PHOENIX — A court ruled Monday that challengers to Joe Biden’s victory in Arizona can get documents they contend will cast doubt on the tally, even as top officials from both political parties certified the state’s election results as accurate the same day.
And an unofficial panel of nine Republican lawmakers that met Monday is looking to ask the full Legislature to void the official tally and give the state’s 11 electoral votes to President Trump — although legislative ability to do that legally remains in question.
Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Randall Warner said he will allow attorneys for state GOP Chair Kelli Ward to compare the signatures on 100 randomly selected envelopes that contained early ballots with the signatures for those same voters already on file.
Warner also ordered Maricopa County to produce 100 random ballots cast at polling places that were damaged or had other problems, to compare with the versions that were reproduced to ensure they could be read by the machines.
That in turn will lead to a hearing on Thursday where Ward’s attorney Jack Wilenchik said he hopes to prove there were mistakes. He said that would allow Warner to extrapolate out the error rate and declare that the officially reported and certified results are in doubt.
More to the point, Wilenchik told Warner, that would require the judge to declare the results invalid.
And that in turn would leave it to the Republican-controlled Arizona Legislature to decide who gets Arizona’s 11 electoral votes, Wilenchik said.
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