PHOENIX – A hand count of ballots from random precincts sought by the Arizona Republican Party in hopes of finding more votes for President Trump just can’t be done, an attorney for Maricopa County told a judge Monday.
Deputy County Attorney Joseph La Rue pointed out that party attorney Jack Wilenchik is demanding there be a random hand-count audit of votes cast at 2% of the more than 700 precincts.
He told Maricopa County Superior Court Judge John Hannah that his county did not require voters to cast ballots in their own precincts.
“We didn’t do it that way,” LaRue said.
Instead, he explained, any registered voter could go to any of the approximately 175 vote centers.
“Our ballots are not separated by precincts,” La Rue said. “They’re in bags, separated by vote centers.”
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That hand count was finished a week ago, he said, based on 2% of the voting centers, something La Rue told Hannan is specifically authorized by the state’s official Election Procedures Manual.
What Wilenchik wants, he continued, is opening all of the bags and trying to figure out which ballots inside belong to which precincts. Even if the bags are opened, La Rue said, it may not be possible to isolate different precincts.
And even it it could be done — a point La Rue does not concede — there is no way all that can happen, including a new precinct-by-precinct hand count, ahead of the plans by the Board of Supervisors to certify the election results in a formal canvass by Thursday, or Friday at the latest.
La Rue told Hannah it makes no sense for him to order the kind of hand count the GOP wants if the results will come after the election tallies already are certified.
“The purpose of the hand-count audit is to determine if the vote was accurate and, if it wasn’t, to take other remedial steps prior to the canvass,” he said. “And so, if the audit takes place after the canvass, I’m not sure what the point would be.”
And there’s something else.
La Rue pointed out that representatives from the Republican Party were involved in the hand count of vote center ballots that was conducted by the county and finished a week ago. He said there were no discrepancies found.
He said it’s too late for the party to come in now, after that count in which they participated was conducted, and claim that’s not the right procedure and demand something else.
There is the legal option for Hannah to grant an injunction to delay the county canvass. But doing so would raise issues that are even more complex.
The state is set to conduct its formal canvass Nov. 30, something that requires all 15 counties to be done by then.
And even if that legally can be pushed back because Maricopa County is not ready, there’s a potentially more serious problem.
The National Conference of State Legislatures says federal law requires all state recounts and court contests to be completed by Dec. 8. And six days later the 11 electors pledged to the winning candidate — currently Joe Biden in Arizona — cast their ballots.
Central to the issue is that requirement to take some ballots from a certain number of precincts, selected by officials of both parties, to count by hand and compare that with what the machines tallied.
If the audit comes in within a certain margin, then everything is fine.
But if one or more races are outside that margin, then the process is repeated with ever-larger batches. And at a certain point if discrepancies persist, there even are provision for a judge ordering the source code for the computer software reviewed by a special master.
All that plugs into contentions by some Republicans that the voting machines were somehow programmed to delete votes for Trump. That includes allegations — with no proof offered — that equipment from Dominion Voting Systems, which is used in Maricopa County, had software glitches that led to mistakes in vote tallies.
Kelli Ward, who chairs the state GOP that has filed the suit, said Monday in a video message that, as far as she is concerned, the election is “far from over.”
“We have questions that have to be answered,” she said. “We are working with the Trump campaign, hand in hand, to make sure the election in Arizona has integrity.”
This isn’t the only lawsuit waiting to be resolved.
Attorney Alexander Kolodin wants Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Margaret Mahoney to rule that one of his clients never actually got a chance to cast her ballot at her polling place. And he contends that another client, while casting a ballot, has no assurance it ever was counted.
But Kolodin conceded that even if he wins his lawsuit, it won’t have any effect on this year’s election.
Photos: 2020 General Election in Pima County and Arizona
Ballot processing in Pima County
Ballot processing in Pima County
Ballot processing in Pima County
Ballot processing in Pima County
Ballot processing in PIma County
Ballot processing in PIma County
Ballot processing in PIma County
Ballot processing in PIma County
Ballot processing, Pima County
Ballot processing, Pima County
Ballot processing, Pima County
Election Day, Pima County and Arizona, 2020
Election Day, Pima County and Arizona, 2020
Election Day, Pima County and Arizona, 2020
Election Day, Pima County and Arizona, 2020
Election 2020 Senate Kelly
Election 2020 Senate Kelly
Election Day, Pima County and Arizona, 2020
Election Day, Pima County and Arizona, 2020
Election Day, Pima County and Arizona, 2020
Election Day, Pima County and Arizona, 2020
Election Day, Pima County and Arizona, 2020
Election Day, Pima County and Arizona, 2020
Election Day, Pima County and Arizona, 2020
Election Day, Pima County and Arizona, 2020
Election Day, Pima County and Arizona, 2020
Election 2020 Arizona Voting
Election 2020 Arizona Voting
Election 2020 Arizona Voting
Election Day, Pima County and Arizona, 2020
Election Day, Pima County and Arizona, 2020
Election Day, Pima County and Arizona, 2020
Election Day, Pima County and Arizona, 2020
Election 2020 Arizona Voting
Election 2020 Arizona Voting
Election Day, Pima County and Arizona, 2020
Election Day, Pima County and Arizona, 2020
Election Day, Pima County and Arizona, 2020
Election Day, Pima County and Arizona, 2020
Election 2020 Arizona Voting
Election 2020 Arizona Voting
Election 2020 Arizona Voting
Election Day, Pima County and Arizona, 2020
Election Day, Pima County and Arizona, 2020
Election Day, Pima County and Arizona, 2020
Election Day, Pima County and Arizona, 2020
Election Day, Pima County and Arizona, 2020
Election Day, Pima County and Arizona, 2020
Election Day, Pima County and Arizona, 2020
Election Day, Pima County and Arizona, 2020
Election 2020 Arizona Voting
Election 2020 Arizona Voting
Election 2020 Arizona Voting
Election 2020 Arizona Voting
Election 2020 Arizona Voting
Election Day, Pima County and Arizona, 2020
Election Day, Pima County and Arizona, 2020
Election Day, Pima County and Arizona, 2020
Election Day, Pima County and Arizona, 2020
Judge throws out lawsuit, finds no fraud or misconduct in Arizona election
PHOENIX — A judge tossed out a bid by the head of the Arizona Republican Party to void the election results that awarded the state’s 11 electoral votes to Democrat Joe Biden.
The two days of testimony produced in the case brought by GOP Chairwoman Kelli Ward produced no evidence of fraud or misconduct in how the vote was conducted in Maricopa County, said Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Randall Warner in his Friday ruling.
Warner acknowledged that there were some human errors made when ballots that could not be read by machines due to marks or other problems were duplicated by hand.
But he said that a random sample of those duplicated ballots showed an accuracy rate of 99.45%.
Warner said there was no evidence that the error rate, even if extrapolated to all the 27,869 duplicated ballots, would change the fact that Biden beat President Trump.
The judge also threw out charges that there were illegal votes based on claims that the signatures on the envelopes containing early ballots were not properly compared with those already on file.
He pointed out that a forensic document examiner hired by Ward’s attorney reviewed 100 of those envelopes.
And at best, Warner said, that examiner found six signatures to be “inconclusive,” meaning she could not testify that they were a match to the signature on file.
But the judge said this witness found no signs of forgery.
Finally, Warner said, there was no evidence that the vote count was erroneous. So he issued an order confirming the Arizona election, which Biden won with a 10,457-vote edge over Trump.
Federal court case remains to be heard
Friday’s ruling, however, is not the last word.
Ward, in anticipation of the case going against her, already had announced she plans to seek review by the Arizona Supreme Court.
And a separate lawsuit is playing out in federal court, which includes some of the same claims made here along with allegations of fraud and conspiracy.
That case, set for a hearing Tuesday, also seeks to void the results of the presidential contest.
It includes allegations that the Dominion Software voting equipment used by Maricopa County is unreliable and was programmed to register more votes for Biden than he actually got.
Legislative leaders call for audit but not to change election results
Along the same lines, Senate President Karen Fann and House Speaker Rusty Bowers on Friday called for an independent audit of the software and equipment used by Maricopa County in the just-completed election.
“There have been questions,” Fann said.
But she told Capitol Media Services it is not their intent to use whatever is found to overturn the results of the Nov. 3 election.
In fact, she said nothing in the Republican legislative leaders’ request for the inquiry alleges there are any “irregularities” in the way the election was conducted.
“At the very least, the confidence in our electoral system has been shaken because of a lot of claims and allegations,” Fann said. “So our No. 1 goal is to restore the confidence of our voters.”
Bowers specifically rejected calls by the Trump legal team that the Legislature come into session to void the election results, which were formally certified on Monday.
“The rule of law forbids us to do that,” he said.
In fact, Bowers pointed out, it was the Republican-controlled Legislature that enacted a law three years ago specifically requiring the state’s electors “to cast their votes for the candidates who received the most votes in the official statewide canvass.”
He said that was done because Hillary Clinton had won the popular vote nationwide in 2016 and some lawmakers feared that electors would refuse to cast the state’s 11 electoral votes for Trump, who won Arizona’s race that year.
“As a conservative Republican, I don’t like the results of the presidential election,” Bowers said in a prepared statement. “But I cannot and will not entertain a suggestion that we violate current law to change the outcome of a certified election.”
Photos of the 2020 General Election voting, election night and ballot processing in Pima County, Maricopa County and throughout Arizona.
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