Arizona
An Arizona state judge threw out the Arizona Republican Party’s lawsuit seeking a broader audit of votes cast on Election Day that county lawyers warned could have delayed the state’s certification of ballots.
In a brief order, Judge John Hannah dismissed the lawsuit with prejudice and denied the party’s request for an injunction to block Maricopa County, home of Phoenix and the most populous county in the state, from certifying its election results.
Pennsylvania
A state judge in Pennsylvania rejected an attempt by the Trump campaign to throw out more than 2,000 absentee ballots for technical reasons.
The Trump campaign has made several attempts to throw out absentee ballots in Pennsylvania courts, and Judge Robert Baldi of the Bucks County Court of Common Pleas on Thursday ruled that throwing out the absentee ballots would disenfranchise voters.
The case was not among those where the Trump campaign has alleged fraud. Instead, the campaign had argued the state should enforce rules about when absentee ballots should or should not be counted, taking issue with 2,177 ballots in Bucks County that were in an unsealed privacy envelope or lacked handwritten dates, names or addresses on their outer envelopes.
Georgia
A federal judge in Georgia rejected an election lawsuit brought by a Republican elector, Lin Wood, who had alleged in court constitutional violations, perceived fraud in the presidential election and sought to block the certification of election results.
“There’s no doubt an individual’s right to vote is sacrosanct,” Judge Steven Grimberg in the Northern District of Georgia said Thursday evening. But, that “does not mean individual voters have the right to dictate” how votes are cast or decided to be counted.
“It’s not for the courts to meddle with” processes set by the states, he added.