Abe Hamadeh at a 2022 Republican rally in Prescott on Nov. 7, 2022. Photo by Gage Skidmore (modified) | Flickr/CC BY-SA 2.0
Abe Hamadeh wants another shot at overturning his loss, saying that issues revealed by the recount in one county put the whole election in question.
Late Tuesday, Hamadeh filed a motion for a new trial in Mohave County Superior Court, arguing that the recount discrepancy in Pinal County is sufficient grounds for a renewed investigation into the midterm election in all 15 Arizona counties. Hamadeh’s previous election challenges were unsuccessful; the first was dismissed for being filed too earlyunder state law and the second was thrown out for failing to meet the burden of proof.
This time, Timothy La Sota, Hamadeh’s attorney, said there is clear evidence that the election was mishandled so badly that it affected the outcome in the closest statewide race in Arizona history.
“The recount identified more problems in an election already riddled with process failures,” wrote La Sota. “This further demonstrated that the vote count totals are likely inaccurate, with thousands of Arizonans’ votes not counted, thus casting further doubt about the actual result.”
Pinal County added 507 more votes in its recount total than were in its original canvass after identifying several instances of poll worker error due, in part, to high staff turnover and insufficient training. The new ballots shrank Democratic Attorney General-elect Kris Mayes’ lead from 511 to just 280.
This reduces the margin between Mayes and Hamadeh to 0.1% — small enough to make every ballot monumentally decisive, La Sota said.
“The tiniest errors in counting are enough to change the results, or at least cast them into doubt,” he said. “And there are now new reasons to believe that such errors occurred.”
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