Late Friday, a judge turned down a bid by Republican Abe Hamadeh for a new trial to contest his loss in the 2022 election for Arizona attorney general.
But it will not be until Monday that Hamadeh — and his successful foe, Democratic Attorney General Kris Mayes — find out exactly why the judge ruled he didn’t present enough evidence to get a new trial.
Mohave County Superior Court Judge Lee Jantzen wrote that he has been working on a “minute entry,’’ a type of court order, and hoped to have it done prior to Friday afternoon.
“But a weekend fire in the court’s home and some emergencies added to my calendar have prevented completion of that minute entry,’’ the judge wrote.
‘Haven’t proven your case’
The order comes more than five months after Jantzen threw out Hamadeh’s original challenge of the election results.
“The bottom line is, you just haven’t proven your case,’’ the judge said in December after a half-day trial. “There isn’t enough information — I don’t think even slight information — the election was done illegally or incorrectly.’’
Hamadeh, in seeking a new trial, said problems unearthed in the legally mandated recount of ballots pointed up the kinds of things that can go wrong in an election. Those specifically included findings in Pinal County that 507 ballots were not counted the first time around, after the initial election results were reported and certified.
While correcting that error closed the margin of victory for Mayes to just 280 votes, that wasn’t enough to set aside the election results.
But attorneys for Hamadeh, the Republican National Committee and two voters argued that Jantzen, who limited their ballot inspections ahead of the first trial, should reopen the case and allow them to examine more.
Jantzen said he took their arguments seriously.
“This is a close call in a closely contested election,’’ the judge wrote in his Friday order. But he said he could not conclude a new trial was appropriate after considering the evidence presented as well as state law and the Arizona Constitution.
Appeal planned
In a prepared statement, Hamadeh said he can’t comment on the ruling until he can see the judge’s reasoning.
“However, we believe the situation is very simple: The contest was not as close as it stands now,’’ he said. “If all legal votes are counted, I win this race for attorney general.’’
He vowed to take his case to the Arizona Supreme Court.
The nature of that appeal will come down to where Jantzen said Hamadeh’s legal arguments fell short — and why Hamadeh thinks that allowing his lawyers to examine more ballots will change the outcome.
In ruling against him in December, Jantzen said he had to decide the case based on the examination of 2,300 ballots in three counties by representatives of both Mayes and Hamadeh. That was because of limited time constraints in election contests.
But after the findings of the uncounted Pinal County votes, Hamadeh’s lawyers argued the case should be reopened.
“Contestants simply ask that we be given the opportunity to apply the Pinal County process across the board to conduct a physical inspection and hand count of ballots that — if the Pinal County issue repeats itself anywhere else in the state — could be outcome determinative in this election,” they told Jantzen.
Unseating an incumbent
They even argued that it works in their favor that Mayes already took office.
The earlier legal contest was governed by rules that require election lawsuits to be filed and completed within a certain number of days. Those rules are no longer a factor, they said.
There is a precedent for unseating an incumbent. That occurred in the 1916 race for governor between incumbent Democrat George W.P. Hunt and Republican challenger Thomas E. Campbell.
Campbell was sworn in after the returns gave him a 30-vote edge. But Hunt refused to leave office while challenging the results, though Campbell did serve as de facto governor in the interim. Ultimately the Arizona Supreme Court, after looking at questions of how people had marked their ballots, installed Hunt in office in late 1917.
Hamadeh has another argument of why he thinks he is entitled to a new trial.
He said that then-Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, who also was named as a defendant in the legal challenge, knew by Dec. 21 — before the original trial — that the recount had showed discrepancies with the official vote total. But that information, which they contend might have convinced Jantzen to allow inspection of more ballots, was not released to Hamadeh and the public for another eight days, after the trial.
Hamadeh does not dispute that Hobbs, now sworn in as governor, was under order not to release the results until they were formally unveiled in court. But he contends she had an obligation to confirm there were problems with undervotes.
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