Abraham Hamadeh got the green light from a Mohave County Superior Court judge to go to trial over an election he says was compromised by misconduct.Earlier this month, Republican Hamadeh filed a lawsuit alleging that his 511-vote loss to Democrat Kris Mayes in the race for Arizona attorney general was the result of election errors, including poll workers bungling Election Day voting in Maricopa County and improperly handled ballots during the verification process.
To prove his claims, Hamadeh requested permission to inspect ballots in Navajo, Maricopa and Pima counties. Judge Lee Jantzen approved that request and set a trial date for 9 a.m. Friday, Dec. 23.
The lawsuit has been criticized by opponents for lacking any concrete evidence and while Jantzen agreed that his rulings must be tied to facts, he said Hamadeh should be given an opportunity to make his argument.
“Plaintiff has a high burden to meet in order to have an election overturned. The Court must make these determinations based on facts and not mere conclusions,” Jantzen wrote. “However, at this stage in the unique proceedings of an election contest, the Court finds the Plaintiff has the right to present its case and even gather additional information.”
To be successful, Hamadeh needs to establish that each claim of misconduct he pointed to in his lawsuit actually occurred and that all of it influenced the election enough to compromise the outcome of the race.
.Hamadeh alleges that on-demand printer malfunctions in Maricopa County, coupled with poll workers who failed to check-out voters from sites experiencing issues, resulted in an unknown number of rejected ballots. The lawsuit also claims that as many as 1,942 provisional ballots were left uncounted in Maricopa County, despite the fact that the voters who filled them out were properly registered to vote and hadn’t previously cast a ballot. Finally, improperly adjudicated and duplicated ballots — both processes that seek to preserve the voter’s intent when a ballot becomes too mangled or illegible for the machines to read — resulted in incorrectly counted votes. …