State GOP Chairwoman Kelli Ward hopes to persuade a judge to throw out the results.

 Capitol Media Services 2019

PHOENIX β€” A court-ordered inspection of more than 1,600 Arizona ballots cast in the general election found just nine with errors in the presidential race β€” not enough to declare Donald Trump the winner here, even if that error rate ran through all similar ballots.

The disclosure came in a hearing on a lawsuit filed by state GOP Chair Kelli Ward, contesting the election results.

Ward’s attorney presented a series of witnesses Thursday who testified about seeing errors in how Maricopa County handled ballots that needed to be duplicated.

This happens when an entire ballot β€” or some of the races on it β€” is unreadable to automatic scanning equipment. That could be due to physical damage, stains or extraneous marks.

A bipartisan group of election workers then examines the ballot, attempts to ascertain the intent of the voter, and creates what is supposed to be a mirror ballot that can be fed through the machine.

The witnesses told Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Randall Warner they saw various errors in the process, with individuals and rescanning machines taking ballots that should have been marked for Trump and either re-marking them for Joe Biden or otherwise altering them so that Trump would not get the vote.

Mistakes occurred during duplication

Scott Jarrett, who works for the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office, testified that a review of the sample of more than 1,600 ballots showed there were some mistakes made by county workers in duplicating the originals, testified Scott Jarrett, who works for the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office.

But he said a review of a random sample of these duplicated ballots ordered by the court turned up just nine with errors.

That’s a crucial point.

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.

Jarrett extrapolated that error rate out among the nearly 28,000 ballots that had to be duplicated in Maricopa County. And he said if that same error rate ran through all those duplicated ballots β€” a point he is not conceding β€” that would have given Trump 102 more votes.

Biden won Maricopa County by more than 45,000 votes.

He also told the judge that even when there were errors, no vote for Trump was awarded to Biden. Similarly, he said, votes intended for Biden that were improperly re-marked on ballots did not wind up in Trump’s tally.

Jarrett also testified that none of the machines that tallied the ballots are connected to the internet where some outsider could alter the results, and that the equipment and software used in the county was reviewed and certified.

β€œNo variance”

In a bid to show the accuracy of the entire process, Jarrett detailed for Warner the steps taken in a legally required random hand count.

That’s where a sample of ballots chosen by officials of both parties is manually reviewed to see how the results compare with what the machines tallied. He said there was β€œno variance” between the hand review and the machine count.

It will be up to Warner to make the final decision of whether there were sufficient errors to throw the returns into doubt, particularly for the presidential race.

Ward hopes to persuade Warner to toss out the results. That, in turn, could throw the issue to the Republican-controlled Legislature to decide who gets the state’s 11 electoral votes β€” the votes that the certified election results said should go to Biden.

Warner earlier Thursday threw out another part of Ward’s claim that Republican observers were not able to adequately see what was going on in the vote counting, the duplication of damaged ballots, and the comparison of on-file signatures with those on ballot envelopes.

The judge said the allegation came too late.

β€œClaims of insufficient opportunity to observe those procedures should have been brought when there was an opportunity to correct any violation of Arizona law, if there was a violation,” the judge said. That could have led to an order for more access while ballots were actually being counted, Warner said.

But what Ward now wants, the judge said, is β€œto upend the entire election.”

Federal court hearing to be set in separate suit

Separately, Ward and others who would have been the electors for President Trump were in federal court Thursday with their list of allegations about election irregularities.

They most immediately want U.S. District Judge Diane Humetewa to issue a restraining order preventing the 11 Democratic electors from casting their ballots for Biden as scheduled on Dec. 14.

That would give their attorney, Howard Kleinhendler, time to present evidence of what he claims is fraud in how the election was conducted.

Kleinhendler also wants the judge to order the seizure of all voting machines, software, ballot return envelopes, paper ballots and other election materials. He contends the system used by Maricopa County was deliberately programmed to add votes to Biden and that early ballots were counted that may not have come from registered voters.

But Justin Nelson, representing Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, pointed out to the judge that the lawsuit names Hobbs and Gov. Doug Ducey as the only defendants. But what Kleinhender wants is in the hands of Maricopa County, which is not named as a defendant in the lawsuit.

Humetewa said she will schedule a hearing for this coming week.

In both cases, the lawsuits focus only on the top of the ticket.

Republicans did fairly well in most other races, holding their own in the Arizona House and losing only one seat in the state Senate.

The only other key race where the GOP candidate came up short was the defeat of incumbent Martha McSally in the U.S. Senate race. But the margin of victory for Democrat Mark Kelly was nearly 78,000, versus the 10,457 edge that Biden tallied over Trump.

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