Trump campaign files new election-related lawsuit in Arizona

President Trump’s reelection campaign said on Saturday that it has filed a lawsuit in Arizona alleging that in-person ballots were improperly rejected in Maricopa County. 

The suit was filed hours after former Vice President Joe Biden was projected to win the 2020 election after clinching Pennsylvania, securing the 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency. 

Trump did not concede defeat to Biden, and promised to begin court fights “to ensure election laws are fully upheld and the rightful winner is seated.”

The campaign has mounted legal challenges in several battlegrounds including Arizona, where Biden currently holds a narrow lead over the president.  

The newest Arizona suit from the president’s campaign alleges that poll workers did not notify in-person voters when the electronic ballot tabulation machines detect an “overvote,” which occurs when voters select more than the number of candidates allowed in a given race. 

Instead of giving voters the opportunity to correct the error, the campaign alleges that poll workers in Maricopa County told voters to press a green button to override the error, resulting in the machine disregarding the voter’s choice.

It further claimed that it has declarations from voters who witnessed this, and say that the problem occurred on a large scale in the county. 

“Poll workers struggled to operate the new voting machines in Maricopa County, and improperly pressed and told voters to press a green button to override significant errors,” said Matt Morgan, Trump 2020 campaign general counsel. “The result is that the voting machines disregarded votes cast by voters in person on Election Day in Maricopa County.”

The campaign is asking for a manual inspection of the affected ballots. 

Maricopa County is the most populous in Arizona, and often, the candidate who wins the county wins the state’s 11 electoral votes. 

The suit names Secretary of State Katie Hobbs (D), Maricopa County Recorder Adrian Fontes (D), and members of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors. 

A spokesperson for Hobb’s office told The Hill that it was looking at the campaign’s suit, but it is “seemingly a repackaged ‘sharpiegate’ lawsuit. Hopefully, this puts the matter to rest for good.”

Earlier on Saturday, Republicans dropped a suit around “sharpiegate,” which alleged that Sharpies were given to voters and that the ink bled through and damaged the ballots. The Trump campaign, the Arizona Democratic Party and the Republican National Committee were all involved in that case.