A lawsuit was filed on behalf of Steve Frisbee and the Board of Elections Steve Frisbee at the State House against the Calhoun County Council of County Touts.

The lawsuit filed Wednesday to stop the re-tabulation of absentee ballots in Battle Creek is the latest in the race for the 44th District in the Michigan House of Representatives between Frisbee and Rep. Jim Haadsma, D-Battle Creek.

“Plaintiffs bring this action for mandamus to prevent Defendant from ordering a recount of all ballots already tabulated at the Battle Creek Absentee Voter Counting Boards (“AVCBs”) as part of the canvassing process,” the lawsuit states.

Programming errors on election night resulted in thousands of votes not being counted. The updated, unofficial results showed Frisbee ahead by 58 votes instead of 1,381.

Calls to Frisbee’s attorneys and to the Calhoun County administration and the county’s communications director were not immediately returned Wednesday afternoon.

More: Here’s how Calhoun County voted in the Nov. 5 election

According to Haadsma’s team, after being informed of the lawsuit by the Frisbee campaign, canvassers stopped re-tabbing late this morning. An hour later, the board of canvassers took a second unanimous vote to order election workers to resume re-tabulating the city’s more than 7,400 absentee ballots.

“I want to see every vote counted accurately, regardless of whether it impacts the outcome of the election,” Haadsma said in a statement after the lawsuit was filed. “Confidence in our elections is essential to the health of our democracy, and the people of Battle Creek deserve to know that every effort has been made to ensure that their votes are correctly tabulated.”

Angela Benander, a spokeswoman for the Michigan Secretary of State’s Office, told the Battle Creek Free Press that she used two high-speed tabulators for absentee ballots, but the reported numbers did not combine the results of the two tabulators and excluded, instead, about half of the results due to programming problem.

“The lawsuit should be dead on arrival, and Rudy Guiliani apparently helped draft it. The bipartisan Calhoun County Board of Aldermen has already voted unanimously twice to reject the arguments and follow the law and the Office of Elections’ guidance to correct election night errors by retabulation,” said Christopher Trebilcock, Haadsma’s attorney. happily continuing despite this effort. This kind of frivolous election litigation needs to stop. Calhoun County deserves better.”

This article originally appeared on the Battle Creek Enquirer: Lawsuit in Calhoun County to stop recount of absentee ballots in key Michigan House race