Kris Mayes Will Be Our Next Attorney General! Hamadeh’s Lawsuit Dismissed Following Trial.

The Judge in Hamadeh’s election contest listened to about 3 hours of testimony from the parties and ruled from the bench that there was insufficient evidence to prove Hamadeh’s contest of the election result. This is the end of the line for Hamadeh’s efforts to overturn the will of the Arizona voters. Hamadeh’s attorney indicated at the time that he had no intent in appealing the case.

The recount in this election is still pending, but is very unlikely to result in any substantial change in the vote results.

The following review of the testimony can be skipped if you aren’t interested in the specific evidence the Judge evaluated in making his ruling.

The court-ordered ballot inspection team flagged about 2500 of 50,000 ballots in Maricopa County that were deemed undervoted for the Attorney General race by the tabulators, with no vote for either candidate. From that sample, both teams actively reviewed about 150, and Hamadeh’s attorneys produced 6 undervote ballots that they claimed were actually marked for Hamadeh (several using check marks or an ‘x’, which would not always be counted by the tabulators), following review yesterday by an inspection panel of mixed party affiliation. There was not full agreement amongst the inspection panel regarding the voter intent of every ballot produced for the court as evidence.

The Mayes team entered into evidence an additional 8 ballots. The Mayes team’s expert (Scott Jarrett, Maricopa Co. Director of Elections) pointed out that some undervoted ballots inspected by the lawsuit’s inspection panel had already been reviewed by an adjudication board when an undervoted ballot was detected by the tabulators, or after the ballot was deposited by the voter into ‘door 3′. Jarrett reviewed all of the 14 ballots flagged by both sides, and he opined that only three should have been adjudicated differently, and that all three of those were in favor of Mayes (Hamadeh’s team conceded that 2 undervoted ballots were actually voted for Mayes). Jarrett did concede on cross that three of the undervotes, if reevaluated for voter intent, should have been awarded as votes for Hamadeh.

Hamadeh’s attorney argued in closing that their alleged ratio of 3:1 in favor of Hamadeh among discovered new votes among the 2500 ballots undervoted evaluated, if expanded across the entire universe of undervoted ballots for the AG race in Arizona, could ultimately result in more total votes for Hamadeh, which could potentially give Hamadeh more total votes than Mayes. He also argued that the misconduct by elections officials alleged was simply the failure to properly evaluate the undervotes and award the votes those voters intended. He conceded that Plaintiff does have not, at this point (the end of the trial!), sufficient votes to change the election outcome.

Mayes’ attorneys argued in closing that the Plaintiff’s attorney just conceded that they don’t have evidence of sufficient votes to change the outcome. Further, they argued that Plaintiff did not even attempt to produce evidence regarding several counts of the contest, and they presented no proof of any misconduct by elections officials. The Defense pointed out that election challenges are not the place for attacking elections procedures to determine the final count, or every election would result in an election challenge: such matters should be properly challenged prior to elections. The Defense argued the case presented by Plaintiff, if upheld, would suggest that after every election the courts should review every ballot for voter intent, which would essentially be a hand recount of the election, which is not provided for by AZ law. Finally, there was a lot of urging the Court to consider sanctions against counsel for the Plaintiff for bringing a meritless suit without any evidence, and wasting everyone’s time and resources in a farcical trial.

In his rebuttal closing, the Plaintiff’s attorney pretty much confined his arguments to defending himself against charges of unethical conduct in filing the suit, and gave excuses as to why he presented no evidence  at all on 3 of the 4 counts alleged.

The judge found Hamadeh’s arguments to be wholly unconvincing and ruled immediately from the bench, refusing to count any additional votes outside the established election procedures. The judge ruled that there wasn’t sufficient proof to establish any of the counts alleged against the presumption that the election was correct and final. There was no evidence of misconduct. The undervoting was due largely to voter error and procedures were in place to try to remedy such. Petition denied.

It was an extraordinarily close race, with only 511 votes between the candidates (a margin is just 0.02%). In fact, it was the closest statewide contest in the history of AZ in terms of percentage margin. The closest in number of votes was the Gubernatorial race of 1916, which came down to a margin of just 30 votes (but amongst a MUCH smaller electorate, giving a margin of 0.05%)

The 1916 race resulted in the Republican Campbell taking office for a full year before litigation concluded in the AZ Supreme Court resulting in the installation of the Democrat Hunt. Thankfully, we appear to have avoided such confustion and consternation in this election.

Congratulations to To Kris Mayes and Adrian Fontes who have both now beaten back election contests from their defeated and election-denying opponents. Very soon, I expect the pleasure of announcing the same result for Governor Katie Hobbs. Either shortly before or after that event, the recounts will be completed and the people of Arizona will know for certain that those statewide officers sworn in on Jan. 5th, 2023 are duly and rightly elected.