The Arizona Supreme Court on Tuesday affirmed President-elect Joe Biden’s victory in Arizona, upholding a lower court’s finding that there was no misconduct, fraud or illegal voting in the general election.
The ruling came hours before the so-called “safe harbor” cutoff, a federal deadline by which states must resolve election-related disputes in state courts to guarantee Congress will count their electors’ votes.
Arizona Republican Party Chair Kelli Ward had initially filed the challenge in Maricopa County Superior Court, seeking to have a judge void Biden’s 10,457-vote win in Arizona. In her claim, she questioned the signature verification process used by Maricopa Countyto authenticate mail-in ballots, as well as the duplication process election officials used to count ballots that tabulation machines couldn’t read.
Ward brought the election contest under a state law that allows voters to dispute certified results if they suspect misconduct, illegal votes or an inaccurate count. But, over a day and a half of testimony and oral arguments, her team failed to prove anything beyond a handful of garden variety mistakes, Superior Court Judge Randall Warner said.
In an order issued Tuesday after Ward appealed to the Arizona Supreme Court, Chief Justice Robert Brutinel agreed.https://www.usatodaynetworkservice.com/tangstatic/html/pphx/sf-q1a2z3be0d353f.min.html
The court agreed Ward’s challenge had 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,'” he wrote — “let alone establish any degree of fraud or a sufficient error rate that would undermine the certainty of the election results.”
“Elections will not be held invalid for mere irregularities unless it can be shown that the result has been affected by such irregularity,” he wrote. “The validity of an election is not voided by honest mistakes or omissions unless they affect the result, or at least render it uncertain.