A Republican who was elected as Maricopa County’s top election official last November, and assumed office in January, is quickly losing patience with his party’s lame efforts to discredit the 2020 election results.
Joe Biden, who carried Maricopa County by over 45,000 votes (see results here), won Arizona’s electoral votes by a statewide margin of roughly 11,000 votes.
Maricopa County, which covers much of the Phoenix metro area, has nearly two-thirds of the state’s entire population. Outside that county, rural red-state and Trumpian politics dominate. In the legislature, the GOP has bare majorities in both chambers (31-29 in the lower house, and 16-14 in the state senate).
But that gave them enough votes to launch a witch hunt for non-existent election fraud in the county where Democratic voters are concentrated (which I previously detailed here and here, and a Seattle Times editorial excoriated here; since then, the GOP’s fake “audit” has descended into utter chaos).
Yesterday, Stephen Richer (photo, left), whose official title is Maricopa County Recorder, “called on other Republicans to stop the unfounded accusations. ‘We can’t indulge these insane lies any longer. As a party. As a state. As a country,’ Richer tweeted,” according to ABC News (read story here).
Like other Maricopa County officials, including other Republicans, who’ve defended the election results he’s whistling into the wind.
The mastermind of the fake “audit” is Republican Senate President Karen Fann (photo, right), a former real estate agent (bio here; details of her voting record here) is on a mission. She even wanted to send political operatives to voters’ homes until the Department of Justice slapped that down, warning her it would violate federal law (read about that here).
Fann’s latest gambit is to haul in the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, including its Republican members, “to answer questions raised by the private auditors she has hired,” ABC News says (read their story here). As in “we want you to come to the police station to answer a few questions and sign a confession.”
Those “auditors,” remain, are partisan operatives employed by a company run by a CEO who is a Trump supporter and purveyor of false election conspiracy theories. Complying with her request would be roughly equivalent to demanding that Elizabeth Smart submit to her kidnappers cross-examining her.
Richer called Fann’s shenanigans by their right name when he said, “Enough with the defamation. Enough with the unfounded allegations.” Richer tweeted Thursday, “I came to this office to competently, fairly, and lawfully administer the duties of the office. Not to be accused … of shredding ballots and deleting files for an election I didn’t run. Enough.”
Meanwhile, the county supervisors “have been aggressively using Twitter in recent days to push back, firing off a series of messages slamming the private company doing the audit. The board plans to hold a public hearing Monday to further to refute lies and lay out facts about these issues,” ABC News said on Sunday, May 16, 2001. The board’s chair, Jack Sellers, a Republican, said, “I know you all have grown weary of lies and half-truths six months after 2020 General Elections.”
Our system is based on the concept that voters will hold elected officials accountable for their behavior in office. Obviously that system breaks down where voters are complicit in the efforts of pandering politicians like Fann to undermine public trust in what two properly conducted official audits determined was a fair and fraud-free election. No matter how much Fann and her backers may wish otherwise, Joe Biden won Arizona.
The effort to destroy our democracy goes beyond Fann and her enablers and confederates. Nationwide, the Republican Party as a whole has embraced Trump’s election lies, false conspiracy theories, and downplayed the Capitol insurrection, while attacking the voting rights of American citizens.
The GOP is no longer a legitimate political party. Under Trump, it has become a dangerous, violent, authoritarian cult. Our freedom is under assault. The few responsible Republican officials who remain, and are brave enough to stand up against this mob, are being run out of the party.
This is not a party you can vote for, even if you don’t agree with Democrats on issues. It is a path to disintegration of our basic freedoms.