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PHOENIX β€” 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 β€œwoefully deficient.”

He said the claim is based on β€œconspiracy-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 β€œout of thin air,” calling the lawsuit a β€œfishing 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.

Republican challengers contend that conspiracy involves Dominion and its officers converting Trump votes into votes for Biden.

β€œPlaintiffs allege that this plan somehow originated in Venezuela more than a decade ago, over the year enlisted β€˜rogue actors’ from various β€˜countries such as Serbia’ and β€˜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 β€œdystopian 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 β€œdo 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.

Arizona officials have certified Joe Biden’s narrow victory over President Donald Trump in the state. Democratic Secretary of State Katie Hobbs and Republican Gov. Doug Ducey stood up for the integrity of the election even as lawyers for Trump were across town Monday arguing without evidence to nine Republican lawmakers that the election was marred by fraud.

More problematic for challengers is that the electors chosen by voters β€” the ones pledged to Biden β€” 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.

β€œThe 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.

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