The Washington Post editorializes today, Arizona is now ground zero in Republicans’ war on voting:
Undeterred by the backlash to Georgia’s new anti-voting law, Arizona Republicans have made their state ground zero in the party’s spurious efforts to question the 2020 election results and restrict voting. First, they insisted on running a chaotic “audit” of the 2020 vote in Maricopa County, the state’s most populous, without the expertise or the safeguards to do so credibly; that nightmare continues, and the results could seriously harm faith in U.S. elections. Then, Arizona Republicans imposed what they call “fixes” to state election law, including a new voting restriction that is pointless — if your goal is to make elections simple and fair.
Before about a decade ago, Arizona had been a model in expanding ballot-box access. Large numbers of Arizonans continue to cast ballots by mail. In fact, the state automatically mails ballots to some 75 percent of its voters, who are on Arizona’s permanent early voting list.
But President Donald Trump turned against absentee voting last year, as it became clear that many Democrats would use the method to avoid voting in person during the covid-19 pandemic. Then he lost the November presidential election by failing in places such as Arizona. Though extreme scrutiny, including two examinations of the Maricopa County count, confirmed that result, Mr. Trump continues to promote the lie that Arizona’s results were fraudulent. He issued on Saturday more wild claims that Maricopa County Recorder Steven Richer, himself a Republican, called “unhinged” and “insane.”
The Republican-run state Senate responded differently to Mr. Trump’s lies — by feeding them. Senate President Karen Fann (R) seized Maricopa County’s ballots and hired Cyber Ninjas, a firm run by a pro-Trump conspiracy theoristwith no apparent experience examining elections, to audit a count that federally accredited experts had already audited. Ms. Fann claims that Cyber Ninjas has found problems, and Mr. Trump is obsessing over the recount as the first step in upending the 2020 election results. Election experts across the country say the real problem is Cyber Ninjas’ shoddy operation — and the danger that the conclusions of motivated amateurs will spread distrust in the nation’s system of government.
For his part, Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey (R) insists the state “shined” in last year’s election. But, perhaps to deflect Trumpist criticisms, he still signed a bill last week mandating that the state purge voters from the permanent early voting list if they fail to cast an absentee ballot in two successive election cycles. Mr. Ducey claims this will save the state money. Yet the cost of dispatching absentee ballots is insubstantial compared to the voter convenience doing so provides. Republicans invariably harp on “election integrity.” But there is no evidence Arizona’s previous system was prone to fraud. [Bill sponsor Sen. Michelle Ugenti-Rita, the GQP’s Queen of Voter Suppression]. And some Republicans argue, essentially, that people who vote infrequently do not deserve the convenience. This argument exposes the antidemocratic thinking behind many new GOP voting restrictions.
Voting should be easy for all, even if it means the state needs to put a few more ballots in the mail, even for citizens who choose not to participate regularly — and even if they choose to vote for Democrats.
Arizona: the meth lab of anti-democracy, and a national laughing stock.
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Phillip Bump of the Washington Post adds, “In Arizona, Republicans accidentally created a robust demonstration of the shoddiness of their fraud claims”, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/05/18/arizona-republicans-accidentally-created-robust-demonstration-shoddiness-their-fraud-claims/
Point by point, the [Board of Supervisors’] letter rebuts the claims raised by Fann, arguing convincingly that the senator and the inexperienced team leading the audit simply have no idea what they’re talking about. The impression one gets from the letter is the impression you might get from watching a YouTube flat-earther challenge an esteemed geology professor on the shape of the planet: a thorough response with no shortage of demonstrated disdain.
Something particularly interesting is happening with the Arizona “audit” (as its proponents call it) that has otherwise been missing in the months since the 2020 election. Because it’s happening now, in relative isolation, and because it carries at least some sort of authoritative stamp that provides a process for feedback, the nation is at long last able to directly confront false election claims promoted by former president Donald Trump and his allies. The result is Republicans stepping up to deride the process as a grotesque, unfounded sham.
To be very clear, there is nothing unusually sloppy or unfounded about the Arizona audit. With no obvious exception, all of the allegations of fraud and malfeasance that have emerged since Trump lost six months ago have been equally shoddy and baseless. Each of them has been the product of an under-informed or obviously biased complainant — or, alternatively, has been numeric prestidigitation meant to imply fraud that never actually manifests in any other way.
What sets Arizona apart is that it can’t be lumped into some overarching narrative of “irregularities,” and it can’t simply be left at “this guy who has a PhD in chemistry says that the n-curve values are suspicious.” They wanted to count the votes, and now they are and now the actual experts have permanent palm marks on their foreheads.
It’s really quite clarifying.
[To] the supervisors’ point about how the “audit” fuels fundraising schemes, it’s clear that the utility of alleging fraud still exists. It exists for Trump for psychological and political reasons. It exists for OAN for audience-building reasons. And it exists for right-wing lawmakers for attention-seeking reasons. So Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) have planned a rally in Phoenix on Friday, assuming that neither of them is otherwise detained.
Both also signed a letter sent by a small group of lawmakers to deputy assistant attorney general Pamela Karlan who had questioned the legality of the audit. That letter, too, centered on Fann’s allegations. It also assured Karlan that Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) had “personally visited the site of the election audit and we are confident in the integrity of the process and look forward to reviewing the results, no matter what is found.”
Biggs was also identified by one of the organizers of the protests at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 as having helped develop the plan for the day.
What’s happening in Arizona is unusual only in that it is happening in a spotlight, and it is happening through a formal system that allows it to be held to account. It is part and parcel with the other claims that Trump, Biggs, Gaetz and the rest have made since November, but it is happening at a quieter moment and more directly challenging the authority of Republican officials, without showing any results.
There probably will never be a “have you no sense of decency” moment for Trump’s effort to argue that the election results were suspect. But Republicans coming together to identify the flagship effort to undermine those results as biased and sloppy is at least a step in that direction.