Trump’s campaign has dropped the lawsuit they filed in seeking review of all the ballots cast on Election Day after finding the margin of victory for the presidential contest in Arizona could not be overcome.
Saturday, they filed the lawsuit alleging that some voters were confused on Election Day and feared that their ballots were not counted if the vote tabulation machines classified their ballots as overvotes. Trump’s campaign was seeking a hand review of ballots flagged by the machine as overvotes alleging it could result in thousands of votes for Donald Trump.
CNN has since projected that President-elect Joe Biden will win the state.
On Thursday, a state judge in Maricopa County held a six-hour evidentiary hearing.
Kory Langhofer, a lawyer for the Trump campaign, wrote, “Since the close of yesterday’s hearing, the tabulation of votes statewide has rendered unnecessary a judicial ruling as to the presidential electors.” He said he did want the judge to rule on their requests to review votes for two down-ballot races.
On Friday, the lawyers for Maricopa County and the Secretary of State filed papers noted that the difference in votes between Biden and Trump is 11,414, with 10,315 ballots left to be counted. The county also said there were 191 votes that were classified as overvotes in the presidential race, a number which they claim is “consistent” with previous contests.
The latest ballot counts “moots” the Trump campaign’s claim, they wrote.
Initially, Trump’s campaign sought a review of all overvotes. Still, on Thursday, Langhofer revised his request, telling the judge that he would only seek a review of vote counts if the number of so-called overvotes exceeded the margin of victory.
The judge threw out paper and electronic affidavits that the Trump campaign collected from voters after Langhofer acknowledged that some of the forms were “spam” and not legitimate voters.
Judge Daniel Kiley said to the Trump attorney, “Let me just clarify,” he added, “Your solicitation of witnesses yielded some sworn affidavits that you yourself clearly determined are false and spam, as you phrased it?”
He continued, “The ones that you couldn’t prove are false you submitted to the court?” the judge said before granting the county’s request to exclude the evidence.
