Seditious Insurrectionist Oath Keeper Rep. Mark Finchem Files Bill To ‘Decertify’ Arizona’s 2020 Presidential Election (Not An Actual Thing)

We all knew this was the end objective of the widely debunked and discredited Arizona Senate GQP sham “fraudit” of the 2020 (only election deniers aka Trump truthers believe this cR-AZy shit).

Seditious insurrectionist Oath Keeper Rep. Mark Finchem (a QAnon and Trump cultist) has introduced a bill to “decertify” the 2020 election in Arizona. Not all election results, mind you,  just the presidential election.

Just to be clear, decertifying a presidential election is not an actual thing, it only exists in the fertive imaginations of Qanon and Trump cultists. These people are simply too crazy – and too dangerous – to be allowed anywhere near an elected office. See, More than 80 Trump truthers are aiming for a power grab:

At least 51 Republican candidates who have falsely claimed that Trump won the election, spread lies about the election’s legitimacy, backed “forensic” audits, promoted conspiracy theories or took other actions to undermine election integrity are running for governor in 24 states, according to States United Action, a nonpartisan group tracking election deniers running for office. In some states, multiple election deniers are running in the same primary.

At least 21 election deniers are running for secretary of state in 18 states, an office that would put them in power to oversee voting in their states. Another 11 election deniers are running for attorney general, which would position them to get involved in election litigation and law enforcement matters.

Seditious insurrectionist Oath Keeper Rep. Mark Finchem is running for Arizona Secretary of State. Section 3 of the 14th Amendment bars this seditious insurrectionist from running for office.

Section 3.

No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any state legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any state, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.

Here is seditious insurrectionist Oath Keeper Rep. Mark Finchem in Washington, D.C. on January 6, 2021, “giving aid and comfort” to his fellow seditious insurrectionists.

A legal challenge to his qualifications to run for office should already have been filed against him with the Secretary of State. If it hasn’t, file one now.

Howard Fischer reports, Finchem wants state to decertify 2020 election:

A state lawmaker representing part of Pinal County has called on the state to decertify the 2020 election ahead of the release of an ‘audit’ of Maricopa County votes.

“I am calling it,” state Rep. Mark Finchem, R-Oro Valley, said in a Twitter post earlier this month.

“I call on Arizona to decertify the election of 2020 and recall the electors,” he said, though there appears to be no legal precedent for that. “There is already enough evidence to show clear and convincing fraud.”

In fact, there is literally NO EVIDENCE.

Narrator: There was no clear and convincing evidence that the elections in those counties were irredeemably compromised https://t.co/JT3E3KpNm0

— Jim Small (@JimSmall) February 7, 2022

Finchem, who is running for secretary of state, said he is basing that in part on “preliminary audit results.”

Really? You mean the entirely debunked and discredited Arizona Senate GQP sham “fraudit” which was so incompetent and seriously flawed that its preliminary report concluded Joe Biden won by even more votes than Arizona’s official count? Fact check: Arizona audit affirmed Biden’s win, didn’t prove voter fraud, contrary to Trump claim.

Finchem represent Legislative District 11, which includes Maricopa, Arizona City, Picacho, Saddlebrooke, Marana and Oracle.

WTF is wrong with you people who live in this district and elect this damn fool to office?

In case you were wondering, no, it's not actually possible to recall electors from 15-month-old election. No matter what anyone tells you, this is not actually a thing that can happen.

— Jeremy Duda (@jeremyduda) February 7, 2022

Why it matters: 'Decertify' isn't a thing. But Finchem is running for Arizona secretary of state. If he wins, in 2024 he & new governor would be responsible for certifying presidential election. That is a thing. https://t.co/p9EzAAU2VA

— Brahm Resnik (@brahmresnik) February 8, 2022

House Speaker Rusty Bowers appears ready to kill this bill like he did the election subversion bill from election denier Rep. John Fillmore.

Well I guess that settles that.

Bowers: "Mr Finchem's obviously unconstitutional and profoundly unwise proposal will receive all the consideration it deserves" https://t.co/vRu4c1R56V

— Jeremy Duda (@jeremyduda) February 7, 2022

Arizonans will learn Friday whether a firm hired by the Senate will confirm or dispute official results which showed that Joe Biden outpolled Donald Trump in Maricopa County by enough of a margin to win the state’s 11 electoral votes.

And that presumes the report by Cyber Ninjas, which has no previous experience with elections and was funded largely by donations from Trump supporters, is considered credible. [It’s not.]

Capitol Media Services already has learned that the presentation set for 1 p.m. on Friday in the Senate chambers, will include at least two findings by others involved in the review of problems with the election returns.

Forner Secretary of State Ken Bennett will report there were several instances where the county did not follow what is required either under state law or the separate Election Procedures Manual. Bennett, however, is reserving comment on whether any of those shortcomings were intentional.

Even the audit leaders themselves said there might be legitimate explanations for the alleged problems they found. They didn’t understand election laws or procedures enough to say, and they didn’t investigate their own claims to conclusion. https://t.co/CpaX9YENRd

— Jeremy Duda (@jeremyduda) February 8, 2022

And Shiva Ayyadurai will say that there are questions about the signatures on some of the envelopes in which county voters returned early ballots.

This conspiracy theorist charlitan is who you are relying on? ‘Audit’ expert Shiva Ayyadurai didn’t understand election procedures. He made a number of false signature claims.

Shiva Ayyadurai appeared to have absolutely no knowledge of Maricopa County policies and procedures regarding the early ballot envelopes and signature verification. That shortcoming would be a consistent theme as he presented his findings as part of the so-called audit of the election in Maricopa County, portraying commonplace occurrences and standard procedures as potentially suspicious. 

And Senate President Karen Fann has asked the attorney general to investigate Ayyadurai’s obviously false findings.

Ayyadurai, known to his fans online simply as Dr. Shiva, is an MIT-trained engineer and entrepreneur known for his disputed claim that he invented email. He has a history of promoting discredited and debunked conspiracy theories about the 2020 election, including during a day-long event at the downtown Phoenix Hyatt several weeks after the election that featured Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani. 

So why is Karen Fann giving this fraudster another chance to spew wild conspiracy theories unsupported by evidence after she has already referred him to the Attorney General’s office for investigation?

The long-anticipated report comes amid GQP politicians, some angling for higher office, already declaring that the yet-to-be-seen report find evidence of fraud.

It also hasn’t stopped those who have questioned the process from already proclaiming that anything that is reported can’t be trusted because of who was involved and the fact that the review was funded almost entirely by those who claim that President Trump was illegally cheated out of reelection.

And the report comes despite a series of rulings by state and federal judges who refused to overturn the results, saying they found no credible evidence of improprieties.

But the big question is bound to be whether the report — if it is to be believed — can verify or dismiss claims of fraud, malfeasance or just sloppy work that led Maricopa County to report that Biden got 45,109 more votes than Trump. That edge was enough to overturn Trump support in rural counties, giving Biden a final victory margin of 10,457.

That presentation will come from Doug Logan, CEO of Cyber Ninjas.

Wait, the “Ninja” who is currently in contempt of court for not producing documents about the GQP sham “fraudit” to the Arizona Republic and and American Oversight. See earlier post, The Never-Ending Fiasco Of The AZ Senate’s GQP Sham ‘Fraudit’.

The choice of [QAnon conspiracy theorist] Logan by Senate President Karen Fann raised questions from the beginning, at least in part because he had made public statements even before the audit started that there was fraud in the election. And Cyber Ninjas also is fighting a court order that it surrender audit-related documents under the state’s public records law.

But it’s not just Logan who will be reporting findings.

One report will come from Ben Cotton, founder of a firm called CyFIR who examined the election tabulation equipment that the county surrendered to the Senate under subpoena. Cotton already has made claims county election equipment was vulnerable to hacking, a contention disputed by county officials.

Randy Pullen, a former chairman of the Arizona Republican Party, will report a third count of the 2.1 million ballots by machine to compare that with both the number reported by the county and the number counted by Cyber Ninjas.

“Essentially we came up with the same number,” Pullen said.

It won’t be as smooth for the report by Ayyadurai who Fann added to the audit team midway through the process to examine signatures on the envelopes of the approximately 1.9 million early ballots.

“He’s worked for banks before, he’s an expert on signature analysis and things like that,” Fann said.

Ayyadurai, however, did not have access to county files which have other signatures with which those on the envelopes can be compared. But Pullen said that, even without that, Ayyadurai did find enough to raise questions.

Pullen said the county claims it uses 27 different points of comparison when it checks to see if the signatures on the envelopes match those on file. But in some cases, Pullen said, what appears in the signature box is just a line or a mark.

“There’s no way it can be a 27 point check,” Pullen said, saying Ayyadurai has identified a number of those. He acknowledged, though, that does not necessarily mean the ballots that were in those envelopes were invalid.

“Now, it’s possible that that scribble that’s in that box is exactly the signature that the person put in as well,” Pullen said. “But not very likely.”

Bennett was tasked with determining whether county officials followed all election laws.

“We did identify a few where they fell short,” he told Capitol Media Services. But Bennett said that, in some ways, that’s no surprise.

“No election can be conducted perfectly because it’s conducted by fallible human beings,” he said. “It’s not a poke in the eye thing. It’s constructive criticism or constructive improvement.”

And Bennett said there are 1,300 of pages of statutes and regulations that outline what is and isn’t permitted, meaning if he reports some errors “let’s keep everything in perspective.”

But does he believe that any of the errors were intentional?

“I’m not going to say in a verbal interview … what I’m going to be putting in writing for the report,” Bennett said.

The fact no report has been issued has not kept others from already publicly concluding that something went wrong. [The Qanon/Trump personaity cultists and election deniers aka Trump truthers.]

Logan said in July there were 74,243 mail-in ballots being received “where there is no clear record of them being sent. Logan also said there were 11,326 individuals who did not show up on the version of the voter rolls prepared the day after the election but did show up on the Dec. 4 list as not only being registered but having voted.

County officials responded with a point-by-point rebuttal. And Logan has made no [false] claims like that since.

That leaves a private canvass [unlawful voter intimidation] conducted by Liz Harris, an unsuccessful legislative candidate. She produced a report claiming that, based on a sample of homes checked, there were more than 173,000 ballots that were lost and more than 96,000 “ghost” voters, ballots that were cast by people who did not exist.

But she cited only two concrete example. And both were quickly disproved.

Also weighing in was former Congressman Matt Salmon who is hoping to become the Republican nominee for governor. He issued a release Thursday saying the report “will outline a number of serious discrepancies and will further demonstrate why people are questioning last year’s election results and the integrity of Arizona’s electoral systems.”

Pressed for details, Salmon cited what he called the county’s “admitted lack of control over its own election equipment,” presumably referring to the fact that Dominion Voting Systems, from whom the county leased the machines, had passwords. Salmon also said the fact that the county didn’t cooperate also shows problems.

“I’m not sure how we’re possibly supposed to believe that similar issues aren’t prevalent in Arizona’s other counties,” Salmon said.

And also “Krazy” Kari Lake.

Why it matters: 'Decertify' isn't a thing. Even with exclamation point. But Lake is running for Arizona governor. If she wins, in 2024 she & new secy of state would have to certify AZ presidential election. That's a big thing. (h/t earlier Finchem tweet) https://t.co/JkX1bxH0IE

— Brahm Resnik (@brahmresnik) February 8, 2022

Skeptics of the whole process [I believe you mean experts who know what the hell they are talking about, Howie], meanwhile, are already seeking to cast doubt on whatever the report shows.

David Becker, executive director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research, pointed out not just Logan’s lack of experience but Twitter posts and retweets about how there was fraud in the election.

Secretary of State Katie Hobbs said the audit was filled with “security lapses, delays, disorganization and a lack of transparency.” She said the review “failed to meet industry standards for an audit, much less an election audit.”

And the Arizona Democratic Party already has scheduled a press conference four hours before the report is released, calling it a “farcical, conspiracy-drive audit” that is “a disgrace to our democratic processes.”

It isn’t only Democrats, however, who have raised questions. Sen. Michelle Ugenti-Rita, R-Scottsdale, running against Finchem for the Republican nomination for secretary of state, said she supported an audit but that it “has been botched,” blaming that on “total lack of competence by Fann.”