AZ Supreme Court Declines AZ GQP Lawsuit To Invalidate Early Voting in Arizona

The Arizona Supreme Court declined Tuesday to consider a special action by the Arizona Republican Party to eliminate the early voting system used by 90% of the state’s voters and require nearly all voters to cast ballots in person on Election Day.

The AP reports, Arizona court declines GOP request to invalidate mail voting:

The court ruled that the case did not meet the limited criteria for a special action lawsuit filed directly to the state’s high court but directed the GOP to take its case to the Superior Court.

The lawsuit filed in February argued absentee voting is unconstitutional and asked the justices to get rid of it or at least eliminate the no-excuse absentee balloting system Arizona adopted in 1991 and has steadily expanded ever since.

The lawsuit comes amid GOP efforts on many fronts to remake the system for casting and counting votes as former President Donald Trump repeats the lie that he lost the 2020 election because of fraud in Arizona and other battleground states. It was blasted by Democrats and voting rights advocates who said the argument was deeply flawed and aimed at undermining elections.

The Arizona Republican Party and its combative chairwoman, Kelli Ward, have been at the forefront of Trump’s efforts to cast doubt on the 2020 election results and block the certification of Democratic President Joe Biden’s victory. The latest lawsuit was filed by the state GOP and Yvonne Cahill, the party’s secretary. Ward is not named as a plaintiff.

It was not immediately clear if the GOP would file the case in Superior Court. Spokespeople for the Arizona Republican Party and Alex Kolodin, the conservative lawyer whose firm filed the lawsuit, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The lawsuit asked the justices to throw out all early voting procedures. If the justices are unwilling to go that far, the GOP asked the court to roll back the expansion of no-excuse absentee voting since 1991, eliminate ballot drop boxes, prohibit ballot counting before election day, or prohibit voting absentee on initiatives and referenda.

The GOP did not challenge absentee voting for members of the military, which the state is required to allow by federal law.

The lawsuit also made two other arguments: that Secretary of State Katie Hobbs erred by including rules for ballot drop boxes in the election procedures manual and by not including signature verification procedures.

In 2020, 90% of Arizona voters used a ballot that arrived in the mail, which can be returned through the U.S. Postal Service, an official drop box run by county election officials or to a polling place. The ballots are collected at a central warehouse, where workers confirm the signature on the outside of the ballot envelope matches signatures on file to verify the vote is legitimate.

There has been no widespread fraud.

Howard Fischer adds, State Supreme Court rejects GOP bid to abolish mail voting in Arizona:

In a brief order late Tuesday the justices rejected a bid by the Arizona Republican Party to declare that early voting is unconstitutional. They rejected arguments by an attorney for the party that the issue is strictly legal and ripe for them to decide, without presenting any testimony or evidence.

But the order, signed by Chief Justice Robert Brutinel, does not end the matter.

He said the challengers are free to refile the case in Maricopa County Superior Court where they can provide some factual basis for their allegations. Only after there is a decision at the trial court — and the judge there makes some findings — would it be appropriate for the high court to review the issue.

[T]he lawsuit has drawn opposition not just from Democratic Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, who is the state’s top election official, but also from Republican Gov. Doug Ducey. He called the legal effort “ill-conceived.”

“It would undo the work of many Republican governors and secretaries of state over the past several decades,” he told reporters last month. And Ducey said the lawsuit is “poorly crafted.”

[T]he decision by the justices not to decide the case on strictly legal arguments is in line with a legal brief filed by the Coconino County Board of Supervisors. County Attorney William Ring said they have to consider the rights of those who could lose their right to cast early ballots.

“This court must justly consider whether action upon the petition (by the Arizona Republican Party) can or will so interfere as to prevent the free exercise of the right of suffrage,” he told the court. And that, Ring wrote, means the justices have to consider “the facts that measure and gauge the personal impact upon the content of individual expectations that are assured by (the Arizona Constitution).”

But GOP gubernatorial hopeful “Krazy Kari” Lake, in her own friend of the court filing, urged the justices to take the case and void early voting.

“Absent an actual reason why the voter cannot vote at the polls, voting occurs at the polls on Election Day, not election Month, wrote Tim La Sota, her attorney. “And a ‘reason’ does not include that the able-bodied, physically present voters simply does not want to take the minimally burdensome step of presenting him or herself at a polling place on Election Day.”

Lake has been among those who has denied that Joe Biden won the popular vote in Arizona, with one of the theories being irregularities in early voting and fraudulent ballots.

The practice, however, is extremely popular among Arizonans: A survey by OH Predictive Insights found that just one out of every 10 registered voters wants to get rid of early ballots in Arizona.

These are two GQP lawyers who have been promoting Trump’s Big Lie ever since election day in 2020. If the State Bar of Arizona had any guts, it would do what the State Bar of Virginia just did. Court orders Jan. 6 defense lawyer disbarred:

A Virginia state court has disbarred Jonathon Moseley, an attorney who has represented a slew of high-profile Jan. 6 defendants, including a member of the Oath Keepers charged with seditious conspiracy, as well as several targets of the House select committee investigating the attack on the Capitol.

Most prominent among Moseley’s criminal clients is Kelly Meggs, an Oath Keeper from Florida who took on a leadership role for the group that breached the Capitol. Moseley also previously represented Zachary Rehl, one of the Proud Boys leaders charged with conspiring to obstruct Congress on Jan. 6, 2021, though he withdrew from that case in December.

On Friday, after a two-day hearing in Prince William County Circuit Court, a three-judge panel ordered Moseley’s law license revoked, court records show.

The Stat Bar of Arizona needs to rid the legal profession of the lawyers who openly support seditious insurrection against the United States in violation of their oath as an officer of the court.