The Arizona Supreme Court on Tuesday knocked down a challenge by the state’s GOP chairwoman, Dr. Kelli Ward, affirming former Vice President Joe Biden’s victory in the state.
Earlier this week, the state’s high court agreed to review Ward’s election integrity challenge following Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Steven Warner dismissing the suit. He concluded that Ward had “not proven that the Biden/Harris ticket did not receive the highest number of votes.”
The state GOP chair had requested to review duplicate ballots in addition to the 1,626 duplicated ballot sample that had already been completed. The sample found that Trump had lost seven votes in Maricopa County due to errors, with nine errors in total.
“We’re filing those papers today, so hopefully we’re going to see some more action there because we are asking to look at the 28,000 duplicated ballots that are in Maricopa County alone, as well as all of the digitally adjudicated ballots,” Ward said on Monday, estimating that there were “100,000 ballots that could be affected” statewide.
3TV/CBS 5 reported:
The high court said Ward “offered no evidence” to show that the sample was inadequate or that there was any widespread fraud that could be proven with more samples. The Supreme Court said even if the error rate stayed the same for all 27,869 duplicate ballots, there would only be 153 votes with errors, which would not be enough to call the election results into questions.
Court documents said the Arizona Supreme Court “unanimously” concluded that the judge in the Maricopa County Superior Court didn’t abuse his power in denying the further inspection of ballots. The court said the challenge failed to present “any evidence of ‘misconduct,’ ‘illegal votes’ or that the Biden Electors ‘did not in fact receive the highest number of votes for office’” let alone establish any degree of fraud or a sufficient error rate that would undermine the certainty of the election results.”
Ward said it is “disappointing” that the high court would “not permit us to look behind closed doors to review additional material for similar mistakes, of which we were in a short time able to identify statistically significant evidence of human error.”
“The question persists then, how can the voting public have confidence in our elections if such pertinent information is inexcusably withheld from them?” she asked:
Chairwoman @kelliwardaz issued the following statement on today's ruling by @AZCourts: pic.twitter.com/MnFltsN1MG
— Arizona Republican Party (@AZGOP) December 9, 2020
Ward added that the American people “may never know with complete certainty the identity of the winner of this year’s Presidential election” but said that “the identity of the loser is perfectly clear: Arizona voters and their confidence in election transparency and accuracy.”
“And while today’s decision is not what those who value and recognize the importance of election transparency and integrity were seeking, rest assured, the fight to restore that corroded confidence will continue,” she added.
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