Former Arizona GOP AG candidate Hamadeh asks state Supreme Court for new election trial

Former Arizona GOP Attorney General candidate Abe Hamadeh on Friday filed a special action with the state Supreme Court, requesting a new trial in connection with his November 2022 election. 

"We just filed a Special Action with the Arizona Supreme Court asking for a new trial regarding the November 2022 election," Hamadeh wrote on X, the platform previously known as Twitter. "Our justice system cannot tolerate the government withholding evidence. Count the votes."

A judge last month rejected Hamadeh's bid for a new election trial. He narrowly lost his bid for state attorney general in 2022 and has been challenging the results of the election. 

Hamadeh and the Republican National Committee sued his opponent, Democratic Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes, to ensure all votes were counted in the contest, which Hamadeh lost by just 280 votes, according to an automatic statewide recount.

During a hearing in May, Hamadeh’s attorney James Sabalos, argued that a sample of ballots needs to be reviewed to find undervotes, which are ballots that didn’t have a candidate selected for the attorney general’s race, because some ballots were misread as undervotes.

There were more than 76,000 undervotes in the attorney general election, and about 2,000 ballots were inspected, with 0.61% ballots misread, Sabalos stated. Applying that rate statewide, that would mean 466 or more votes in the race weren’t correctly counted for Hamadeh, he also said.

"I stand by my commitment to keep fighting for the people of Arizona and their sacred right to vote," he wrote in a press release. "As a veteran, I took an oath to serve our country overseas, and I will continue to serve Arizona and our country."