Mohave County Superior Court Judge Lee Jantzen has denied Abraham Hamadeh's request to throw out the attorney general election results.
Republican Hamadeh lost to Democrat Kris Mayes by 511 votes out of 2.5 million. His lawsuit alleged that problems with printers in Maricopa County led to a series of issues that disenfranchised voters. He also alleges his race was affected by improper handling of ballots that were duplicated or adjudicated by humans because they could not be read by tabulators.
Under Arizona law, he faced the high bar of proving not just that election officials erred but that he would have won without their misconduct.
The judge said Friday that Hamadeh has not proved his case.
"I think the bottom line is for the ballots we've been able to present given the time, the compressed time frame, I think they clearly show in favor of what Mr. Hamadeh alleged in our complaint. If you extrapolate the numbers, they're not going to get us to the 511 votes if you take the sample we have. We concede that," Timothy LaSota, Hamadeh's attorney said.
Dan Barr, the attorney for Mayes, said, "This concession we just heard from Mr. LaSota that he doesn't have anywhere close to the numbers to make a difference in the election is jaw-dropping. I mean what have we been doing here for the past two weeks?"
Judge Jantzen ultimately said, "You haven't ended up proving the elements of the case as we review the record. There hasn't been proof there's been mistakes made."
