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The Trump campaign has filed a lawsuit against an Arizona county, arguing that voting officials wrongfully rejected votes.
According to the campaign, the Republican National Committee, and the Arizona Republican Committee, numerous voters in Maricopa County in the 2020 election were deceived into allowing their ballots to be rejected by tabulating machines due to an “overvote.”
An overvote on a ballot occurs when there is an irregularity on a ballot such as two candidates selected when there should only be one. This could be due to a mistake on the part of the voter or even from an ink blot or other marking.
Under Arizona laws, overvotes must be reviewed to determine what the voter actually wanted. This helps weed out errors from misregistered irregularities from ink splotches or other markings.
“If a field on the ballot contains what the tabulator deems an apparent defect or irregularity, the voter’s intended selections in the affected candidate races or ballot proposition contests will not be tabulated, even if the voter’s intent could be discerned by a visual review of the ballot,” the Trump campaign lawsuit explains.
According to the lawsuit, ballots with irregularities detected by the tabulator can be deemed “spoiled” – allowing the voter to obtain and cast a new ballot. Alternatively, voters can choose to cast their ballot without the irregularity – physically depositing their ballot in a special drawer to be reviewed at the counting center.
However, this process was allegedly misconstrued by poll workers during the 2020 election.
Instead of following the above protocol, poll workers reportedly deviated by pressing or telling voters to press the “green button” on the tabulator to override any irregularity warnings. By pushing this button, ballots were allegedly cast without the irregularity but were not subject to further review by the counting office.
“While this safeguard was afforded to putative overvotes cast on early ballots and on Election Day ballots that poll workers properly segregated in a separate repository, potentially thousands of voters across Maricopa County have been disenfranchised by systematic improper tabulator overrides,” the Trump campaign lawsuit contends.
Part of the problem can reportedly be traced to new voting machines used in Maricopa County for the 2020 election. Allegedly, poll workers struggled with this new technology and, as a result, improperly pressed or told voters to press the override button when faced with errors.
As a result of this conduct, thousands of in-person votes for President Trump and the Republican Party could have been wrongfully rejected, the lawsuit alleges. The Trump campaign challenges this conduct under Arizona state law, arguing that poll workers and election officials had a duty to properly advise voters of their legal rights and properly count valid ballots.
The Trump campaign’s lawsuit asks the court for declaratory relief, injunctive relief, and other forms of relief which “are necessary to prevent irreparable injury to the plaintiffs.” This relief is proposed to include a manual inspection of affected ballots in Maricopa County.
According to the lawsuit, this could yield thousands of votes in Trump’s favor. With Joe Biden holding only a narrow lead over Trump, these votes could swing the state in his favor.
Arizona officials, including Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, have denied the claims against them and maintained that their election process was fair.
“My office has been putting out information for months about how election processes work in the state & all we do to ensure security & fairness,” Hobbs wrote in a Twitter post.
“If you haven’t been paying attention, that’s on you, but don’t show up when you don’t like the result & scream fraud w/no evidence.”
On Saturday, Republicans dropped a similar lawsuit against the Maricopa County in connection to the use of Sharpies at voting locations. In a statement to The Hill, Hobb’s office said that the Trump campaign’s lawsuit is under review but is “seemingly a repackaged ‘sharpiegate’ lawsuit.”
This lawsuit is one of several legal challenges from the Trump campaign following last week’s election. Although national news outlets have called the election in favor of Joe Biden, President Trump has not conceded defeat.
Did you vote in the 2020 election? Let us know how you feel about this lawsuit in the comment section below.
The Trump campaign is represented by Kory Langofer and Thomas Basile of Statecraft Law and by Brett W. Johnson and Eric H. Spencer of Snell & Wilmer LLP.
The Donald Trump Campaign Lawsuit is Donald J. Trump for President Inc., Case No. unknown, in the Superior Court for the State of Arizona in and for the County of Maricopa.
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3 thoughts onTrump Campaign Files Lawsuit Blaming Arizona Loss on Rejected Votes
There was a lot of nefarious activity going on nationwide. Mail in balloting was a scam. Democrats rushed to changed laws months before the election so that they could commit voter fraud on a grand scale.
This is the same party that demands no ID and no signature requirement for voters. Bunch of hucksters and I can’t wait for them to be exposed.
I voted for Biden. My whole family did! No fraud. Most voted for the person not the party
So, Secretary of State Katie Hobbs is telling “us” the voter “If you haven’t been paying attention, that’s on you, but don’t show up when you don’t like the result & scream fraud w/no evidence”. Wait a second, I’m not a poll worker, I have not been trained to work the polls but I do expect the professionals to assist me when I am at the polls exercising my constitutional right to ensure I am using their machine correctly.
The american people have been abused by people such as Ms.Hobbs and the courts have a responsibility to verify every vote, prosecute every person that helped in crippling our faith in the system and bring us to a whole statue.