Page:Ward v. Jackson (CV-20-0343-AP EL) (2020) Decision Order.pdf/4

Arizona Supreme Court No. CV-20-0343-AP/EL

Page 4 of 7 chosen sample ballots. The first review was of 100 ballots and the second was of 1526 ballots, and of the 1626 total, there were nine errors, (1617 correct duplicate ballots) that if correct would have given the Trump Electors an additional seven votes and the Biden Electors an additional two votes. The Secretary maintains that this constitutes an error of no more than 0.37% within the sample. Appellant argues that the error rate was 0.55%, and the trial court concluded the results were “99.45% accurate.” When this is extrapolated to the total number of duplicate ballots it is not sufficient to come close to warranting a recount under A.R.S. § 16-661.

Although Appellant requested additional time and the opportunity to review additional ballots, Appellant offered no evidence to establish that the 1626-ballot sample was inadequate to demonstrate any fraud, if present. As the trial court noted, this review confirmed the witness testimony that there were mistakes in the duplicated process, the mistakes were few, and when brought to the attention of election workers, they were fixed. Extrapolating this error rate to all 27,869 duplicate ballots in the county would result in a net increase of only 103 votes based on the 0.37% error rate or 153 votes using the 0.55% error rate, neither of which is sufficient to call the election results into question.

The parties also presented evidence after reviewing a sample of the envelope signature on mail-in ballots. Their experts determined