I think the burden of proof is slightly different when it comes to elections. The defendants claim lawful chain of custody does not apply because plaintiff could not show tangible evidence of specific instances of failure. Plaintiff instead showed a broad failure in chain of custody. It may not apply under the narrow view of this hearing when establishing intentional misconduct. There must be hard evidence of this, the defendants claim. That is weak at best.

The defendants could have provided hard evidence that chain of custody was lawful in this election, but they chose not to. They want to disregard violating lawful procedure and their inability to provide evidence to the contrary is hard evidence of intentional misconduct. They must prove the chain of custody was lawful, but they decided to ignore it even claiming it does not apply to elections in their closing, which is completely nuts.

If this hearing results in a loss, I think it is still a huge win because once again we get to see how unlawful Maricopa county is, and this is on the record. That is my opinion.