Posted by AzBlueMeanie:
The Tucson Weekly reports that Team McSally is trying to suppress conditional ballots from Latino districts in Cochise County by seeking a temporary restraining order to prevent provisional ballots from being counted on the specious grounds that the enclosure envelope was not sealed before being presented to election officials.
Spoiler alert: there is nothing in the statutes that require a sealed envelope — the ballots were accepted by poll workers, so the chain of custody was complete. CD2 Update: Republicans Go to Cochise County Court To Block Counting of Provisional Ballots in Latino Precincts:
[Martha McSally's] attorneys were in Cochise County court today in an effort to block
the counting of provisional ballots in a predominantly Latino precinct.
Barber’s campaign manager, Jessica Floyd, said it was an effort by Team McSally to disenfranchise Cochise County voters.
"We respect the ballot counting process currently taking place and want
to see it move forward,” Floyd said in statement. “The request for a
temporary restraining order filed today is an active attempt by Martha
McSally’s attorneys to disenfranchise voters in Cochise County. Throwing
away the votes of Southern Arizonans is wrong and unacceptable.”
* * *
Attorneys Eric H. Spencer and Michael Liburdi of the Snell and Wilmer
law firm claim that approximately 130 provisional ballots should not be
counted because they “have been spoiled because they were not sealed,
as required, when they were transported from the Castro Park, Ramsey and
Hopi Precinct polling locations to the Cochise County Elections
Department and Recorder’s Office.”
The lawyers have asked for a temporary restraining order to keep the
Cochise County Division of Elections from counting the ballots.
But attorneys Paul F. Eckstein, Dan Barr and David Gaona of the Perkins
Coie law firm, which is representing Barber, say that Judge Wallace R.
Hoggart should reject the request for a temporary restraining order
because Spencer and Liburdi “simply cannot point to anything in section
16-584(D)—or any section of the election code, for that matter—which
would require that provisional ballots be sealed when presented to
election officials for verification.”
