricopa County and statewide. Despite this, 14% of voters supposedly flipped to oppose Arizona's top Trump candidates. Just like how no one believed Donald Trump lost the state in 2020, when he led Joe Biden 3 or 4 points going into the election, no one believes Hobbs really won. This is why instead of being happy and gloating at their win, the left is reacting with a bizarre level of intense anger toward the right.

Lake's team discovered that over 298,942 ballots delivered to third-party signature verification service Runbeck Election Services on Election Day had no chain of custody and provided this evidence to Thompson. A Runbeck employee stated there were at least 9,530 duplicate ballots printed and issued with no chain of custody. And two days after the election, 25,000 more ballots were found that lacked a chain of custody, totaling over 333,472 ballots. Under Arizona law here and here, every one of those constitutes a class 2 misdemeanor.

But as a fact-checker pointed out, one of Lake's own witnesses at the trial admitted during cross-examination that delivery receipt forms did exist and that she had seen them in photos -- meaning that chain of custody does exist even if she wasn't given physical copies of them.

Alexander then pushed another conspiracy theory:

The MSM is ignoring the prosecution threats county supervisors have received for merely considering conducting a hand count of the ballots. Mohave County Supervisor Ron Gould was threatened with a felony and jail. Hobbs threatened county attorneys into not doing their legal job of representing county supervisors like him. A.R.S. 13-1804, extortion theft, states that it is a class 4 felony to threaten to "Take or withhold action as a public servant or cause a public servant to take or withhold action."

Alexander didn't mention that Gould and Mohave County officials were in the process of breaking Arizona law by refusing to certify the election by the state-mandated deadline.

Alexander concluded by touting Lake's desperate appeal of the court ruling:

All eyes are now on the Arizona Supreme Court and then the U.S. Supreme Court to see if they go along with the trial court judge and cover for the wrongdoing using a bogus technical excuse. In 2020, SCOTUS didn't provide reasons for rejecting certiorari on Trump's election lawsuit and others. The people need to watch both courts closely and hold them accountable if they do not correct this travesty of justice, by refusing to reelect the Arizona Supreme Court judges and creating awareness about the inaction of SCOTUS justices.

Clinging to never-proven or long-disproven conspiracy theories about election fraud shows why Alexander makes an ideal WND columnist.