Trump Campaign Drops Arizona Lawsuit Over Rejected Votes

A man fills in his ballot, in Lansing, Michigan, on Nov. 3, 2020. John Moore/Getty Images

The Trump campaign on Friday dropped its lawsuit in Arizona seeking a review of ballots that were cast by overriding the tabulating machine’s rejection of the vote.

The lawsuit, filed on Saturday, claimed that votes were rejected because poll workers had told voters to press a green button to cast their vote even after the tabulator had rejected it due to defects or irregularities on the ballot.

One of the alleged defects was overvotes, when a voter selects more than the permitted number of candidates in a given race. This usually occurs when ink splotches or stray markings are made on the ballot.

The lawsuit, which was filed against Arizona’s secretary of state and other state officials, asked the court to order (pdf) election officials to hold off on certifying results until a review of the ballots that contain apparent overvotes or other defects is completed.

On Friday, the Trump campaign filed a motion telling the court that it no longer needed its intervention for the campaign’s claims.

“Since the close of yesterday’s hearing, the tabulation of votes statewide has rendered unnecessary a judicial ruling as to the presidential electors,” it wrote in the filing (pdf).

But the filing added two down-ballot races in the lawsuit were still seeking review.

Lawyers for Arizona’s secretary of state on Friday submitted to the court a “notice regarding ballot counts” (pdf) that states that the data “moots the claims and request relief” for the campaign and the Republican National Committee.

The data shows that, at the time of filing, there were only 191 overvotes identified in the presidential race.

The office of Katie Hobb, Arizona’s secretary of state, did not immediately respond to The Epoch Times’ request for comment.

This comes after the Republican Party of Arizona filed a lawsuit (pdf) against Maricopa County Recorder Adrian Fontes and other state officials, seeking a hand count of votes by precinct, as opposed to by voting centers.

Under the secretary of state’s manual, election officials must perform a limited precinct hand count audit after every general election.

For the 2020 election, Maricopa County set up “vote centers” across the county rather than assign voters to “polling places” in their precincts, as had been the traditional practice in prior elections.

The difference in sampling vote centers compared to precincts is that there are significantly fewer vote centers.

“There is a fundamental difference between sampling ‘polling centers’ and ‘precincts,’ most notable being the fact that there were only around 175 vote centers this election, but there were 748 precincts,” the Arizona GOP wrote in a release.

The Arizona GOP argued that hand-counting by precinct “would therefore potentially result in a more precise sampling of votes.”

This case is cited Donald J. Trump for President, Inc. et al vs Hobbs et al (CV2020-014248).

Tom Ozimek contributed to this report.