DETROIT — A Calhoun County judge rejected Wednesday a lawsuit from a Republican candidate who sought to stop the re-tallying of some absentee ballots in a key race for the Michigan state House that currently has an unofficial margin of victory of just 58 votes.

A problem with the reporting of Battle Creek's absentee ballots caused about 2,800 ballots not to be included in the initial results in Calhoun County, according to the county clerk's office. The county's results were updated Friday after the discrepancy was discovered, leaving Republican Steve Frisbie, a Calhoun County commissioner, with a 58-vote lead over incumbent state Rep. Jim Haadsma, D-Battle Creek.

The Calhoun County Board of Canvassers decided Tuesday to re-tabulate the absentee ballots from Battle Creek. But on Wednesday, Frisbie submitted a lawsuit in Calhoun County Circuit Court, contending the move amounted to an "ad hoc" recount and went against Michigan law.

Frisbie's filing described the suit as an "emergency election case" and requested "immediate relief."

"Without immediate action by this court compelling defendant to cease unlawfully tabulating ballots, plaintiffs' right to an election conducted according to Michigan election law will forever be lost," Frisbie's lawyers, Cole Lussier and Daniel Ziegler, wrote in their court filing.

Frisbie's legal team argued that state law sets standards for recounts, including requiring a candidate to submit a petition for a recount after results are certified. The results have not yet been certified in Calhoun County.

But Michigan law does specifically allow county canvassers to "correct obvious mathematical errors in the tallies and returns."

And Calhoun County Circuit Court Judge John A. Hallacy quickly denied Frisbie's motion, saying he had other "adequate legal remedies," including seeking a recount himself.

Attorney Christopher Trebilcock, who's representing Haadsma, said the GOP lawsuit "should be dead on arrival and looks like Rudy Giuliani helped draft it," referring to the former New York City mayor who served as Republican Donald Trump's lawyer in the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election.

"The bipartisan Calhoun County Board of Canvassers already voted unanimously twice to reject the arguments and to follow the law and guidance from the Bureau of Elections to correct the election evening errors by re-tabulating," Trebilcock said. "That work is thankfully and correctly continuing despite this effort.

"This type of frivolous election litigation needs to stop. Calhoun County deserves better.”

Re-tabulating the ballots involves running them through vote-counting machines again to check the results, which would be different from a traditional recount, which would be done by hand.

The Michigan Democratic Party said Frisbie's lawsuit would potentially disenfranchise "thousands of voters in the county’s largest city."

There were 7,416 absentee ballots cast in Battle Creek, according to the Secretary of State's website.

Battle Creek used two high-speed absentee ballot tabulators, but the election management system in the county wasn't programmed to combine the drives from the two tabulators, Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson's office has previously said. So after reading the first set of numbers, it replaced the first results with the second set instead of adding them together, leading to the problematic initial results.

Under the initial numbers, Frisbie was leading Haadsma by 1,381 votes.

Michigan Democrats lost control of the 110-seat state House in the Nov. 5 election, and Republicans have counted Frisbie in their new 58-seat majority.

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