PHOENIX — Attorneys for state and county election officials head to federal court Tuesday, Dec. 8 to try to quash one of the two remaining attempts to overturn Joe Biden’s win in Arizona.
In legal papers filed in federal court, Deputy Maricopa County Attorney Tim Liddy said the lawsuit, filed by the 11 Republicans who hope to be electors for President Trump, is “woefully deficient.”
He said the claim is based on “conspiracy-theory laden, unsigned, redacted declarations making wild accusations” about Dominion Software, which provides election equipment to the county.
And Liddy told U.S. District Court Judge Diane Humetewa that claims of hundreds of thousands of illegal votes appear to have come “out of thin air,” calling the lawsuit a “fishing expedition.”
Roopali Desai, representing Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, was even more direct in saying there’s nothing to the allegations of a conspiracy to throw the election to Biden.
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Republican challengers contend that conspiracy involves Dominion and its officers converting Trump votes into votes for Biden.
“Plaintiffs allege that this plan somehow originated in Venezuela more than a decade ago, over the year enlisted ‘rogue actors’ from various ‘countries such as Serbia’ and ‘foreign interference by Iran and China,’ compromised voting machines and software in states across the country in this election, and was ultimately executed with the assistance of thousands of Democratic, Republican, and nonpartisan election officials despite the presence of both parties in numerous states across the country, including Arizona,” Desai told Humetewa. She called it “dystopian fiction.”
The challengers hope to get the judge to order Hobbs and Gov. Doug Ducey to reverse the formal Nov. 30 certification of the election results. That would keep the 11 Democrats who were chosen as Biden electors from casting their votes for him.
The Republican plaintiffs’ attorney, Sidney Powell, said if Humetewa is unwilling to do that, she should preclude the inclusion of certain early ballots in the returns, ballots she contends “do not comply with Arizona law.”
Biden bested Trump among early ballots by 138,476. But the president outpolled the former vice president in Election Day voting by more than 230,000.
Separately, the Arizona Supreme Court is weighing whether to hear an appeal by state GOP Chair Kelli Ward.
A judge last week tossed out her efforts to void the election returns, finding she had presented no evidence of fraud or misconduct.
And he said while there were some mistakes made in creating duplicate ballots for those that were damaged or unreadable, there were not enough of them to change the fact that Biden beat Trump in Arizona by more than 10,000 votes.
One thing the judges in both cases must consider is how quickly they need to act.
Federal law says all election challenges are supposed to be resolved by Tuesday, Dec. 8.
But attorney Jack Wilenchik, who is representing Ward, told the Supreme Court on Monday to ignore the deadline as an unconstitutional infringement on the rights of states to decide their own election matters.
More problematic for challengers is that the electors chosen by voters — the ones pledged to Biden — are supposed to cast their ballots this coming Monday.
Each of the pending lawsuits seeks a court order to prevent that from happening, at least until the legal issues are resolved, if not permanently, a move that could allow the Republican-controlled Legislature to decide who gets Arizona’s 11 electoral votes.
Wilenchik contends the upcoming Monday deadline, too, is not enforceable.
“The only real deadline is Jan. 6,” he said, the date set out in the U.S. Constitution when Congress counts the electoral votes from each state and declares the presidential winner.
A third lawsuit, which also sought to overturn the election returns, was voluntarily dismissed on Monday.
That case was filed on behalf of four plaintiffs. It included claims that Facebook billionaire Mark Zuckerberg funneled money to election officials in nine Arizona counties through grants from the Center for Tech and Civil Life to deliberately skew the vote here for Biden.
The attorney who filed it, and then pulled it, David Spilsbury, said that some attorneys in Minnesota, who actually were the people bringing the lawsuit, decided not to pursue the matter.
The Center for Tech and Civil Life called the claims baseless and frivolous. Its grants were intended to make voting safer during the pandemic through drive-by and drop-box sites.
Four prior lawsuits about the conduct of the Arizona election already have been dismissed. Each raised different issues ranging from about oversight of the counting process to the use of Sharpies on ballots at polling places.
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.