GOP liaison to Arizona reverses course after vowing to resign

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Twitter recently suspended a number of pro-election-audit accounts — including one that’s been cited as the partisan ballot review’s official page.

The Republican serving as liaison between the Arizona state Senate and the private company conducting a partisan ballot review said Wednesday that he intended to resign, then walked it back.

Ken Bennett, a former Arizona secretary of state, said he’d decided to resign when it became clear he would not regain access to the Phoenix fairgrounds where the private company, Cyber Ninjas, continues its examination of millions of ballots cast last November in Maricopa County.

“Right now I’m the liaison in name only,” he told conservative radio host James Harris on Wednesday morning. “I don’t know if that makes me a LINO or what.” Continue reading.

Arizona taxpayers could be on the hook for a $9 million bill after GOP subpoenas routers: report

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On Monday night, Bill Gates, a Republican member of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, revealed on CNN that the Republican-controlled Arizona Senate has had Maricopa County officials served with a new subpoena seeking their routers for its audit of the 2020 election.

Appearing on CNN, Gates stated, “Right before I came on here, the board of supervisors received another subpoena from the state Senate ordering us to turn over the routers, in addition to some other information. And they threaten us in these papers that if we do not turn those over by Aug. 2. So that’s next Monday, then we could be held in contempt.”

According to the Washington Post’s Joseph Marks, that could run the bill associated with the audit, seeking evidence that Donald Trump had the 2020 election stolen from him, up to $9 million. Continue reading.

Trump whines for over 100 minutes at Arizona grievance festival — here are the 7 most absurd moments

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Donald Trump spoke for over 100 minutes during a long-winded speech at a “Rally to Protect Our Elections” in Phoenix.

Much of Trump’s speech was focused on repeating his debunked lies that he won the 2020 presidential election, when in reality he was defeated by Joe Biden.

But he also found time to bash much of America while praising the local extremists behind Arizona’s audit of the vote in Maricopa County and listing his many perceived grievances. Continue reading.

Republicans kick Arizona audit ‘director’ out of the building as GOP chaos escalates: report

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Republicans once referred to Ken Bennett as the “director” of their widely-panned audit of votes in Maricopa County, but he has reportedly lost his privileges to even enter the building where the fiasco is taking place.

Bennett, who served as Arizona’s Secretary of State and president of the state Senate, was the one person associated with the recount with experience in elections. He was officially listed as the liaison to the state Senate, which paid $150,000 of the $9 million the audit is reportedly costing.

“Questions are mounting about who is in control of the long-running partisan review of Maricopa County’s 2020 election results — the Arizona Senate, which ordered it, or the outside firms that are running it,” The Arizona Republic reported Friday evening. “On Friday, Ken Bennett, the Senate liaison to the audit, was not allowed into the building at the state fairgrounds where the audit is taking place, a day after he shared data with outside critics from an ongoing ballot count.” Continue reading.

Cyber Ninjas Whine As Arizona ‘Audit’ Is Proved Utterly Pointless

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It’s been three weeks since the Arizona “audit”—a process that involved the most partisan of Trump partisans searching for “bamboo ballots” and the ghostly fingerprints of Hugo Chavez, under the supervision of a firm created expressly to bolster conspiracy theories—apparently came to a close. That is, the audit farce is still officially underway, but three weeks ago Cyber Ninjas tweeted out an announcement that they were done pretending to count ballots, and had moved onto the most critical part of the process: terminal whining.

As CBS News reports, Cyber Ninjas is now complaining that they “don’t have enough information” to complete the audit. Because getting to finger every single ballot, take control of the voting machines (which will now be discarded after the auditors did who knows what to them), and initiating a plan to go door-to-door asking people how they voted just isn’t enough. As has happened several times in the process, the Ninjas, along with supporters in the Arizona Senate, are directing fingers at the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors—the Republican-controlled Board of Supervisors—for failing to “cooperate” enough in an audit where they’ve turned over every ballot, every machine, and every scrap of paper related to the election. That’s not enough, say the Ninjas. They want … well, it might be easier to say what they don’t want. 

Until they get everything on their unreasonable list, and whatever unreasonable list comes after this, the “auditors” insist that they are not going to issue a report. Since July 2, all the ballots, machines, and accoutrements of Ninjaing have been parked at an unairconditioned building on the Arizona state fairgrounds. It’s unclear whether anyone is actually working there. Continue reading.

House Dems launch investigation into Arizona ballot review

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The oversight committee is seeking a wide range of information from Cyber Ninjas, the firm overseeing the Arizona effort.

The House Oversight Committee is launching an investigation into the ballot review being run by the Republican-controlled state Senate in Arizona, the committee announced on Wednesday.

“Americans’ right to vote is protected by the Constitution and is the cornerstone of our democratic system of government,” Oversight Chair Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) and Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), who helms the subcommittee on civil rights and civil liberties, said in a statement. 

The committee is seeking a wide range of information from Cyber Ninjas, the firm overseeing the Arizona effort, including communications it had with Maricopa County officials, former President Donald Trump or his representatives, and those who have advanced election-related falsehoods such as Sidney Powell, Mike Lindell and Lin Woods. Continue reading.

‘It sickens me’: Longtime GOP voter disgusted by the ‘corrupt and ridiculous’ Republican antics in Arizona

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The Republican Accountability Project describes itself as an initiative tasked with “defending the accessibility, integrity, and competitiveness of American elections.” This Tuesday, the group uploaded a video to YouTube featuring “Julie” from Prescott, Arizona, who described herself as a former Republican and Army veteran who worked for the federal government for 34 years.

“I love my country. I loved being a Republican. I was a Republican for 40 years. I voted in every election as long as I was stateside during that 40 years,” Julie said. “And I believed and still believe in the principles and the ideals of the Republican Party, which are smaller government and lower taxes, balanced budgets and free trade and all those things.”

“I still believe in those, but as of this day, I am a Democrat because I could not stay in a party that was committed to one person, to his bidding and his appeasement. And I just couldn’t do it. So I left the party because they left me and I am now a Democrat,” she continued.  Continue reading.

It’s a failure’: Arizona audit appears to be backfiring on Republicans – and could haunt them at the ballot box

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A new poll shows that a partisan audit of votes cast in the 2020 presidential election could ultimately backfire on Republicans who appear on future ballots in Arizona, especially if they express support for the bogus effort.

Sean Noble, a top GOP operative in the state, told Politicoof the controversial recount in Maricopa County, “it’s a failure, it’s a joke,” adding that Republicans in other states should “avoid it. The election is long over, time to look forward.”

Fernand Amandi, whose firm conducted the poll, said: “As bloody red meat for the MAGA Republican base, the audit is manna from heaven, but the problem is that Arizona is not a red state anymore. It’s a swing state. The audit may be serving two interests: firing up the MAGA base but giving Democrats the opportunity to make the case to Arizona voters to stick with them.” Continue reading.

QAnon congresswoman predicts Arizona audit will prove Bill Barr let Trump’s victory be stolen

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Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s (R-GA) latest conspiracy is that former Attorney General Bill Barr is secretly part of the anti-Trump resistance.

According to Greene, Barr knew that the 2020 election was won by Donald Trump, but refused to fight for him. It’s for that reason that Greene thinks the GOP “audits” must continue, because they’ll vindicate Trump’s “Big Lie.”

“When that comes out, and the truth has shown that perhaps election fraud did happen, and President (Donald) Trump really won. then we’re going to see people that should have acted like William Barr, like our secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, and many others, we’re going to see them with mud on their faces,” Greene rambled to Newsmax on Monday. Continue reading.

Arizona’s Maricopa County will replace voting equipment, fearful that GOP-backed election review has compromised security

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Arizona’s Maricopa County announced Monday that it will replace voting equipment that was turned over to a private contractor for a Republican-commissioned review of the 2020 presidential election, concerned that the process compromised the security of the machines.

Officials from Maricopa, the state’s largest county and home to Phoenix, provided no estimates of the costs involved but have previously said that the machines cost millions to acquire.

“The voters of Maricopa County can rest assured, the County will never use equipment that could pose a risk to free and fair elections,” the county said in a statement. “As a result, the County will not use the subpoenaed equipment in any future elections.” Continue reading.