President Donald Trump's reelection campaign, along with the Republican National Committee, have filed a lawsuit against Maricopa County, Arizona, that accuses poll workers of improperly rejecting in-person votes on election day.
In their lawsuit, the Republicans claim, when an overvote was detected on a ballot, poll workers were to inform voters and allow them the opportunity to fix the error, reports NBC affiliate KPNX in Phoenix.
Instead, the lawsuit claims, when issues with the vote tabulation machines happened, the poll workers would push a green button to override the error, or voters were asked to push the button. This caused an override that resulted in the vote not being counted.
The lawsuit states:
"Qualified electors casting ballots in person on Election Day in Maricopa County submitted their completed ballot to an electronic tabulation machine. Numerous voters were alerted by these devices to a facial irregularity in their ballot—frequently an ostensible 'overvote' — but were induced by poll workers to override the tabulator's rejection of the ballot in the good faith belief that their vote would be duly registered and tabulated. In actuality, overriding the electronic tabulator's alert automatically disqualifies the putative 'overvotes' without additional review or adjudication."
The campaign says several county voters have complained about the issue.
"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," Trump 2020 campaign's general counsel, Matt Morgan said in a statement. "The result is that the voting machines disregarded votes cast by voters in person on Election Day in Maricopa County."
The lawsuit demands overridden ballots be inspected manually, in the same way elections officials examined mail-in or drop-off ballots that were overvoted, KPNX reported.
The campaign contended voters' choices were disregarded in those races, saying new voting machines were used on Election Day on Tuesday. The lawsuit suggested those votes could prove "determinative" in the outcome of the race between Trump and Democrat Joe Biden, who was declared the winner Saturday by major television networks.
The Maricopa County Elections Department and a spokesman for Biden did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Biden currently leads Trump by 0.65%, or just over 21,000 votes in Arizona.
The Trump lawsuit, whose plaintiffs include the Arizona state Republican Party and the Republican National Committee, cited declarations by some poll observers and two voters that claimed the problem led to rejected votes.
Information from Reuters was used in this report.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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