WASHINGTON — The Arizona Senate GOP’s ridiculous election “audit” has barely begun, but it’s already apparent that it is a deeply compromised political stunt. The Republican caucus hired a firm owned by a noted “Stop the Steal” supporter Doug Logan to conduct the audit, and new reporting by the Arizona Mirror details further links to election fraud conspiracy theories. Auditor Doug Logan wrote an “election fraud facts” report for U.S. senators who tried to overturn the election, and a pro-Trump cable news host on One America News is even raising money to fund the audit.
“This stunt is a complete farce and a brazen waste of taxpayer resources,” said Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee President Jessica Post. “Instead of acknowledging the reality of the election result and working to tackle the problems Arizonans are facing, Republicans would rather squander time and money on an obvious political sideshow. They should abandon this bogus effort and focus on doing their jobs.”
Republicans already litigated their claims of election fraud repeatedly, and courts in Arizona and across the country resoundingly rejected those claims. A previous official audit of voting machines in Maricopa County found that they were working perfectly, and a limited hand recount similarly found a perfect match with the machine-generated tabulation.
GOP lawmakers around the country, including in Arizona, are hard at work introducing measures that will make it harder to vote, inspired by the same voter fraud misinformation they have repeatedly spread without evidence. Over 600 Republican state legislators signed on to the effort to overturn the election or pushed conspiracy theories about the results.
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