Abe Hamade says the issues revealed by the recount in one county are throwing the entire election into question and wants another shot at overturning his defeat.
Late Tuesday, Hamade asked the Mojave County Superior Court for a new trial, arguing that the recount discrepancies in Pinal County were sufficient grounds for a new midterm election inquiry in all 15 Arizona counties. I filed a claim. Hamade’s previous election challenge was unsuccessful.the first one is submitted too early Under state law, the second was discarded unable to bear the burden of proof.
Now, Hamade’s attorney, Timothy La Sota, says there is clear evidence that the election was so badly mishandled that it affected the outcome of the closest statewide election in Arizona’s history. Stated.
“The recount has identified even more problems in an election already plagued by process failures,” La Sota wrote. It further indicates that it is high, and thousands of Arizonans’ votes were not counted, raising even more questions about the actual results.”
Added Pinal County 507 more votes in the recounted total
than was on the original canvas after identifying several instances of vote worker error, partly due to high staff turnover and inadequate training. narrowed Chris Mays’ lead from 511 to just 280.
This reduces the gap between Mays and Hamade to 0.1%, small enough for all votes to make a decisive decision, La Sota said.
“The slightest error in counting is enough to change the results, or at least make them questionable,” he said. “And now we have new reasons to believe that such an error occurred.”
At the core of La Sota’s allegations are vague or unclear markings on ballots, commonly referred to as over- or undervotes, which led to counting machines mistakenly denying ballots, and the arbitration process, where election officials ) failed to fill the gap. La Sota pointed to discrepancies in handcount audits conducted during the recount as evidence. This practice compares machine counts with manual results. La Sota said the motion found unvoted voters in Yavapai, Gila, Pima and Santa Cruz counties.
The Yavapai County hand count report found two more votes in the election for Attorney General. Also in Pima County, a hand count audit found two of his extra votes for Hamade that were improperly scored, subtracting one from Mays’ total.
According to La Sota, undervoting in Maricopa County is where it can make the biggest difference. Of his 1.5 million votes cast in the county’s midterm elections, he was under-voted by as many as 50,000, which county attorneys say is a fairly standard amount. It is not uncommon for voters to not mark part of their ballot.
This undervoting number is particularly concerning, La Sota argued, because Maricopa County’s adjudication process is tolerant of early voting, which has tended to favor Democrats in 2022. If an early ballot is incorrectly filled out and read as completely blank by the counting machine (e.g. voter ticks the oval instead of filling it out), it will be sent to adjudication for review. can be
In contrast, if an Election Day ballot was read completely blank by the counting machine, is not It was sent to adjudication because “in theory, voters were informed about the matter at the vote center” by verbal warnings, posters, and election officials.
La Sota added that if voters on Election Day miss some of their ballots, the counting machine will not notify them as long as other constituencies are filled out. The assumption is that Election Day voters will be notified and will not hear or hear their voices at the ballot box.
La Sota is unconvinced by the allegations, pointing out in the motion that it unfairly endangers conservative voters who hoped to vote on Election Day 2022.
“Since the votes on Election Day voted for Mr Hamade by a wide margin, the failure to adjudicate and count the supposed under-vote on Election Day would have the most serious impact on Mr Hamade’s vote total. Of course,” he wrote.
La Sota added that testimony provided in the failed gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake’s election challenge flagged even more uncounted votes. During the trial, it was revealed that improperly printed timing marks on ballot papers had led to mass voting denials.
La Sota claimed 196,113 votes were rejected in Maricopa County alone, according to voting records. He admits that some of those denials may have been from the same ballot that was denied multiple times before being counted by the machine. A spreadsheet of all actions performed by the aggregation machine.
Importantly, the public records request Mr. Hamade filed with Maricopa County to obtain a list of provisional ballot recipients and information on uncounted early ballots dropped on Election Day has been fulfilled. said La Sota. That means, unlike at the time of the trial in December, Hamade is now properly prepared to provide evidence for his claims.
As of Monday’s inauguration, Chris Mays is officially the state’s attorney general. But La Sota said it is neither too late nor inappropriate to challenge the election now, especially given that the information revealed by the recount was previously unavailable. Once the election is over and the recount is complete, there will be no urgency to file a lawsuit to confirm that someone will be president, and there will be more room for investigation, La Sota said.
A partial survey in Pinal county, which is still being recounted, gave Hamadeh an extra 277 votes, La Sota said. Validating votes in the rest of the state, especially in Maricopa County, could move the race in Hamade’s favor.
“Mr Hamade has not asked the court to change the total votes or the results of the election on a whim,” said La Sota. “For clarity,[we]want an exact vote total — nothing more, nothing less — currently know the facts The actual discrepancies Pinal County found meant that similar issues elsewhere would unbalance this race. ”
The request for a new trial was filed the same day Mays’ campaign filed it with a Mojave County judge. impose sanctions on Hamade And his fellow plaintiffs challenged the election without evidence to support their claims.
