‘Counting ballots/ allaboutgeorge/Creative Commons
By Yvonne Wingett Sanchez | Arizona Republic
A redo of the election of Arizona Republican Party officers appears as though it will not take place on April 24 as GOP activists had hoped, after a Maricopa County Superior Court judge said Thursday it was unlikely legal deliberations over the effort would be resolved by then.
The legal challenge has been temporarily sidetracked by top state GOP officials ducking process servers as the activists suing the party leaders face scrutiny over the signatures they gathered to force another election.
The development prolongs the fight inside the Arizona Republican Party over the legitimacy of its Jan. 23 elections, where Chair Kelli Ward won reelection in a race that went to a runoff.
Arizona GOP activists gathered 353 signatures from state committee people in an effort to force a do-over of all party elections after Ward and state party officials would not heed repeated calls to audit the results and procedures of the election even as she made similar demands after former President Donald Trump’s loss to President Joe Biden.
Ward and state party officials claimed the activists had not gathered enough signatures to force another election and accused the activists of tricking people into signing onto their effort. A review of the signatures by AZGOP representatives found some duplicative or ineligible signatures while other people, according to the party, asked that their names be removed.
