Abe Hamadeh, the Republican candidate for Arizona Attorney General in the recent 2022 General Election, intends to ask a Mohave County judge for a new trial in his election challenge, based in part on critical evidence withheld from Pinal County about hundreds of uncounted ballots.
Hamadeh’s challenge was denied Dec. 23 by Judge Lee Jantzen, who cited a lack of evidence to support the candidate’s contention that potentially a few thousand valid ballots were not counted by Arizona’s 15 counties. On Dec. 29, the results of a statewide recount in the attorney general’s race slashed Kris Mayes’ apparent 511-vote win over Hamadeh to only 280 votes.
Then-Secretary of State Katie Hobbs and all 15 counties were defendants in Hamadeh’s election challenge filed on Dec. 9. The motion by Hamadeh for a new trial is expected to focus on what Hobbs and her staff knew about Pinal County’s errors in tabulating votes before and after the county’s board of supervisors canvassed its election results on Nov. 21.
Katie Hobbs in her role of Secretary of State had possession, custody, and control over the evidence of Pinal County’s huge discrepancy and she KNOWINGLY failed to disclose this to me and the court. She intentionally misled the judge.
We will file a legal challenge shortly.
— Abe Hamadeh (@AbrahamHamadeh) January 2, 2023
One question for Jantzen will be whether Hobbs and Pinal County officials acted with intentional disregard by withholding critical evidence in Hamadeh’s case. For instance, Pinal County’s recount report shows 507 more votes were tabulated as part of a mandatory recount of the AG’s race than had been reported in the earlier county and state canvasses.
But information about those errors was never disclosed to the public or Jantzen the week before when the judge conducted an evidentiary trial in Hamadeh’s election lawsuit.
While Hamadeh hopes to resurrect his election challenge based on the actions or inactions of various parties, the fallout of the Dec. 29 recount hearing continues, particularly the fact Pinal County did not initially count the 507 votes to the AG’s race.
The extent of Pinal County’s problems caught even veteran election officials off guard, including newly sworn-in Secretary of State Adrian Fontes. He expressed dismay at the “problematic” Pinal County situation, comparing it the “barely” acceptable performance in Maricopa County where only a handful of additional votes were reported in the recount out of nearly 2 million ballots.
He then pointed the finger of blame at Pinal County’s Republican-controlled board of supervisors.
“You know, the single digit differences are not unusual, but it is absolutely, it’s really problematic to see the number of ballots in Pinal County that were not tabulated,” Fontes said in a radio interview Friday before he turned to making excuses for the errors.
“The folks down in Pinal County, particularly the Board of Supervisors and their election director back a year ago did not staff up,” Fontes said. “They did not fund up. They did not train and prepare for what they knew was going to happen.”
Another problem known to Pinal County officials during Hamadeh’s legal fight was that several dozen valid votes were reported in the Nov. 21 canvass as undervotes, which occurs when a tabulation machine cannot scan or “read” a vote cast in a specific race.
Hamadeh has long argued that the voter’s intent could in fact be determined for a significant number of undervotes reported across Arizona. And many of those initially reported Pinal County undervotes were actually readable votes that were tabulated during the recount in the attorney general’s race.
In addition, Hamadeh argued in his election case that several counties mishandled provisional ballots. Although Pinal County officials knew a problem occurred with some of its provisionals, no one told Hamadeh or Jantzen.
Hamadeh asserts that Hobbs and her attorneys acted with intent to not advise Jantzen about the significant Pinal County vote difference between the Nov. 21 canvass and the Dec. 29 reading of the recount results in a Maricopa County courtroom.
But the General Election problems were not totally unexpected, according to Fontes, a former Maricopa County Recorder. He pointed to “big issues” which occurred with Pinal County’s primary election back in August which led to the firing of Elections Director David Frisk, who was on the job for only a few months.
This resulted, Fontes said, in an “entirely new set of leadership” coming in without much election administration experience. However, Fontes was complimentary of Virginia Ross, who retired in August as Pinal County Recorder to sign a four-month contract as temporary elections director. Her contract called for a guaranteed $175,000 payday with the potential for another $25,000 upon canvassing.
According to Fontes, Ross “did yeoman’s work” and cannot be directly blamed for Pinal County’s second mismanaged election of 2022.
It is unknown whether Hamadeh’s motion for a new trial will seek sworn testimony from Pinal County’s officials about the tabulation errors and about why the information was not made public earlier.