The Arizona GOP is bringing a lawsuit challenging a ridiculously ineffective hand count audit that election officials used to verify that everything was legit and there was no fraud.
NEW: @AZGOP now getting in on the legal challenges. The party just dropped a lawsuit earlier tonight demanding a hand count of votes by precinct, not vote centers. #ABC15 #YourVote pic.twitter.com/C1uW78SxJJ
— Nicole Valdes (@NicoleValdesTV) November 13, 2020
Maricopa County just completed their hand count audit on Monday, and reported a 100% match. For reference, here's a snippet from a letter sent to @FannKfann and @speakerbowers by @GeneralBrnovich on this issue & what exactly a hand-count audit tests: pic.twitter.com/BPkLuRyv9i
— Nicole Valdes (@NicoleValdesTV) November 13, 2020
Here's why @kelliwardaz argues this is an issue: pic.twitter.com/1qCWrIzinJ
— Nicole Valdes (@NicoleValdesTV) November 13, 2020
Here’s more from DC Examiner:
The Arizona Republican Party filed a lawsuit on Thursday challenging the state’s standard of verifying accurate vote counts through checking a small sample of ballots, arguing that the check should be conducted by precinct rather than by vote center.
Arizona law requires county election officials to conduct a hand-count of at least 2% of precincts in the county, a measure to ensure quality and accuracy in the election process. The Maricopa County Elections Department said Monday that it had conducted that hand audit with representatives from the Republican, Democratic, and Libertarian parties and found a 100% match with the machine tally.
Maricopa County, the most populous county in the state, allows flexibility for voters to cast ballots at any “voting center” rather than requiring voters to cast ballots at a specific precinct location. There were 175 vote centers and 748 precincts in the county this year. The hand audit was conducted in four of the 175 voting centers.
The Arizona Republican Party argues that the hand-count audit should consist of at least 15 of the 748 precincts instead.
“Arizona voters deserve complete assurance that the law will be followed and that only legal votes will be counted,” Arizona Republican Party Chairwoman Kelli Ward said in a statement Thursday evening.
According to Arizona Mirror reporter Jeremy Duda, the standard of using voting centers instead of precinct-based counting was changed in 2011.
I believe the lawsuit has merit, but that doesn’t mean much in this day and age when so many people just want to accept Biden’s victory as a fait accompli.