Challengers to Joe Biden's victory in Arizona will get documents in their bid to void the election results.
Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Randall Warner said Monday that he will allow attorneys for state GOP Chair Kelli Ward to compare the signatures on 100 randomly selected envelopes which contained early ballots with the signatures for those same voters already on file.
Warner also ordered production of 100 ballots cast at polling places which were damaged or had other problems with the versions that were reproduced to ensure they could be read by tabulation machines.
That in turn will lead to a hearing on Thursday where attorney Jack Wilenchik said he hopes to prove there were errors and that, extrapolating out the error rate, throws the results into doubt. And that, Wilenchik told Warner, will provide the basis for declaring the results invalid.
What that in turn would do, Wilenchik said, is leave it to the Republican-controlled Arizona Legislature to decide who gets Arizona's 11 electoral votes.
Less clear is whether and how that could happen.
In the official canvass conducted Monday morning, state officials from both parties certified that Biden got 10,457 more votes than Trump. Absent a ruling by Warner, that clears the way for the 11 electors pledged to Biden to vote for him on Dec. 14.
Warner's decision to allow a hearing drew opposition from Secretary of State Katie Hobbs. Roopali Desai, her attorney, said it amounts to an illegal "fishing expedition.''
"This sets a very dangerous precedent,'' she told the judge of having people file suit because they think there was something wrong.
“There is no basis to check if they did a good job,'' she said.
Warner conceded she may be right. But the judge said he would rather err on the side of allowing the case to proceed and then having the state Supreme Court tell him he was wrong than to dismiss it only to be told he has to start over again with time running out.