(Headline USA) A pair of far-left activist groups on Saturday petitioned the Arizona Supreme Court to extend the deadline for voters to fix problems with their mail-in ballots following delays in vote counting and notifying voters about problems.
The court case could mean further delays in a state and county that has gained notoriety in recent election cycles over its excessively drawn-out ballot-counting process and widespread suspicious of vote fraud, including the last remaining U.S. Senate race to be called in last Tuesday’s election.
Republican Kari Lake and Democrat Ruben Gallego remain neck-in-neck in the race to determine the size of the GOP majority for the Senate as President-elect Donald Trump returns to the White House for his second term.
Lake, a staunch Trump supporter, recently waged a drawn-out legal battle against Maricopa County election officials and others over her 2022 gubernatorial run, where similar delays and election irregularities appeared to help give an advantage to then-Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs.
Although the election officials in Maricopa County, the state’s most populous county, are nominally Republican, some—including lame-duck county Recorder Stephen Richer, who lost his own re-election bid but remains overseeing the general election—have been vocally opposed to Lake and the Trump “America First” movement. Richer also has excepted large amounts of money from leftist donors and formed a PAC directly opposed to Lake and Trump.
From someone who lives in Arizona, I believe Maricopa County is the most corrupt county in the United States of America. pic.twitter.com/ja1y3DxQTU
— 🇺🇸 Army-Brat 🇺🇸 (@KandyLime) November 9, 2024
Lake also criticized blue-leaning Pima County for refusing even to say how many votes it had received.
BREAKING: @KariLake's Attorney Sends Letter To Pima County, Arizona Due To Continuously Changing Total Outstanding Ballot Count.
"We Are Seeking Complete Transparency…& A Complete Accounting As To Discrepancies That Have Been Identified In The Publicly Reported Data." pic.twitter.com/anbxNVEmYg— John Basham (@JohnBasham) November 9, 2024
Despite the delays and irregularities having already fueled allegations that corrupt officials were rigging the count to find ballots for Gallego, the American Civil Liberties Union and the Campaign Legal Center doubled down by pushing for even more delays.
The activist groups asked the state’s high court in an emergency petition that the original 5 p.m. Sunday deadline be extended up to four days after a voter is sent notice of a problem.
“[T]ens of thousands of Arizonans stand to be disenfranchised without any notice, let alone an opportunity to take action to ensure their ballots are counted,” the groups claimed in the petition.
“Because these ballots have not even been processed, [r]espondents have not identified which ballots are defective and have not notified voters of the need to cure those defects,” the petition stated.
Arizona law says people who vote by mail should receive notice of problems with their ballots, such as a signature that doesn’t match the one on file, and get a chance to correct it in a process known as “curing.”
The groups’ petition noted that as of Friday evening more than 250,000 mail-in ballots had not yet been verified by signature. The bulk of them were in Maricopa County.
Just under 200,000 early ballots remained to be processed as of Saturday, according to estimates on the Arizona Secretary of State’s Office website.
The county takes pride in conducting “accurate and timely” signature verification, and that all signatures for the general election went through the process by the end of the day Friday, “giving voters with questioned signatures ample time to cure their signature,” claimed Taylor Kinnerup, a spokesperson for the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office.
“As an administrative agency, our office is bound by the letter of the law which gives up to five calendar days following an election for a voter to cure their signature,” Kinnerup said. “Voters are contacted directly if their signature is questioned but can also choose to see if their ballot needs to be cured online at BeBallotReady.Vote.”
Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press
