Arizona GOP chair Kelli Ward takes vote lawsuit to state Supreme Court

PHOENIX – Dr. Kelli Ward, chair of the Arizona Republican Party, is taking her battle to reverse the certified results of the state’s presidential election to the Arizona Supreme Court.

Ward filed a notice of appeal with the state’s highest court late Friday.

The Supreme Court confirmed receipt of the case Monday and said it would decide the matter without oral argument.

The parties were ordered to file simultaneous briefs of no longer than 3,000 words and an appendix with their exhibits by noon Monday.

A Maricopa County Superior Court judge ruled on Friday that Ward failed to prove fraud in her challenge of election results in metro Phoenix and that evidence presented at trial wouldn’t reverse President Donald Trump’s loss.

Earlier Friday, before the dismissal, Ward told KTAR News 92.3 FM’s The Mike Broomhead Show she would “go to the end to prove” that “President Trump won this election by a landslide in Arizona.”

Ward is pressing ahead after four previous legal challenges to the validity of Arizona’s elections were dismissed.

On Nov. 30, Arizona’s two top-ranking Republican elected officials, Gov. Doug Ducey and Attorney General Mark Brnovich, signed off on Democratic Secretary of State Katie Hobbs’ election certification.

The certified results showed President-elect Joe Biden winning Arizona by more than 10,000 votes to claim the state’s 11 electoral votes. As it stands, Biden will win the presidency by a 306-232 margin when the Electoral College meets on Dec. 14. Biden’s inauguration is set for Jan. 20.

Biden won in Maricopa County, the state’s most-populous region, by more than 45,000 votes in becoming the first Democratic presidential candidate to win Arizona since 1996.

Ward’s lawsuit challenges the validity of certain ballots cast in Maricopa County.

As part of the case, a court-ordered sampling of 1,626 duplicated ballots found that Trump lost seven votes due to errors in ballot processing.

Scott Jarrett, Maricopa County’s director of Election Day and emergency voting, said in court Thursday that Trump could have lost 103 votes if the error rate were extrapolated across all 27,800 duplicated ballots in the county, nowhere near enough to change the outcome.

Legal challenges by Trump and his allies would have to succeed in multiple states to change the outcome, and they have done little but rack up losses in courtrooms and recounts to this point.

U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr has said the Justice Department has uncovered no evidence of widespread voter fraud that would change the outcome of the election.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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