(C) Arizona Mirror
This story was originally published by Arizona Mirror and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .



Abe Hamadeh once again demands the courts boot Kris Mayes and declare him AG [1]

['Gloria Rebecca Gomez', 'More From Author', '- January']

Date: 2024-01-04

Despite asking voters to move on and consider him for a seat in Congress, Republican Abe Hamadeh is once again asking the courts to overturn his 2022 loss in the Arizona Attorney General’s race.

In his latest challenge, filed in Maricopa County Superior Court, Hamadeh insists that current Attorney General Kris Mayes — who defeated him by 280 votes — is illegally holding the office that should belong to him. Accusing her of “usurping” the position, attorney Ryan Heath calls on the court to remove her from office and install Hamadeh in her place.

“Petitioner seeks the issuance of a writ of quo warranto to Respondent Kris Mayes…directing that she cease functioning as Arizona’s Attorney General and order the State Defendants to install Petitioner as the Attorney General, an office to which Petitioner is personally entitled,” wrote Heath.

Arizona law allows an individual to file a quo warranto, in the hopes of obtaining a court declaration that someone is holding a public office illegally. That has happened once before: In 1999, Republican Tony West was removed from the Arizona Corporation Commission after the Arizona Supreme Court determined that he broke the law by being elected to the commission while still being subject to its rules. West had a commission-issued license to sell securities at the time of his election.

The problem with Hamadeh’s claim that Mayes’ removal from office means he should be installed instead is that courts have previously determined that the prior office holder should assume office — not the competitor. In West’s case, the Supreme Court determined that his predecessor should take his place, not his Democratic rival in the election.

That would mean that former attorney general Mark Brnovich would fill in for Mayes until a replacement could be found.

Heath, however, disputed that conclusion in an emailed statement to the Arizona Mirror. Hamadeh’s claim differs significantly from the one that ultimately unseated West. In the case against West, Heath wrote, the question was whether he was ineligible for a position on the Arizona Corporation Commission because of his license, while Hamadeh is arguing that the election that placed Mayes in the office of Arizona attorney general was itself illegitimate, nullifying any authority she might have.

To bolster his claim that Mayes is illegally acting as attorney general, Heath argued that Maricopa County election workers inaccurately verified thousands of early ballots, skewing the attorney general’s race against Hamadeh. As a result, he argues, the only way to ensure a fair result would be to set aside the 2022 results and order a complete do-over.

At the heart of Heath’s argument is the dispute over what exactly constitutes a “registration record”.

Arizona state law directs election officials to count an early ballot only after the signature on the affidavit envelope has been compared and verified against the voter’s signature in their “registration record.” Initially, that record strictly referred to the signature provided when the voter first registered to vote, after having presented their identification and proof of address.

But in 2019, lawmakers enacted changes allowing for comparisons to more recent signatures, like those on previously accepted early ballot envelopes, effectively opening up signature verification options to the voter’s entire “registration record.”

Heath claims that lawmakers never intended to greenlight signature matching beyond the signatures first submitted when a person signs up to vote. And, given that early ballot voters both outnumbered in-person voters and supported Democrats in 2022 — largely because Republican candidates told voters to avoid mail-in ballots amid false claims of fraud — Mayes’ margin of victory was illegitimate and should be nullified, according to Heath.

“If mail-in ballot votes were properly rejected because the signatures on the mail-in ballot affidavits were not consistent with the voters’ signatures in their ‘registration records’, then Petitioner would have won the Contested Race,” Heath wrote. “At the very least, the Contested Race is uncertain as a matter of law — requiring nullification.”

This isn’t the first time early ballot signature verification has been at the center of an election challenge. Late last year, Heath advanced a similar argument on behalf of Republican Cochise County Supervisor Tom Crosby in a special action that was quickly thrown out of court for failing to follow proper legal processes.

And it isn’t Hamadeh’s first time making such a claim: His second lawsuit hoping to overturn his 2022 defeat also included criticism of Maricopa County’s signature verification practices. But Mohave County Superior Court Judge Lee Jantzen dismissed that argument on the grounds that the Maricopa County ballot verification procedures have existed since before the 2022 election, and could have been challenged in court before the election was held.

While Hamadeh’s campaign is gearing up to convince voters he’s the best candidate to represent Arizona’s ruby-red Eighth Congressional District for the U.S. House of Representatives, his focus on his 2022 defeat is still firmly in place. He already has a request filed with the appeals court seeking a new trial in Mohave County Superior Court, after Hamadeh’s legal team was unable to convince a judge in December 2022 that election misconduct cost him the race. And in November, Hamadeh sued Maricopa County election officials over issues with on-site printers at several voting centers that he alleges tilted the race against him.

But spokeswoman Erica Knight said Hamadeh’s focus on 2022 won’t detract from his commitment to a job in Congress, if voters elect him.

“If the courts recognize what every Arizonan already knows, that if the remaining votes were counted, Abe Hamadeh would be the Attorney General,” she said, in an emailed statement. “He has always promised the people of Arizona that he would never stop fighting for the sanctity and security of our elections and is proud to continue the fight for accountability and exposing the system that has disenfranchised thousands of voters and he will continue this fight when elected to U.S. Congress.”

[END]
---
[1] Url: https://www.azmirror.com/2024/01/04/abe-hamadeh-once-again-demands-the-courts-boot-kris-mayes-and-declare-him-ag/

Published and (C) by Arizona Mirror
Content appears here under this condition or license: Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.

via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/azmirror/