OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
Maricopa County, Arizona Board of Supervisors Chairman Jack Sellers released a statement on Wednesday explaining why he is replacing election equipment.
While this is a good move, Sellers is a Democrat, and he claims he’s only replacing the election equipment because the GOP-led audit in Maricopa County somehow tainted the machines.
In his statement, Sellers said:
Maricopa County announced this week that it will comply with the Secretary of State’s direction and replace the tabulation equipment that was subpoenaed by the Arizona Senate Republican leadership and provided to an uncertified contractor. This follows the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency stating the equipment the Senate took from the County must never be used in any future election.
Sellers also mentions that the Department of Homeland Security and other federal agencies, which is a major concern for many Americans:
Counties are in the business of running elections according to the laws written by the State Legislature. Yet Senate Republican leadership continues to ignore the law and suggest it doesn’t apply to them when it comes to procurement, public records and accounting for dollars spent for a public purpose.
They decided to hire uncertified novices to inspect expensive election equipment. The suggestion that we can now run a few Logic & Accuracy tests and call equipment good is wildly naïve but not surprising. Maricopa County already hired two certified voting system laboratories to conduct true forensic audits of the tabulation equipment. Those audits proved that during the 2020 General Election the tabulation equipment wasn’t connected to the internet or capable of vote switching.
Beyond that, Republicans have been making major moves in the battleground state.
The GOP-controlled Arizona Legislature has voted to revoke the Democratic Secretary of State Katie Hobbs’ legal authority in election-related lawsuits, handing that power to the attorney general.
The measure was included in major budget legislation, including several actions revolving around the election.
It now goes to Republican Gov. Doug Ducey, who has the power to accept or reject individual parts of the measure.
Attorney General Mark Brnovich has sparred with Hobbs before over election lawsuits.
Brnovich recently accused Hobbs of not adequately defending the state against election-related lawsuits.
The bill approved gives Brnovich’s office exclusive control of such lawsuits, but only through Jan. 2, 2023 — when the winners of the next elections for both offices would be about to take power.
https://twitter.com/Trumpy0/status/1410583906655555607?s=20
Arizona was arguably one of the most important states in the 2020 presidential election.
Even seven months later, a battle is on to audit and examine just what went on in November in the battleground state.
The Republican legislature of the state never wants that to happen again and they just made a big move.
The Arizona House passed two bills aimed at securing their elections.
The first requires election officials to hand over records to prosecutors.
The second raises the threshold of auto recounts to 0.5 percentage points.
Many have been arguing for months that the election audit in Maricopa County, Arizona, could pave the way for many other states to follow.
Maricopa County has completed the hand counting of 2,089,563 ballots.
Now, the remaining paper evaluation process will be finished by next week.
“At our current rate of examining over 100k ballots per day, we will complete the paper examination phase of the audit by Saturday, June 26,” the Maricopa Arizona Audit’s official Twitter account tweeted.
https://twitter.com/ArizonaAudit/status/1405263926682546176?s=20
Arizona GOP Chairwoman Dr. Kelli Ward recently provided a major update on the audit and what comes next.
Last week, it was revealed that a whopping nine state delegations will tour the Maricopa County audit facility on Friday.
Ward, who threatened that there “could be arrests of people who are refusing to comply,” says the audit could be completed much sooner than expected.
