Even the GOP-dominated Maricopa County Board of Supervisors has had enough of Arizona’s half-baked audit of the 2020 election, calling it a “sham” that has reduced Arizona to “a laughingstock.”
The five-member board – four of the members are Republicans – wrote a letter to state Senate President Karen Fann, another Republican, demanding that the audit come to an end. They called the process a “spectacle that is harming all of us,” and added “we stand united together to defend the Constitution and the Republic in our opposition to the Big Lie. We ask everyone to join us in standing for the truth.”
Board Chair Jack Sellers, a Republican, called the controversial probe a “circus” and an “attempt at legitimatizing a grift disguised as an audit.” Sellers is so frustrated with the audit, he announced that he’ll no longer engage requests or questions on it.
The public rebuke comes on the heels of Fann’s claim that the Board of Supervisors deleted data relating to the 2020 election. According to The Washington Post:
A Twitter account associated with the audit went further, claiming that the officials had deleted files just before handing over material to the Senate and caused “spoliation of evidence” — a potentially criminal act.
Trump seized on that and took it even further, writing in a statement Saturday that the “entire Database of Maricopa County as been DELETED!” and adding: “This is illegal.”
But the Board of Supervisors said they did no such thing and asserted that any problems stem from Cyber Ninjas, the firm tasked with executing the audit. Cyber Ninjas has no experience running election audits and its CEO aggressively pushed the “Stop the Steal” narrative on social media.
The audit – which involves the recount of 2.1 million ballots – plays into the conspiracy theories designed to explain away Trump’s embarrassing defeat in Arizona. He was just the second Republican presidential candidate to lose the state since 1952.
The Washington Post describes some of the more unusual aspects of the audit:
As part of the process, they also have incorporated other murky and ill-explained analysis, including physically examining the ballots using UV lights and microscopes. One official involved said the goal was to look for bamboo in the paper, which might indicate ballots were illegally smuggled from Asia.
Bill Gates, the Republican vice chairman of the Board of Supervisor, said the audit is “creating a black eye to Arizona” and urged business leaders to condemn the proceedings. He also called out his Republican colleagues, “They’ve got to stand for what is right. Otherwise, why did they run for office in the first place?”