It was bad enough that Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Randall Warner erred in Improperly Allowing A Fishing Expedition For Evidence Of Election Fraud, despite Arizona Republican Party chair Kelli “Chemtrails” Ward having failed to produce any evidence in support of the extraordinary relief requested.
No evidence? No problem. Judge will let @kelliwardaz examine 200 ballots in her attempt to overturn the presidential election in Arizona, despite a lack of evidence of any fraud or misconduct. https://t.co/tPJ4zsXqCG
— Jeremy Duda (@jeremyduda) December 1, 2020
Ward’s alleged crack team of handwriting experts apparently did not find anything in the signature verification process used to authenticate mail-in ballots. The Arizona Republic reports, Arizona GOP claims ballot review found voided Trump votes, asks to inspect thousands more:
For the signature verification review, handwriting experts found that eight to 10 mail-in ballots had “inconclusive” signature matches based on the number of signatures on file, the GOP filing states. Ward’s team noted an inconclusive result isn’t the same as “invalid or fraudulent.”
It was among the duplicate ballots where inspectors found problems of “serious concern,” according to a Wednesday filing from Arizona GOP lawyer Jack Wilenchik.
One original ballot contained what “was clearly a vote for Trump,” but the “duplicate ballot switched the vote to Biden,” he wrote in the court filing. Another ballot “was clearly a vote only for Trump, but the duplicate ballot had a vote for both Trump and a ‘blank’ write-in candidate.” That caused the Trump vote to be canceled, Wilenchik wrote, since voters could only choose one candidate in the presidential race.
This is not evidence presented in court under oath, subject to cross-examination, so take this bald assertion for what it’s worth.
The chair of the state Republican Party on Wednesday asked the judge to allow her to inspect thousands of Arizona ballots for irregularities, alleging that an initial review found two instances where officials discarded votes for President Donald Trump.
It was 2 of 100, so that's 2%. And there are only about 28K duplicated ballots in Maricopa. Extrapolate that and you have 560 ballots, presuming every single error switched Trump votes to Biden, and none vice versa. That leaves Biden with a 9897-vote lead in AZ. https://t.co/327TSWnnAT
— Jeremy Duda (@jeremyduda) December 3, 2020
But the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors stepped in later in the day to announce it would voluntarily provide up to 2,500 more ballots for inspection “to ensure confidence in the election results,” rendering a court order unnecessary.
This is a Republican dominated board of supervisors humoring and coddling insane conspiracy theorists, who are not entitled to the extraordinary relief that they requested. Stop humoring and coddling these insane conspiracy theorists! You are only compounding the error of Judge Warner.
“There were no errors observed in the sample which granted a vote to Trump, or which canceled out a Biden vote,” Wilenchik wrote in the Wednesday filing. “Given the extremely small sample size” and “the fact that candidates Trump and Biden are apart by less than one half of one percent apart,” he wrote, finding two problematic ballots is significant.
In his filing, Wilenchik asked the judge to allow the team to inspect thousands of duplicate ballots and to postpone Thursday’s trial until the review was completed, contending that holding a trial “within only three days of a major elections contest being filed — and with the opportunity to inspect only hundreds out of millions of ballots — denies Plaintiff the opportunity to be meaningfully heard.”
The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors’ decision took care of the inspection request.
[T]he judge rejected the call to delay Thursday’s hearing, Wilenchik said late Wednesday.
The case is set to go to trial Thursday at 10:30 a.m.
Note: There are some late intervenors trying to join this lawsuit as plaintiffs, represented by David Spilsbury. Motion to Intervene.
https://twitter.com/marceelias/status/1334332740448251910
Roopali Desai, a lawyer for Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, had previously argued Ward’s repeated calls for ballot reviews were attempts to “fish” for something to later be presented at the hearing, and that Ward had no existing evidence of misconduct.
“(Ward) alleges that county officials engaged in ‘misconduct’ by (1) failing to allow observers to stand close enough to watch the signature verification process for early ballots, and (2) failing to allow observers to watch one step in the ballot duplication process,” Desai wrote in a Tuesday filing.
“Nothing in the law entitles political party observers to a closeup view of the signature verification process or duplication process,” she wrote. “Beyond that, Petitioner fails to allege facts sufficient to suggest any wrongdoing by Maricopa County officials, much less overcome the presumption that election officials acted in good faith.”
Desai went on to say that Ward was working to undermine election integrity despite four prior election challenges either being dismissed or withdrawn because of a lack of evidence.
“Difficult as it may be for Petitioner to accept, this election is over, and her preferred slate of presidential electors received fewer votes than those of the winning challenger,” Desai wrote.
This clown show will get underway shortly this morning. I will update this post when there is reporting on this hearing later today.
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