Nov. 14 (UPI) — The Trump campaign on Friday dropped its participation in a lawsuit questioning the integrity of Arizona’s in-person voting after President-elect Joe Biden received enough votes to be projected the winner in the state.
President Donald Trump’s campaign filed a lawsuit Saturday, arguing that poll workers did not notify in-person voters when the electronic ballot tabulation machines detected an “overvote,” indicating a voter selected more than the number of candidates allowed in a certain race.
But the vote-counting process Thursday indicated that Biden’s lead over Trump was insurmountable regardless of a judge’s ruling in the case.
“Since the close of yesterday’s hearing, the tabulation of votes statewide has rendered unnecessary a judicial ruling as to the presidential electors,” the Trump campaign wrote in a court filing.
A Maricopa County judge held a six-hour hearing on the lawsuit Thursday before the Trump campaign walked away from the case. KSAZ-TV in Phoenix reported the lawsuit was still active, though, for two down ballot races, that of the Board of Supervisors District 1 and State Senate District 28.
Major media outlets on Thursday called the Arizona race for Biden, the first Democrat to win the state since former President Bill Clinton in 1996. With nearly all ballots counted, Biden won 49.4% of the more than 3.4 millions votes the state cast to Trump’s 49.07%.
Georgia was also called for Biden on Friday, and North Carolina was called for Trump.
Trump, with 232 electoral votes to Biden’s 306, has yet to concede defeat and has filed several lawsuits in states and counties requesting recounts and to prevent results from being certified, citing widely discredited claims of voter fraud and tabulation errors. Republican supporters and poll challengers have also raised objections to the vote count in various states and local jurisdictions.
On Friday, Wayne County, Mich., Circuit Judge Timothy Kenny rejected poll challengers’ request to halt the canvassing and certification of the county’s election results and to have an independent audit of the results. The judge said many of the Republican poll challengers who signed affidavits claiming fraudulent activities did not attend an Oct. 29 informational session explaining how the elections process works.
“No formal challenges were filed,” Kenny said in his opinion. “However, sinister, fraudulent motives were ascribed to the process and the city of Detroit. Plaintiff’s interpretation of events is incorrect and not credible.”
