Court: Election lawsuit filed by Arizona GOP was groundless

PHOENIX — The state Court of Appeals has upheld a ruling declaring a lawsuit filed by the Arizona Republican Party after the 2020 election to be groundless and filed in bad faith, ordering the party to pay legal fees.

In a ruling late Thursday, the three-judge panel said Maricopa County Superior Court Judge John Hannah Jr. was correct in tossing the demand by the GOP that a legally required post-election hand count audit of ballots be done by precinct.

Appellate Judge Michael Brown said it was clear the Election Procedures Manual specifically allowed Maricopa County to use vote centers, where a voter may cast their ballot at any location rather than only in their home precinct.

The manual, which has the force of law, was prepared by the Secretary of State’s Office and approved in 2019 by both then-Gov. Doug Ducey and then-Attorney General Mark Brnovich.

Brown also said even if the Republican Party thought the manual conflicted with state law, the time to file suit was before the election. Instead, he noted, the party went to court not only after the election — in which Democrat Joe Biden defeated Republican Donald Trump in the presidential race —but after the audit was complete.

The judges agreed with Hannah that the lawsuit was groundless and brought in bad faith so the party is liable to the Secretary of State’s Office for the $18,238 in legal fees it racked up, as well as for any additional costs incurred in the appeal.

In a written statement, a state GOP official said the party was surprised by the decision and will discuss the next steps with attorneys.

The issue stems from the legally required random hand count of ballots. That procedure has officials from both parties select a batch of ballots and races within those ballots to determine if the machine tallies match the counts done by humans.

In all cases, the match was 100%.

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But attorney Jack Wilenchik, representing the Republican Party, said the law requires the audits be conducted at 2% of voting precincts.

Maricopa County, and six other counties, use voting centers where any individual can go to cast a ballot. So the audit was conducted at 2% of these vote centers. Wilenchik argued that was illegal and sought to hold up the formal canvass of the election results.

In his 2021 ruling, however, Hannah said that when legislators allowed counties to establish vote centers, they also gave the secretary of state the power, through the official Election Procedures Manual, to allow audits in that method.

On the timing issue, the judge said it was “inexcusable’’ the party filed suit three days after Maricopa County publicly announced results of the hand count.

But what really provoked Hannah was the party’s admission that “public mistrust following this election motivated this lawsuit.’’

“The plaintiff is effectively admitting that the suit was brought primarily for an improper purpose,’’ the judge wrote. “It is saying that it filed this lawsuit for political reasons. ‘Public mistrust’ is a political issue, not a legal or factual basis for litigation.’’

He said the evidence showed the party filed a meritless lawsuit solely to undermine public confidence in the 2020 General Election.