By Howard Fischer
Twitter: @azcapmedia

PHOENIX — A federal judge on Tuesday questioned her legal ability to overturn the results of the election that declared Joe Biden the winner of the Arizona’s 11 electoral votes.

“The election results were already certified,” said U.S. District Judge Diane Humetewa. “The governor has already transmitted the same to the United States Archivist.”

In fact, Ms. Humetewa told attorney Julia Haller, who is representing the challengers, that federal courts in other states have thrown out nearly identical lawsuits seeking an order to decertify their results. She said they concluded there is no federal law being violated that would give them the ability to issue such an order.

“What makes this different?” she asked.

Ms. Haller said federal courts can review state election matters. And as to timing, she said the 2000 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in the Florida election contest between George W. Bush and Al Gore was decided after that state certified its results.

But the heart of Ms. Haller’s arguments Tuesday came down to what she said is the weight of evidence that something went wrong, not just here but in other states where she has gone to court.

“We have seen that a combination of individual anecdotal evidence, together with statistical proof, is the standard to show when broader remedial relief is justified,” she told the judge.

That argument was disputed by attorney Justin Nelson, representing the secretary of state and the governor.

He told Ms. Humetewa there are a host of legal problems with the claim that Ms. Haller filed on behalf of the 11 would-be Republican electors, issues including whether federal courts have jurisdiction over what are claimed violations of Arizona election.

The bottom line, he said, is the challengers are not entitled to have a federal court set aside the election.

“The courts cannot turn the clock back and create a world in which the 2020 election results are not certified,” Mr. Nelson argued. More to the point, he said the lawsuit has an ulterior motive.

“This case is an attempt to undermine our confidence in the system with no basis in law or fact,” Mr. Nelson said. “They are using the federal court system in an attempt to undermine the rule of law and obtain breathtaking, startling and unprecedented relief to overturn the will of the people.”

Ms. Haller is trying to keep the case alive so she can present what she called “concrete evidence of widespread voter fraud.”

Much of that is based on complaints about the Dominion Voting Systems software and equipment.

She said there is mathematical evidence of an “injection” of votes for Mr. Biden at specific times on election night. And that, said Ms. Haller, goes to how Dominion, a company challengers have said has ties to foreign countries and staffers who are hostile to Mr. Trump, uses an algorithm to tally votes rather than actual votes, all of which she claims provided artificial support for Mr. Biden.

Mr. Nelson, however, said claims about how Dominion is operated and even whether it sends data out of the country is irrelevant as there is no hard evidence showing any actual fraud occurred in Arizona. Then there’s the fact a random hand count of ballots — the actual papers filled out by voters — meshed 100% with what the machines recorded.

Ms. Haller said her evidence goes beyond that, including a claim that more than 86,000 early ballots were returned by people but never recorded.

That number, however, is based on a phone survey of voters done by someone retained by the Trump campaign who asked people whether they sent in their ballot. The estimate comes from extrapolating out what that survey concluded.

But Mr. Nelson is arguing that is highly unreliable.

For example, he said it could include people who didn’t get their ballots in the mail on time. And then there’s the issue the survey, conducted two weeks after the election, might result in people who “lied or misremembered.”

Then there’s the fact the survey doesn’t suggest these missing ballots — assuming there really are that many — would have favored Mr. Trump.

Ms. Haller has other allegations, including nearly 220,000 other votes she claims were fraudulently recorded for voters who, using that same telephone survey methodology, claimed they never requested mail-in ballots.

If Ms. Humetewa does not immediately dismiss the case on legal grounds she has agreed to allow Ms. Haller to present whatever evidence she has at a Thursday hearing.

Less clear is what the judge might do if she does conclude there is evidence of misconduct or fraud.

Most immediately she could order the governor and secretary of state to decertify the returns.

That would leave Mr. Biden without the state’s 11 electoral votes.

But he may not need them to retain at least 270 electoral votes if similar election challenges fail elsewhere.

Then there’s the question of whether that would allow the Republican-controlled legislature to shift the electoral votes to Mr. Trump.

House Speaker Rusty Bowers said that’s not a legal option, saying state law spells out the only legal electors are the ones who were certified. Anyway, he said, there aren’t the votes to bring the legislature into special session ahead of Jan. 6, the day Congress will tally all the electoral votes.

Ms Haller also wants a court order seizing all servers, software, voting machines, tabulators, printers, logs, ballot return envelopes and all election materials. And she ultimately wants a full manual recount of early ballots or at least a “statistically valid sampling.”