Decision Desk HQ called Arizona for Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden on Wednesday, the third outlet to call the race since Fox News and The Associated Press called the race early last week.
“Decision Desk HQ Projects Biden (D) Has Won The State Of AZ And Its 11 Electoral Votes,” Decision Desk HQ announced on. Wednesday night. “Race Called At 10:29 PM EST.”
Decision Desk HQ Projects Biden (D) Has Won The State Of AZ And Its 11 Electoral Votes
Race Called At 10:29 PM EST
All Results: https://t.co/7CxbLsQ3gY
— Decision Desk HQ (@DecisionDeskHQ) November 12, 2020
President Donald Trump, whose campaign is pursuing litigation in the state over the presidential election, asserted that he would eventually triumph in the state after an “audit” of the votes. Trump trailed Biden by roughly 11,600 votes by Thursday morning.
“From 200,000 votes to less than 10,000 votes. If we can audit the total votes cast, we will easily win Arizona also!” Trump said.
From 200,000 votes to less than 10,000 votes. If we can audit the total votes cast, we will easily win Arizona also! https://t.co/3eZHjdZL98
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 12, 2020
A Trump campaign lawsuit against Maricopa County, the most populous county in Arizona, will be heard in court on Thursday morning. Earlier this week, the Trump campaign requested that the court place under seal a video that the plaintiffs wanted to submit since it was taken illegally in a polling place.
Trump campaign attorney Kory Langhofer said she would not have approved of the video being taken, but “now that it exists and it shows the poll worker pressing the green button, that’s relevant evidence.”
“I’m uncomfortable with the idea of having a video that shows people’s faces, voted ballots, or visible who they voted for,” Langhofer added. “So it seems to me like sealing it is appropriate.”
Maricopa County attorneys opposed the move, citing the fact that taking such videos is illegal under Arizona law. The video, the attorneys argued, may be needed by state law enforcement officials to pursue charges against whoever took it.
“It would [be] counterintuitive to have individuals invade the privacy of voters and violate their right to vote in secret and then use the fruit of that potentially illegal activity to advance a civil case,” the Maricopa County attorneys wrote in response to the Trump campaign request. “Moreover, it would be borderline obscene to allow them to do it, then present it to a court in secret.”
The Trump campaign filed the lawsuit on Saturday. As The Daily Wire reported:
The Trump campaign has sued Arizona’s Maricopa County alleging that poll workers may have disenfranchised thousands of in-person voters on election day by incorrectly handling some ballots.
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.”