Arizona GOP’s attorney blasts judge in new legal filings over election ruling | Howard Fischer/Arizona Daily Star
The Arizona Republican Party is telling a judge he’s treading on First Amendment rights if he imposes sanctions on the party for bringing what he called a “meritless” lawsuit over the Nov. 3 election. “Public mistrust following this election motivated this lawsuit, and there is absolutely nothing improper or harassing about that,” the attorney for the party, Jack Wilenchik, told Maricopa County Superior Court Judge John Hannah. He said forcing those who bring such actions to pay the other side’s legal fees, even if the cases are ultimately thrown out of court, effectively silences those who exercise their constitutional rights to challenge results. And Wilenchik contended the fact it is being considered shows “a degree of bias” by Hannah and that the judge is ignoring the feelings of those voters who question the legitimacy of the general election results. Hannah has not said when he will rule on the issue. The dispute is what’s left of a bid by the state GOP to force a different method of conducting the legally required random hand count of ballots. In that procedure, officials from both parties select a batch of ballots to determine if the machine-tallied results match what humans found. In all cases in Maricopa County in the general election, the match was 100%.
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