The Arizona Republican Party filed a lawsuit on Thursday challenging the state’s standard of verifying accurate vote counts through checking a small sample of ballots, arguing that the check should be conducted by precinct rather than by vote center.
Arizona law requires county election officials to conduct a hand-count of at least 2% of precincts in the county, a measure to ensure quality and accuracy in the election process. The Maricopa County Elections Department said Monday that it had conducted that hand audit with representatives from the Republican, Democratic, and Libertarian parties and found a 100% match with the machine tally.
Maricopa County, the most populous county in the state, allows flexibility for voters to cast ballots at any “voting center” rather than requiring voters to cast ballots at a specific precinct location. There were 175 vote centers and 748 precincts in the county this year. The hand audit was conducted in four of the 175 voting centers.
The Arizona Republican Party argues that the hand-count audit should consist of at least 15 of the 748 precincts instead.
“Arizona voters deserve complete assurance that the law will be followed and that only legal votes will be counted,” Arizona Republican Party Chairwoman Kelli Ward said in a statement Thursday evening.
According to Arizona Mirror reporter Jeremy Duda, the standard of using voting centers instead of precinct-based counting was changed in 2011.
