AZ Senate Republicans To Do A Full Hand-Recount Audit Of Maricopa County Ballots

The Arizona Republican Sedition Party’s “Stop The Steal” attempt to reverse the certified, signed, sealed and delivered 2020 vote with a sham “audit” conducted by radical Republican state senators who gave aid and comfort to the violent seditious insurrectionist MAGA/QAnon cult in Washington D.C. on January 6, and to their insane party chair, Kelli “Chemtrails” Ward, in her frivolous evidence-free lawsuits brought in bad faith (for which the GQP has now been sanctioned by the court), is not yet over.

Radical Republicans who control the Arizona Senate announced Thursday they now intend to do a complete hand-recount audit of 2.1 million ballots in the state’s most populous county to ensure that President Joe Biden’s November win was legitimate. (It was!) Arizona Senate to hand-count 2.1 million Maricopa County 2020 election ballots:

Senate President Karen Fann had been pushing for a “full forensic audit” of Maricopa County’s election result and won a court order on Feb. 26 granting the Senate access to the ballots and tabulation machines. But she had never acknowledged until this week that she wanted a full recount, something state law doesn’t allow expect in narrow circumstances.

Previous documents obtained by The Associated Press showed Fann intended to recount “at least” 550,000 ballots.

Fann has been trying to locate an auditing firm that can do the deep dive she wants. Some Republican backers of former President Donald Trump allege there was fraud in the election in Arizona and other battleground states that led to his defeat. Fann said she wants to answer their questions one way or the other.

These looney tunes also question that American astronauts ever landed on the moon – it was all filmed in a movie studio, don’t you know. Is Fann also going to investigate this? Did Ted Cruz’s daddy actually assist Jack Ruby in assassinating John F. Kennedy? Is Fann going to investigate this also? And what about those UFO’s that former Governor J. Fife Symington III saw over Phoenix in 1997? True story. And what about that whack Pizza Gate and QAnon conspiracy bullshit they all seem to believe in. Is Fann going to investigate this also?

If we’re going to investigate every crazy thing that Republicans believe in, let’s investigate the greatest fraud perpetrated on the American people over the past 40 years: faith based supply-side “trickle down” economics. Now that’s the “Bigfoot” of frauds.

Fann announced Thursday that she had decided on a specific firm to oversee the audit but did not reveal its name, saying she was still negotiating final details. She had previously been considering a company with deep ties to Trump’s campaign but said last month that it was no longer being considered. The Allied Security Operations Group worked with Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani to raise baseless allegations of election fraud and counting errors in Arizona and other states.

Yeah, that instills confidence that Fann is fair and impartial, and has good judgment.

Fann’s announcement said she now intends to do a full-hand recount of the ballots in addition to testing the tabulation machines and rescanning all the ballots. She said she hopes to do the work at county buildings to ensure ballot security.

Maybe she should have asked first.

But county spokesman Fields Moseley said the county hasn’t had any recent discussions about allowing the Senate to use its facilities for its new audit. Early this month, Board Chair Jack Sellers sent a letter to Fann and other GOP senators asking where she wanted the ballots delivered. The Senate said it had no room for them and hoped to use county facilities.

A full hand-recount will be challenging because it will require scores of people and observers if Fann is to end up with a trusted product.

She said she hopes the effort is bipartisan, but Senate Democrats said that is laughable.

“We never wanted anything to do with that,” said Sen. Lupe Contreras, the assistant minority leader. “I guess you could say we worked in a bipartisan way since we backed the Board of Supervisors, which is all Republican but one,” Contreras said.

The five-member county Board of Supervisors has pointed to repeated checks that showed the election was free, fair and properly conducted. They included pre-and post-election tests of counting equipment and software and a hand count of a ballot sample that showed the machine count was accurate.

Last month, they released the results of two new audits of their equipment done to mollify the Senate. They showed no malicious software or incorrect counting equipment and that none of the computers or equipment were connected to the internet.

“When all the work is done, there will be a full report for the Senate and County to review,” Fann said in a statement. “Our voters expect this audit, and it can be a big step in returning trust and confidence in our election process.”

Oh, so this is the new standard for lawlessness: Republican voters want something, so we’re going to go ahead and violate Arizona’s election laws to mollify them. This is GQP authoritarianism writ large.

The Arizona Mirror adds, Fann wants hand count of 2.1 million ballots, may use volunteers (excerpt):

Yellow Sheet Report, a high-priced insider tipsheet by the company that publishes the Arizona Capitol Times, reported on Wednesday that Fann plans to use volunteers for the hand count, and suggested using a bipartisan group of 100 volunteers for the effort. Fann told the Arizona Mirror on Thursday that she wants the hand count to be as bipartisan or nonpartisan as possible, and that the Senate could save money if it had qualified volunteers and didn’t have to pay everyone involved in the count.

Democrats, Libertarians, and Green Party observers should not lend any credibility to this GQP farce. Do not participate. Let Republicans pick their partisan Tea Party, militia members, and QAnon whack jobs to conduct their sham audit. I’ve worked with these people, I know that they cannot count worth a damn. This sham audit will have no credibility whatsoever, and no one can trust the results.

Hand count audits invariably result in human error. I’ve seen it many times, and had to recount because some other volunteer on my team couldn’t concentrate enough to count. The hand count audits are checked against the machine count for accuracy.

Maricopa county has already conducted such a test using federally certified firms, who found no problems with the machines — in addition to scanning and hand counting all 2.1 million ballots.

Fann said on Thursday that she still believes the proper venue for the audit is Maricopa County’s facilities, “to preserve the chain of custody and maintain security of the ballots and equipment.” Fields Moseley, a spokesman for Maricopa County, said there have been no further discussions between the county and the Senate on the matter.

Fann also said the Senate has reached out to experts on the election process in Arizona and around the country, “and hope to have the best and brightest involved in the audit.”

The Republicans in the Arizona Senate are involved in this audit – they are not the best and brightest by any fanciful stretch of the imagination.

You may not be aware of it, but some MAGA/QAnon cult member went dumpster diving at Maricopa County Elections headquarters hoping to find proof of something nefarious going on. Maricopa County: Dumpster divers didn’t find voted 2020 ballots:

Staci Burk, a Pinal County woman who filed a failed lawsuit challenging the general election results last year [dismissed], alleges that she and others found a bag filled with shredded ballots from the November election in a Dumpster outside a loading dock at the Maricopa County Tabulation and Election Center south of downtown Phoenix.

In a Facebook post on Saturday, Burk described it as “physical evidence collected.” A website she linked to that touts numerous conspiracy theories about the election called it “evidence of shredding of ballots.”

But Megan Gilbertson, a spokeswoman for the Maricopa County Elections Department, said the ballots weren’t cast in the 2020 general election. State law requires counties to keep all ballots for 24 months after an election is canvassed.

Gilbertson noted that the county sends out sample ballots, which are printed on the same paper as the ballots used in the election, and that such ballots are also available online. And there are many voters who received ballots in the mail but didn’t return them, she said.

“The ballot shown in the picture could be any one of those things. What it is not is an official voted ballot from the November General Election. The 2.1 million voted ballots from the November General Election are safe and accounted for in a vault, under 24/7 surveillance,” Gilbertson said.

The QAnon Queen, Sen. Kelly Townsend, a Mesa Republican, posted on Facebook that Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer told her that the elections department doesn’t shred ballots.

Burk also falsely claimed that photos and videos she posted of the loading dock at MCTEC showed pallets of ballots from the 2020 election, Gilbertson said. Those pallets are actually boxes of blank voter registration forms.

Burk posted photos of the shredded ballots on her Facebook page, along with photos of a yellow bag in the trash bin at MCTEC, which an unnamed man climbed into the Dumpster to retrieve. Other photos show the man poring over long strips of shredded ballot in a kitchen.

Burk wrote on Facebook that they went to three other locations. She wouldn’t say how many bags of shredded ballots were allegedly found, nor would she permit the Arizona Mirror to inspect them.

[T]he allegations were reported by the right-wing conspiracy website Gateway Pundit.

Burk has not yet filed a complaint regarding the ballots with any law enforcement agencies. She told the Mirror that she’s exchanged emails with the Attorney General’s Office regarding shredded ballots, but hasn’t spoken with anyone at the office about it or filed any official complaint.

Senate President Karen Fann wrote on Twitter on Sunday that she’d contacted the Attorney General’s Office and asked for an investigation into the claims.

Oh good! Another rabbit hole Fann wants to go down just because some MAGA/QAnon nut alleges something.

That Burk and her fellow activists took the ballots from MCTEC, brought it to a private residence and sorted through the shredded paper raises questions about contamination of evidence, were there to be an investigation. But Burk said that she took video showing that it came from the county elections department and insisted that there were no problems with the chain of custody.

As if this “genius” knows anything about the Rules of Evidence. Clearly doesn’t understand chain of custody.

Gilberston said Burk and her compatriots were not only Dumpster diving on county property, but that security footage shows them attempting to break into the building using a board they found in the trash bin. Gilbertson said they attempted to break into the building on Saturday, the day they allegedly found the shredded ballots.

“Maricopa County plans to follow up with law enforcement about these activities,” she said.

Another Republican senator whom we are supposed to believe is fair and impartial (as if!) doesn’t trust our Republican Attorney General, who is a four-square partisan hack, to do the investigation. Top GOP senator: Shredded ballots will ‘evaporate’ if given to the AG:

A top-ranking Senate Republican told a Pinal County woman who claims to have found shredded 2020 ballots in a trash bin that she should turn them over to him and warned against trusting the Republican attorney general with the “smoking gun” evidence of election fraud.

Sen. Sonny Borrelli, the Senate majority whip, also speculated that “high-level people” want the Senate’s investigation into the election to go away, and that the only way to make that happen would be if he were killed.

Borrelli told Staci Burk and another, unnamed woman that she should provide the shredded ballots to him and to the Senate’s sergeant-at-arms.

“If they seize that stuff from you, that stuff could disappear,” Borrelli said of the Attorney General Mark Brnovich’s office, which he said was uninterested in ferreting out election fraud. “If you turn it over to them, it’s going to evaporate.”

But Borrelli told the Arizona Mirror on Wednesday that he was merely exaggerating in an attempt to convince the woman to trust him.

“No really, I’m not as nuts as I sound!”

Burk provided a recording of the call to the Arizona Mirror on Tuesday.

Borrelli told the Mirror that he spoke with Burk on Sunday after being bombarded with calls about her allegations. She was “all over the place” and made it clear that she didn’t trust the attorney general, whom she claimed had ignored other alleged evidence of election fraud she has, so Borrelli said he tried to convince her to hand over the ballots she said she found. Borrelli said he might have gone a little overboard and been a little overzealous, but if he’d told her she should trust the attorney general, she wouldn’t have provided the shredded ballots.

“If it’s evidence of a crime, it’s got to be turned over to law enforcement. So, I’m trying to convince this lady who doesn’t trust anybody, so I’m trying to use whatever communications skills I can to convince this lady to trust me to at least let me take a look at them, verify what she’s got is true and correct,” Borrelli told the Mirror.

A likely story.

He also said that if the attorney general investigated the shredded papers before the Senate and declared that there was no foul play, some people would say it was a conspiracy and a cover-up. He noted that some people are spreading conspiracy theories that a weekend fire at Hickman’s Family Farms in Arlington, which is owned by the family of Maricopa County Supervisor Clint Hickman, was set to destroy fraudulent ballots, saying, “This is how crazy it is.”

And you think your sham audit is going to cure this level of crazy? BTW, that’s a lot of roasted chicken.

The senator would not directly comment on what may happen if the attorney general got a hold of the alleged shredded ballots before the Senate examined them. But he told the Mirror, “Do I believe the attorney general is corrupt? No.”

Borrelli said he’s the primary reason why the Senate has sought to investigate the 2020 election, describing himself as the “instigator” who prodded his colleagues to action. He added that it would be harder for his “high-level” enemies to silence him than Burk.

Do paranoid much?

“If anything freaking happened to me in the Senate, if I got hurt, if I got killed, this whole thing would go away because there’s nobody in the Senate that would push,” he said. “They can try to silence you – you’re a private citizen. They can’t do anything to me. They can bully me all they want, but they know they can’t take me out… unless they whack me out or if I have a suicide.”

Yeah, this guy is a “stable genius.” Hoo boy!

When the Republican Senate’s sham audit does not produce any evidence of widespread voter fraud, the MAGA/QAnon cult already has another conspiracy theory lined up and ready to go. Finchem’s new conspiracy theory: There’s no evidence because the supervisors destroyed it:

One Republican legislator who has built a national following by falsely insisting there was widespread fraud in the 2020 election in Arizona is now pushing a new evidence-free conspiracy theory: A planned audit by the Arizona Senate might turn up nothing because Maricopa County officials “destroyed evidence” when they conducted two audits of the election last month.

The two audits were done in response to baseless claims of voter fraud and conspiracy that the election was rigged against former President Donald Trump, but they have not satisfied Trump supporters, including state Rep. Mark Finchem, an Oro Valley Republican who has been at the forefront of spreading lies about the election in Arizona.

“We are hopeful that the shenanigans the Board has engaged in with their version of an ‘audit’ has not destroyed the evidence needed to prove or disprove the allegations that the election was illegitimate,” Finchem said in an interview with The Epoch Times, a pro-Trump far-right website [run by a Chinese religious cult, the falun gong] that boosted election conspiracy theories.

And appearing on [Trump coconspirator] Steve Bannon’s show War Room, Finchem said the audits the supervisors did amount to interfering with a “crime scene.” He said he has also asked Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich’s office to open a criminal investigation and convene a grand jury.

Brnovich’s office said that’s not true.

“Representative Finchem has not met with investigators from our office to discuss allegations of voter fraud or the 2020 election,” Brnovich spokesman Ryan Anderson said in a statement to the Arizona Mirror. “We have consistently said that if anyone has evidence of voter fraud, they are encouraged to contact our office and speak with investigators.”

Finchem presented nothing to support his claim that the county supervisors or their auditors destroyed any records. But Supervisor Steve Gallardo, the board’s lone Democrat, said that absence of evidence is itself being used as proof that there’s a conspiracy.

Because that’s how “Q” rolls.

“We kinda saw this type of talking point being used in other YouTube videos,” Gallardo said, referencing the litany of conspiratorial videos that have surfaced online in the wake of the 2020 election that have alleged malfeasance in Arizona’s election. “There is no audit that can be done that will satisfy Mr. Finchem.”

Finchem not only needs to be recalled, hopefully the Department of Justice will find enough evidence with which to charge him for his role in the January 6 sedition and insurrection.

When Senate Republicans fail to prove their unfounded conspiracy theory – and they will fail – every one of them should be forced to submit their resignation from office en masse.

UPDATE: Adrian Fontes, who ran the 2020 election, says the Senate Republican majority lied to the Maricopa County Superior Court to get the subpoena for the ballots – they informed the court that they did not intend to do a full recount of the ballots. He also reveals that his predecessor, Helen Purcell, is who the Senate Republicans wants to conduct their sham audit. video at: https://www.facebook.com/adrian.p.fontes/videos/10219316201442270.