Mr. Jansen said Mr. Hamade took the opportunity to make his case at the hearing in December, arguing that he should have been declared the winner instead of Democrat Chris Mays. Thousands of ballots were examined at the time. And the judge said that Hamade presented only one witness.

“At the end of the day, the evidence shows that after scrutinizing a large number of undercounted ballots, we found only about a six-vote difference,” Jantzen said. don’t pick it up

The judge said what Hamade now wants is whether a problem exists with the approximately 8,600 provisional ballots cast at polling stations but not counted due to questions about whether voters are registered to vote. said it was time for additional legal “discovery” to investigate. . The argument is that Republicans have higher voter turnout than Democrats on election day, meaning provisional ballot tallies affect the campaign by just 280 votes.

The only problem, Jantzen said, is that the election challenge will be run under a set of quick rules. And the law cannot do anything other than the limited ballot checks he has already approved.

We have others, too.

The judge said the issue of provisional ballots was “important to this case,” but evidence would be available in November and December before the trial if Mr. Hamade and his lawyers made “sufficient efforts.” said it was done.

“Furthermore, even in light of plaintiffs’ charts showing voter trends on Election Day in Maricopa County, it remains speculative to say that further findings would have closed the voting gap.” he wrote.

Jantzen was sympathetic to the candidates’ problems, given the time constraints on election lawsuits enacted by Congress.

“But if there is an allegation that there is a problem with the provisional ballots made in the complaint, it will not be investigated later and must be argued in some detail at trial,” he said.

Hamade also argued that the evidence of human error in Pinal County after the recount would be the basis for determining whether there were similar problems elsewhere. But the judge said “there is no evidence”.

Jantzen also wasn’t convinced that then-Secretary of State Katie Hobbs had done anything wrong by not highlighting the issues in the pretrial recount of the Hamade case.

“The court further found that the evidence for Pinal County’s error was insufficient beyond speculation about other errors for which there was no evidence,” he wrote.

Jantzen also rejected Hamade’s argument that Arizona has a precedent that shows there is no artificial deadline to complete an election lawsuit.

This is based on a ruling by the Arizona Supreme Court after the 1916 gubernatorial election between incumbent George W. P. Hunt and Republican challenger Thomas Campbell. The official tally gave Campbell a lead of 30 out of 60,000 votes.

It took until the following year for the High Court to rule that Campbell, in interim office, had actually lost the case and that Hunt would serve the remaining two years of his term.

The problem with Hamade’s argument, Jansen said, was that in 1916 there was no law dictating what would happen if the election was contested. Only after this controversy was the first rule setting deadlines for appeals, the rule governing this election, modified over the years, finally introduced.

Hamade has no intention of conceding.

“The court’s ruling encourages an appeal, and we do intend to do so,” he said in a prepared statement.