At today’s hearing on the retrial motion, attorneys for unsuccessful Attorney General candidate Abe Hamade said the campaign “would have ruled differently if a Mojave County Superior Court judge had provided additional evidence. ‘ said.

But lawyers for Attorney General Chris Mays said the evidence Hamade’s lawyers are referring to is not yet available and can only be obtained through a “fishing expedition” that goes beyond case law and statutes governing election campaigns. argued that it would.

Hamade challenged the 2022 election results in December, but his claim was dismissed after lawyers admitted there was no evidence to “support” the challenge.

Now, Hamade is asking the same judge to order a new trial and allow 76,000 undervotes in the election.

Hamade and Mays had a close margin to begin with, but a statewide recount narrowed it to just over 280 votes, revealing a single county gap.

Hamade’s attorney, Jennifer Wright, said ‘newly discovered evidence’ garnered enough votes to dethrone Mays and declare Hamade a ‘constitutionally and democratically elected attorney general’. He argues that he can and insists on a retrial.

Wright said based on research in certain counties and some speculation, “more than 76,000” votes were recorded as undervoting in the Attorney General election.

She said ballots examined at the first trial found that 14 out of about 2,000 votes had been under-voted to Hamade, corresponding to a misread rate of 0.61 percent.

Extrapolating that, she argues, the attorney general election could have more than 466 votes, more than the 280-vote difference between Mays and Hamade.

And to counteract the rigid schedule set for the campaign, Wright was also involved in the 1916 Arizona Supreme Court case of Hunt v. Campbell, which replaced candidates in the governor’s office more than a year after the election. heavily dependent.

“The court continued … because it was important to get it right,” Wright said.

Alexis Dannemann, an attorney for Mays, said, “Plaintiffs spent most of their argument asking this court to consider various so-called facts, most of which were mere opinions and testimony of the attorneys, not actual evidence. ‘ said.

Dannemann said the new trial and Undervote’s tally request were “directly in conflict” with election tactics, and that Hamade’s lawyers “had no evidence when they brought the campaign, and no evidence of their allegations at trial.” …and there is still no evidence.”

“Their argument in this court can be summed up as ‘this election was coming, let us keep looking and maybe we’ll find something,'” Dannemann said.

He also said there was too much emphasis on the Hunt-Campbell fight, noting that the deadlines that now govern the campaign did not exist at the time.

Wright said case law and state constitutions “require” counting votes “incorrectly marked as undervoted” that have not been counted despite the campaign schedule. claim.

Judge Lee Jantsen said he would rule on the new trial “within the next few weeks.”