The Republican Party of Arizona sued the state on Thursday to force a “hand count” of ballots after several media outlets joined Fox News and The Associated Press in calling the state for Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden.
President Donald Trump has narrowed Biden’s lead in the state to roughly 11,000 votes as outstanding ballots still being counted tend to favor the president over his Democratic challenger. Trump has likely not won enough of the ballots to overtake Biden and win the state’s 11 electoral votes, however.
The Arizona GOP lawsuit is meant to force the state into enforcing current laws on hand counting ballots by precinct as opposed to voting centers, according to an Arizona GOP press release.
“Traditionally, voters have been assigned to a ‘polling place’ in their precinct at which to vote; however, for the 2020 general election, Maricopa County instead set up a number of polling places across the county called ‘vote centers’ where voters from any precinct could vote,” press release said. “There is a fundamental difference between sampling ‘polling centers’ and ‘precincts,’ most notable being the fact that there were only around 175 vote centers this election, but there were 748 precincts. Hand counting by precinct would therefore potentially result in a more precise sampling of votes.”
Republican Party of Arizona Chairwoman Kelli Ward said in a statement, “The question here is one of statutory construction, and whether the Secretary of State’s Election Procedures Manual is able to supersede Arizona’s state law. Arizona voters deserve complete assurance that the law will be followed and that only legal votes will be counted in the 2020 election.”
BREAKING: This afternoon, the @AZGOP filed suit to enforce a hand count by precinct, not voting center, as required by law.
"Arizona voters deserve complete assurance that the law will be followed and that only legal votes will be counted." — Chairwoman @kelliwardaz pic.twitter.com/xzcqUT8jTc
— Arizona Republican Party (@AZGOP) November 13, 2020
The Trump campaign is pursuing its own legal actions in the state. On Saturday, the campaign filed a lawsuit against Maricopa County, the state’s most populous county, over allegedly incorrectly rejecting some votes through mishandling “overvote” ballots.
As The Daily Wire reported:
The campaign announced its lawsuit in a press release on Saturday, claiming that some ballots cast on election day were marked as “overvotes” by the machines processing them, meaning the machine found that more votes were marked on the ballot than is allowed. Many overvote ballots were then canceled instead of being taken by a poll worker and counted by hand, the lawsuit says.
“When a machine detects an overvote on a ballot, poll workers should inform in-person voters of the error and give them an opportunity to correct the issue. Instead, poll workers in Maricopa County pressed, and told voters to press, a green button to override the error,” the press release said. “As a result, the machines disregarded the voter’s choices in the overvoted races. The campaign has collected declarations from voters who witnessed the problem and alleges that the problem occurred on a large scale in Maricopa County.”
Related: Arizona: Trump Pushes For ‘Audit’ After Another Outlet Calls Race For Biden