Arizona – Heroes and Threats to the Sanctity of the Vote
Joe Biden won Arizona by about 10,500 votes – the first Democratic presidential win in Arizona since Bill Clinton in 1996. https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/30/politics/joe-biden-arizona-certification/index.html Arizona is a closely divided state with a Republican Governor and two Democratic US Senators. Its representation in the US House of Representatives is split 5/4 Democrats to Republicans. Republicans have a two-vote majority in the Arizona state Senate and a two vote majority in the Arizona House. President Biden won Maricopa County, the state’s most populous county and accounting for 60% of Arizona voters, by 45,000 votes. https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-arizona-election-2020-campaign-2016-5642a850384031d162351f4e3983da85
Over the past year, Arizona has been a hot bed of ferment between two warring wings of the GOP --the elected executive officials who did their jobs to count the votes and certified the election results and defended the fairness and integrity of the election, and the efforts by the diehard, Trump aligned state and local GOP activists to overturn the results of the 2020 Presidential election. https://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/editorial/2021/12/30/arizonans-year-risked-destruction-buck-election-audit/9025932002/
Heroes
President Trump, his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani and Arizona GOP Chair Kelli Ward pressed the 4-1 GOP majority of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors to overturn the results of the presidential election. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/elections/records-show-pressure-trump-allies-arizona-officials-not-certify-election-n1273034 Although all four GOP supervisors were strong Trump supporters, they were steadfast in defending the integrity of the election. https://www.12news.com/article/news/politics/stop-the-counting-records-show-trump-and-allies-pressured-top-maricopa-county-officials-over-election-results/75-61a93e63-36c4-4137-b65e-d3f8bde846a7 The County recently released a report rebutting the falsehoods contained in the Cyber Ninjas audit for the Arizona Senate and detailing the integrity of the Presidential election in Maricopa County. https://recorder.maricopa.gov/justthefacts/pdf/Correcting%20The%20Record%20-%20January%202022%20Report.pdf?__cf_chl_captcha_tk__=v81Fq4dspq1kJWqNQ5hZHnfIbO1cy70NLQ8j_nF4KCE-1642765740-0-gaNycGzNCFE
Similar to his efforts with Georgia’s election officials, President Trump called the Chair of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, Clint Hickman, in an effort to reverse the election results; Hickman declined to take the President’s call. https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/05/politics/clint-hickman-trump-giuliani-election-calls-maricopa-county-cnntv/index.html Hickman and his family have been subjected to a full year’s worth of threats to their lives for his role in certifying President Joe Biden’s win in Arizona’s most populous county. https://cronkitenews.azpbs.org/2021/11/02/hickman-a-year-after-2020-elections-threats-abuse-still-coming-in/ He has been resolute in defending the integrity of vote and vote counting in Maricopa County.
At the very moment of certifying the results of the Arizona election, President Trump called Arizona Governor Doug Ducey, who ignored the White House call as well. https://apnews.com/article/election-2020-donald-trump-arizona-elections-doug-ducey-e2b8b0de5b809efcc9b1ad5d279023f4 Ex-President Trump and his Arizona allies are continuing to bash Governor Ducey for failing to overturn Trump’s electoral defeat in Arizona. https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-will-never-endorse-doug-ducey-republican-senate-run-arizona-2022-1
Immediately after the election, Trump’s supporters pressured Arizona Speaker Rusty Bowers to call a special session of the Arizona House and decertify Arizona voters’ decision to vote for Joe Biden as our next President. https://www.azfamily.com/news/politics/election_headquarters/trump-supporters-target-arizona-house-speaker-rusty-bowers-over-election-results/article_8368a120-3a80-11eb-8106-8be083047f7a.html A follow up effort by the self-styled Patriot Party to recall Speaker Bowers for his failure to call the Arizona House into special session to try to decertify Biden’s win failed on a technicality – failure to properly fill out the recall forms. https://kjzz.org/content/1692778/recall-effort-against-arizona-house-speaker-rusty-bowers-fails
When Arizona state Representative John Fillmore introduced legislation to give the Arizona state legislature the right to overturn those federal and state election results with which they disagree, this was a bridge too far for Speaker Bowers, himself a conservative Republican and Trump supporter. He assigned the bill to be heard in every one of the 12 House Committees, effectively killing the measure. “The Speaker wanted to put the wooden cross through the heart of this thing for all to see.” https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/04/us/politics/arizona-republicans-rusty-bowers-voting-rights.html “We gave the authority to the people, and I’m not going to go back and kick them in the teeth.” Bowers said to the Capitol Media Services. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/04/us/politics/arizona-republicans-rusty-bowers-voting-rights.html
Threats
Arizonans have been voting by mail for over 20 years, and 80% of Arizona voters vote by mail; they clearly like and trust voting by mail. https://www.azcleanelections.gov/election-security/the-security-of-voting-by-mail Arizona state Representative John Fillmore, who proudly describes himself as the most conservative member of the Arizona House, was extremely upset by the defeat of Donald Trump in Arizona. He introduced legislation (House Bill 2596) to eliminate mail in voting, machine counting of ballots, early voting, and finally he proposed to give the state legislature the right to overturn election results (whether at the state or federal office levels) with which they disagree. He described his efforts as a return to “1958 style voting” – voting only on election day with paper ballots counted by hand. https://www.businessinsider.com/arizona-house-speaker-bowers-quashes-bill-legislature-overturn-election-results-2022-2 Since the disputed elections of 1876 (Hayes v. Tilden), it is simply unheard of for state legislatures to overturn the results of the popular vote in their state, thus giving the losing Presidential candidate two bites at the apple.
Yet that is exactly what President Trump, Rudy Giuliani, John Eastland and allies sought to do in seven swing states, including Arizona. https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/27/politics/fake-electors-explainer/index.html With the assistance of the President’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, and his team, Arizona state GOP Chair Kelli Ward and ten other prominent GOP activists presented a false slate of Presidential electors to Congress. https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/elections/2022/01/13/arizona-trump-electors-slate-jake-hoffman-anthony-kern-kelli-ward/6519418001/
Responding to the urgings of President Trump, Rudy Giuliani, Kelli Ward and others, a large number of Arizona residents went to DC on January 6; a contingent broke through police lines, assaulted police officers, and tried to stop the formal Congressional process of tallying the Electoral College votes; they are now being charged for their criminal actions. https://www.azfamily.com/news/investigations/cbs_5_investigates/az-cases-jan-6-riot/article_5863bb42-6e8a-11ec-9844-7b0ef90d42de.html Of the over 700 persons charged with crimes, over 200 have so far pleaded guilty. https://www.insider.com/capitol-rioters-who-pleaded-guilty-updated-list-2021-5
Two members of the Arizona GOP Congressional delegation, Representatives Andy Biggs and Paul Gosar, are alleged by one of the January 6 event’s prime organizers (Ali Alexander) to have been deeply involved in planning the events of January 6. They deny any involvement with him. https://www.politico.com/news/2021/12/18/stop-the-steal-founder-jan-6-committee-gop-lawmakers-525345 A recent article in the Guardian describes the significant linkages between Representative Gosar and a number of far-right extremist groups. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jan/26/paul-gosar-far-right-republicans The insurrectionists’ break in at the US Capitol neatly coincided with the objections of Representative Gosar and Senator Ted Cruz to the counting of the Arizona electoral votes. https://www.npr.org/2022/01/05/1069977469/a-timeline-of-how-the-jan-6-attack-unfolded-including-who-said-what-and-when
Arizona state Senate President Karen Fann and her GOP Senate colleagues retained the inexperienced, but Trump allied firm, Cyber Ninjas, to audit and hand recount the votes in Maricopa County. https://www.npr.org/2021/09/24/1040327483/the-controversial-election-review-in-arizona-confirms-bidens-win The audit concluded that President Biden received even more votes, and Trump had even fewer votes than the official tally in Maricopa recorded. https://www.npr.org/2021/09/24/1040327483/the-controversial-election-review-in-arizona-confirms-bidens-win
The Cyber Ninjas report made a series of recommendations to the Arizona Senate for “improving” Arizona elections. https://www.azsenaterepublicans.com/cyber-ninjas-report Cyber Ninjas is resisting two Arizona state court orders to provide a full public disclosure of its work. https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/arizona/articles/2021-11-03/cyber-ninjas-fights-arizona-audit-public-records-demands As of early January 2022, it has closed down and gone out of business. https://thehill.com/regulation/cybersecurity/588703-cyber-ninjas-shutting-down-after-judges-fines-arizona-audit-company
Maricopa County has issued a point-by-point rebuttal to the audit report detailing those claims which were false, inaccurate or misleading about the election. https://www.azfamily.com/news/politics/arizona_politics/maricopa-county-says-cyber-ninjas-made-nearly-80-false-claims-in-2020-election-audit/article_b5a512d0-6e65-11ec-bcc8-3fc00640df99.html It found there was merit to exactly one of the 77 factual findings in the Cyber Ninjas audit, namely that 50 ballots had been double counted. https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/05/politics/maricopa-county-rebut-2020-election-review/index.html
The Electoral Integrity Project (EIP) reviews the integrity of state election systems in the United States, and has done so for the last decade. EIP found that Arizona ranked dead last (51st) in the 2016 election and had improved to the lower third in the 2018 mid-term elections. https://www.electoralintegrityproject.com/peius2018 In the 2020 election cycle, it found Arizona had continued to improve its electoral integrity. On many of the measures of election integrity developed by EIP, US election integrity declined in the 2020 election cycle; this was led most prominently by the unwillingness of the parties to accept the validity of the election results. The decline in public confidence in election results was particularly pronounced in Arizona. https://www.hks.harvard.edu/publications/electoral-integrity-2020-us-elections This is a strong indicator that the “big lie” is working to erode public confidence in our electoral process. On objective measures such as fairly counting the votes or complying with election laws, the US system was assessed to have performed very well. Thus, the US electoral performance ranked very highly on vote tabulation, the voting process, and the performance of election authorities; however, it ranked quite poorly on issues like campaign finance, campaign media coverage, and treatment of minority and women candidates; the truly unfortunate roles played by disinformation spread on social media during the 2020 elections and by gerrymandered districts were particularly concerning to EIP. https://www.hks.harvard.edu/publications/electoral-integrity-2020-us-elections