AZ GOP Chair Sues To Invalidate The Election And Have The Legislature Award Electors (Updated)

The Trump campaign’s final act of desperation to overturn the election results in battleground states in a misguided belief that Republican state legislatures can substitute a slate of electors for Donald Trump over the popular vote winner Joe Biden – they cannot – is to file a series of copy and paste lawsuits in the battleground states seeking to stop final certification of the vote.

These are the same allegations already considered and rejected by more than three dozen courts as being without merit, with judges often highly critical of the Trump campaign lawyers who brought these frivolous lawsuits.

https://twitter.com/marceelias/status/1331333132952465410

This didn’t stop Minnesota from certifying its vote. Minnesota panel signs off on election results, says voting system clean.

https://twitter.com/marceelias/status/1331333869455413249

And of course, here in Arizona. Howard Fisher reports, Head of Arizona GOP asks court to throw out Biden’s win in the state:

The head of the Arizona Republican Party is asking a court to declare the election results that gave the state’s 11 electoral votes to Joe Biden are void.

[A complaint filed by the law firm of Wilenchik & Bartness late Tuesday] on behalf of party  chairwoman Kelli Ward claim the system used in Arizona to check signatures on mail-in ballots lacks sufficient safeguards to ensure they came from the registered voters whose envelopes were submitted.

The lawsuit also contends legally required observers were unable to see the process from where they were placed.

Ward asserts as well that the process for dealing with damaged ballots did not result in them being accurately recorded.

She most immediately wants a court to order production of a reasonable sampling of the signatures on the ballot envelopes so they can be compared to signatures on file.

Ward also wants inspection to compare damaged ballots with the duplicates that were created by election workers to allow them to be scanned.

But the real goal is to have the court set aside the results of the election.

That could happen in two ways [according to the complaint].

One would be for a judge to conclude that, given the problems, “the result of the election is fundamentally unknown.” That, according to the lawsuit, would require voiding the election.

By itself, that act would mean Biden is not entitled to the state’s 11 electoral votes.

What could happen next, though, is that it would allow the Republican-controlled Arizona Legislature to make the final decision of declaring which slate of electors won: those pledged to Biden or those pledged to President Trump.

This is the misguided “GOP Clown Car Coup” strategy.  Why the AZ Legislature can’t alter the election outcome.

The other option would occur if a judge ruled, particularly on how the damaged ballots were handled, that votes for Trump were instead given to Biden.

There is no evidence to support this. In fact, Kelli Ward signed off on the “100% accuracy” of the Maricopa County vote.

Completed the final check on the #GeneralElection: our internal post election accuracy test. It was a 100% match. All 3 political parties were present as well as a representative from the Arizona Attorney General’s Office. Up next is the official canvass! https://t.co/wQ4QkJzxHh pic.twitter.com/c3gngWshld

— Maricopa County Elections Department (@MaricopaVote) November 19, 2020

And that would permit the judge to declare that the Trump-pledged electors got more votes than those pledged to Biden, said Ward’s attorney, Her attorney, Jack Wilenchik.

https://twitter.com/marceelias/status/1331399172285673472

But time is running out for Ward and the state GOP to come up with evidence.

Federal law requires that all challenges and recounts related to presidential elections be resolved no later than Dec. 8. The Electoral College vote is six days later.

That’s not exactly accurate. The safe harbor date means that challenges to electors resolved by December 8 cannot subsequently be challenged in the Electoral College or in Congress in January. Legal challenges to electors that are unresolved by December 8 do not carry this safe harbor protection. The Trump campaign’s strategy is to drag out these state certifications past the safe harbor date so that they can continue to challenge electors for Biden.

The court should dismiss this frivolous lawsuit in short order. More importantly, the court must impose sanctions on the lawyers and their clients for bringing this frivolous lawsuit solely for the improper purpose of delaying final certification of the vote.

In the previous lawsuit the Arizona Republican Party lost, the court did impose Rule 11 sanctions for filing a frivolous lawsuit, requiring the Arizona Republican Party to pay the attorneys fees and costs of the Secretary of State incurred in responding to its frivolous lawsuit.

Let’s be clear: Joe Biden won in Arizona, and he did so on the strength of Republican voters who crossed party lines to vote for him. These Republicans need to take back the Arizona Republican Party from the authoritarian far-right fringe, the likes of Kelli “Chemtrails” Ward, who have turned the Arizona Republican into a cesspool of QAnon conspiracy theorists and anti-government seditionists. It’s time for traditional Republicans to clean house at the Arizona Republican Party, and throw out the far-right fringe trash.

UPDATE: Arizona will certify its vote on Monday. Then this lawsuit will be filed. Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Randall Warner has scheduled a hearing in this matter on Monday at 10:30 a.m.

Obvious Man points out the obvious: if these ballots are fraudulent as to the presidential race at the top of the ballot as she claims, then of course the ballots must be fraudulent as to all other contested race on the ballot.

Kelli Ward cannot invalidate just the presidential race, but must invalidate the entire election – “What’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.”  She is in fact arguing that no one was legitimately elected in the the November election, and that there must be a do-over election for all down ballot races on the ballot and the ballot propositions, excluding the presidential race.

There is zero chance that the court is going to grant the relief she is requesting.