'Assessing our options': Hamadeh calls for hand count, explores legal avenues in AG race
Corrections & Clarifications: Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Timothy Thomason's last name was incorrect in a previous version of the article.
Republican candidate for attorney general Abe Hamadeh and his attorneys are continuing to question results and exploring legal options after a statewide recount showed a significant vote gain in his favor.
With almost 2.51 million votes cast in the statewide race for attorney general, Hamadeh lost by 280 votes, according to the recount results announced Thursday in a hearing in Maricopa County Superior Court.
The race went immediately to an automatic recount because the vote differential between the candidate was less than half a percentage point. Before the recount, Mayes led by 511 votes.
Hamadeh, on Twitter, called for a hand count of all the the ballots.
"We MUST get to the bottom of this election. Transparent elections are fundamental to a democracy. A discrepancy this big in the recount calls for an inspection of ALL the ballots."
In another post, Hamadeh said, "Katie Hobbs and SOS Office abused our courts and made a mockery of the justice system. They knew the results of the recount was going to show a LARGE discrepancy due to tabulation errors and fought against our election contest knowing this. They deceived the courts."
Hamadeh is looking at possible legal avenues after the recount was announced and the election certified by Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Timothy Thomason.
"We will continue to fight this and owe it to the voters in Arizona to look at this from every single angle until we restore trust in our election system," he said in a statement released Thursday afternoon.
Hamadeh also cited thousands of uncounted provisional ballots. People cast provisional ballots if there is doubt about their eligibility to vote. These ballots can remain uncounted if election officials determine the voter is not qualified to participate.
He declined a request from The Arizona Republic for additional comment.
'Thankful':New Arizona Attorney General Mayes responds after recount affirms win
Thomason denied Hamadeh's attorney's request to block Mayes' installation as attorney general until all legal prospects have been exhausted. Hamadeh is planning an appeal.
Hamadeh has previously filed two election contests. The first, filed in Maricopa County, was dismissed because the judge said it was premature to bring a complaint under election statutes. The second election contest was denied in Mohave County after the judge said there was not enough evidence to support the complaint.
Many of the issues in the complaint were based around tabulators in Maricopa County and poll workers improperly "checking out" voters. Ballots printed using ink that was too faint for tabulators to read led to lines at some polling locations, which caused some voters to go elsewhere.
The complaint alleged that some workers botched the checkout process because of ignorance and incomplete training. That, combined with members of the Maricopa Board of Supervisors encouraging people to go elsewhere, led to the inability of mostly Republican voters to cast ballots, according to the complaint.
Kari Lake and Mark Finchem, Trump-supported Republican candidates for governor and secretary of state respectively, also filed unsuccessful election legal challenges. Hamadeh legally distinguished himself from the others in his because his contest was narrow in scope, focusing solely on the attorney general's race, and did not claim voter fraud.
Hamadeh, a former Maricopa County prosecutor and an intelligence officer in the Army Reserves, won a crowded six-person primary Aug. 2, bolstered by the endorsement of former President Donald Trump.
Tara Kavaler is a politics reporter at The Arizona Republic. She can be reached by email at tara.kavaler@arizonarepublic.com or on Twitter @kavalertara.
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Hamadeh not satisfied with Arizona AG results, calls for hand count
