Grand Canyon Times

Arizona Republican Party Chairwoman Kelli Ward is asking a judge to be allowed to look at thousands of ballots for possible irregularities, after claiming that there were at least two instances where officials tossed out votes for President Donald Trump.

Ward and her team were already allotted access to look at 200 ballots earlier this week, but now she is hoping to see more.

Ward said in the filing that she wasn’t sure of the signature verification process that was used for mail-in ballots. She also claims she is apprehensive of the duplication process used by election officials when counting ballots that aren’t tabulated by a machine.

She was initially allowed to inspect 100 mail-in ballots and 100 duplicate ballots, but attorney for Arizona GOP, Jack Wilenchik, said in a filing that while inspecting the duplicate ballots, there were serious concerns, the news media reported.

"There were no errors observed in the sample which granted a vote to Trump, or which canceled out a Biden vote," Wilenchik wrote in the filing, the news media reported. However, there were two problematic ballots.

He wrote that the candidates were apart by less than one-half of 1%, so that is significant in such a small sample size. In the state, Biden only one by a little more than 10,000 votes.

While Ward, her attorney and team are continuing to fight for the cause, Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, through her attorney, Roopali Desai, said the election is over.

"Difficult as it may be for Petitioner to accept, this election is over, and her preferred slate of presidential electors received fewer votes than those of the winning challenger," Desai wrote, the news media reported.

Ward is also part of a lawsuit against Hobbs and Gov. Doug Ducey, alleging mass election fraud. That suit is seeking to decertify election results.