Kelli Ward, the chairwoman of the Arizona Republican Party, will have a few more hours on Friday to convince a Maricopa County Superior Court judge that election procedural errors kept President Donald Trump from being credited with all of the votes cast for him, and that the judge should announce him the winner of Arizona’s 11 electoral votes.
All the attorneys involved in the case have already indicated an appeal to the Arizona Supreme Court, and if necessary the U.S. Supreme Court, is likely.
The parties will resume testimony Friday morning with testimony from Reynaldo Valenzuela, as certified election officer for Maricopa County. Judge Randall Warner hopes to have a written order issued no later than Monday morning given that the U.S. Elector College meets Dec. 14.
One of Ward’s main claims, both in legal briefings and her public comments, is that Maricopa County’s election was not conducted free of fraud. There was much testimony Thursday suggestive of human error by workers and volunteers, as well as apathetic attitudes by county officials and the political parties toward some of the reported problems.
Some of those issues may have been magnified by COVID-19 protocols. However, none of the witnesses put forth evidence or even a suggestion of evidence to support Ward’s claims. In addition, Scott Jarrett, the county’s election day director, once again debunked the suggestion that any of the county’s Dominion Voting System hardware was connected to the internet.
But despite getting evidence on the record of a variety of procedural defects inside Maricopa County’s Tabulation Election Center (MCTEC), Ward had part of her lawsuit dismissed Thursday by Warner, who ruled that observers inside MCTEC had sufficient opportunities to address problems as they occurred, including frequent issues with some of the software used to review ballots that were not being read properly by the tabulation machines.
More than 2.1 million general election ballots were cast in Maricopa County. Elections officials reported on Nov. 12 that a legally required post-election hand count of more than 8,000 of those ballots found zero error between how the tabulation machines counted the presidential race on those same ballots.
But Ward’s challenge is not to the counting of ballots, but the validity of some of the ballots themselves. Those 27,869 ballots had to be duplicated, or essentially reconstructed onto a new ballot for a variety of reasons.
“The hand count process would not catch any errors in the duplication process,” according to Ward’s attorney Jack Wilenchik. “If the duplicated ballot was somehow filled out incorrectly, the tabulation machine would have no way of knowing.”
Jarrett testified that a court-approved review of 1,626 ballots revealed 1,617 (or 99.45 percent) – were duplicated properly. The nine improperly duplicated ballots contained eight votes never credited toward any Presidential candidate, six of which should have gone to Trump.
Another never-awarded vote should have gone to Biden, one ballot had no valid vote for President, and one vote would have been taken away from Biden and counted for Trump. The parties had intended to review a total of 2,600 duplicated ballots but ran out of time.
However, Jarrett also testified that if the sampling results were extrapolated to all 27,869 duplicated ballots, Trump may have ended with another 120 or so votes, far short of his 10,457 deficit in the state’s certified election results. And if an equal number of votes had been incorrectly credited to Biden, then Trump would gain another 120 or so.
Wilenchik has even suggested Thursday that an audit should be conducted of all duplicated ballots statewide. But if Maricopa County’s error rate held true statewide, Trump would earn a few hundred more votes, but not nearly enough to trigger a statutory full recount.
Warner ruled at the start of the trial that Ward could not argue that misconduct was involved with the difficulty observers had in seeing ballots or getting the attention of an election supervisor quickly enough. He also denied request from The Lincoln Project to file friend of the court brief Wednesday evening, noting “it is simply too late” as the trial was beginning Thursday morning.
One of Ward’s witnesses was Linda Brickman, newly named chair of the Maricopa County Republican Party, who served on one of the two-member duplication boards. She described “incredulous problems” with the duplication software, which was not part of the Dominion Voting System used for tabulation.
Jarrett testified that election supervisors were aware of complaints about the software, and he admitted “there is no other audit” done to ensure the duplicated ballot was properly filled out.
There was also significant testimony from Lori Gray, an approved election observer, about the difficulty getting the attention of an election supervisor quickly enough to catch a ballot she believed was being duplicated incorrectly. The observers were prohibited from speaking directly with the duplication teams, so a duplicated ballot may have been finished by the time a supervisor got to a station.
“Most of (the errors) were not caught,” Gray told Warner. And even when a supervisor was able to identify which ballot image or duplicated ballot needed further review, none of the witnesses knew whether an election official took steps to ensure those ballots were looked at again.
One of the most unexpected cross-examinations occurred Thursday afternoon. Wilenchik solicited testimony from Laurie Hoeltzel, a self-described forensic document examiner, about her review of the signatures on 100 mail-in ballot envelopes.
Hoeltzel had classified a handful of the signatures as “inconclusive,” which she said was based on a lack of several signature samples, or exemplars, as reference. However, she admitted finding no indication of fraud in the county’s decision to have verified all 100 of the signatures, which seemed like it would be the end of her testimony.
But under cross-examination, Hoeltzel credentials and education was challenged. She was also asked about some less than stellar comments recently made by other judges about her testimony.
Wilenchik has not asked to review additional signature envelopes, so it appears Ward is dropping her claim that a large number of the 1.9 million mail-in ballots in Maricopa County may have been accepted for tabulation despite questionable signatures.