Source: Politics<\/p>\n
A monthslong examination of all the ballots from the 2020 election in Arizona\u2019s most populous county may be winding down soon. But now the state is spreading the \u201caudit\u201d playbook across the country. <\/p>\n
Supporters of former President Donald Trump \u2014 fueled by Trump\u2019s false claim that he did not lose the 2020 election \u2014 are behind a new push to review the results in states including Michigan, Georgia, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. The new drive is worrying state election administrators, who say the efforts will further inflame conspiracy theories and erode faith in the American democratic system.<\/p>\n
The burden of these reviews could fall on the shoulders of state and local election officials, further complicating a field where many are worried about a brain drain<\/a> due to exhaustion and threats workers faced in the aftermath of the 2020 election.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re wasting a lot of taxpayer money. We’re wasting a lot of people’s time,\u201d said Jennifer Morrell, a former elections administrator and consultant who served as a nonpartisan observer for the Arizona secretary of state during the Arizona review. \u201cWe’re sucking a lot of energy from the folks that need to be preparing and working on the next election.\u201d<\/p>\n The efforts in Arizona began in late April<\/a>, when the Republican-controlled state Senate hired private firms to review the 2.1 million ballots cast in Maricopa County, which Biden narrowly carried en route to flipping the state.<\/p>\n The process in Arizona, headed by an inexperienced firm called Cyber Ninjas, has been mired in controversy. Supporters call the effort an \u201caudit,\u201d but it is nearly universally derided by election professionals as a ham-fisted fishing expedition that doesn\u2019t rise to the standards of an actual, professional audit. It\u2019s also been costly: County officials announced this week that they won\u2019t reuse any of the voting equipment<\/a> that was examined during the review, which could cost taxpayers millions of dollars.<\/p>\n Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, and the Republican-controlled Maricopa County government have vociferously opposed<\/a> the review. And Democratic election administrators, along with many nonpartisan and some Republican officials, have begun to speak out about the dangers of the approach spreading across the country and are working to stymie the drive.<\/p>\n \u201cBefore this audit came to Arizona, folks who were behind it were trying to find a way to get a foothold anywhere they could,\u201d Hobbs said. \u201cAnd Arizona happened to be the place that they could. And we know that they’re looking for ways to do it in other states.\u201d<\/p>\n Trump has publicly fixated on the effort in Arizona, regularly putting out statements praising it and insisting it will show he won an election he lost. He also praised the Arizona state senators for their efforts during his first post-presidency rally in Ohio over the weekend, eliciting a cheer from the crowd. <\/p>\n \u201cThey are going to issue a report at some time in the not too distant future, it will be very interesting to see,\u201d Trump said. \u201cA lot of states have gone to watch them, and they\u2019ve come away with praise, real praise. So let\u2019s see how that turns out. Arizona: It is a big deal.\u201d<\/p>\n The local coliseum that has hosted the examination in Arizona has been a pilgrimage site for Republican elected officials and candidates who have promoted Trump\u2019s fraud claims. The Arizona Republic has tracked<\/a> roughly 20 Republicans from 10 states who have visited Veterans Memorial Coliseum during the review.<\/p>\n Now, efforts are underway to bring audits to counties and states across the country \u2014 often at the urging of the former president. Trump has publicly called for audits in numerous states and has politically threatened Republicans who have not backed those calls, especially in critical swing states that he narrowly lost in 2020.<\/p>\n In Michigan last week, a Republican-led state Senate committee found no evidence of fraud in the state. \u201cOur clear finding is that citizens should be confident the results represent the true results of the ballots cast by the people of Michigan,\u201d the report concluded<\/a>.<\/p>\n A letter from Michigan state Sen. Edward McBroom, a Republican, that accompanied the report said he believed \u201canother audit, a so-called forensic audit, is not justifiable,\u201d particularly in Antrim County, a traditionally conservative county that\u2019s been at the center of conspiracies that the election was stolen from Trump. <\/p>\n McBroom, who did not respond to a request for comment, did, however, write that he is \u201ckeeping a close eye on the legislatively-initiated forensic audit in Arizona and will continue to ask questions regarding other election issues I feel are not settled.\u201d He wrote he could change his recommendation about an audit in the state based on the results in Arizona, or further investigation in Michigan. (Trump put out a statement attacking McBroom.)<\/p>\n The push in Michigan extends beyond Antrim County. The board of commissioners of Cheboygan County, Mich., voted 4-3 last week to request an audit<\/a> of the county\u2019s results, asking the state elections director to approve it. Trump won the country overwhelmingly. <\/p>\n \u201cThere is no information or gain that can be made from this audit. Things will stand as they are,\u201d Cheboygan Commissioner Michael Newman, a Republican and one of the three commissioners who voted against requesting an audit, said in an interview.<\/p>\n The commissioners who voted for an audit did not respond to interview requests.<\/p>\n Newman, who said he believes Biden was duly elected, said there was a local pressure campaign to push for an audit, but that constituents in his district urged him to vote against it.<\/p>\n \u201cThey want to see us all changed so we\u2019re not seated anymore, and they want to go after our county administrator,\u201d Newman said of activists pushing for the audit.<\/p>\n And in the state legislature, freshman Republican state Rep. Steve Carra recently filed legislation<\/a> calling for a \u201cforensic audit\u201d of the results. Carra, who said he believed there was substantial fraud during the 2020 election, is primarying Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.), one of the Republicans who voted to impeach Trump. He said the election results are an animating factor among Republicans.<\/p>\n \u201cI think it is the number one issue from people in my community. And I also think it\u2019s the number one issue for all of my conservative colleagues around the state,\u201d Carra said. \u201cSo if they vote against this, I think that\u2019s something that people from their communities would not appreciate.\u201d<\/p>\n Similar pushes have materialized elsewhere. Pennsylvania state Sen. Doug Mastriano has boosted his political profile<\/a> by becoming one of the vocal proponents of Trump\u2019s lies about the election, and is considering a run for governor in the state. Mastriano, who visited the Arizona site, has pushed for an audit in his home state \u2014 and Trump has attacked Republican leaders in Pennsylvania who have not backed him, even name checking Republican state Senate leader Jake Corman.<\/p>\n \u201cOther State Senators want this Forensic Audit to take place \u2014 immediately,\u201d Trump said in a mid-June statement. \u201cI feel certain that if Corman continues along this path of resistance, with its lack of transparency, he will be primaried and lose by big numbers.\u201d<\/p>\n In Georgia, conspiracy theories about Trump\u2019s loss persist, despite the fact the state saw its votes recounted twice in 2020. Republican State Party Chair David Shafer, who also toured the Arizona site<\/a>, has praised the calls for an audit in his home state.<\/p>\n \u201cThe vast majority of Republicans believe that there were irregularities in the last election that have not been fully investigated,\u201d Shafer said on the sidelines of the state party convention earlier this month.<\/p>\n A Georgia state judge also recently dismissed most of a lawsuit<\/a> that sought to review absentee ballots in Fulton County, home to Atlanta. The suit was by plaintiffs who were trying to find fraud in the state. <\/p>\n And in Wisconsin, state Assembly Speaker Robin Vos has hired retired police officers<\/a> to investigate \u201cpotential irregularities and\/or illegalities\u201d in the election. Two Assembly Republicans who traveled to Arizona have also said they\u2019d like to see a similar undertaking in their state<\/a>, and Trump has recently attacked Vos and other Republicans in the state for \u201cactively trying to prevent a Forensic Audit,\u201d although backlash to Vos at the state convention was muted.<\/p>\n A Trump adviser recently told POLITICO<\/a> that the former president remains \u201cadamant about doing audits\u201d and \u201cis going to keep up pressure on Republicans to have the courage to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n The particularities of the process in Arizona have also concerned election experts, who fear that activists elsewhere will try to mirror or copy a flawed approach from the state.<\/p>\n The so-called audit has crossed deep into conspiratorial territory. Workers had checked for bamboo fibers in ballots (a nod to a baseless theory that ballots may have been sent from Asia) and used UV lights on ballots, potentially for (non-existent) watermarks. Cyber Ninjas itself is owned by a man who has promoted<\/a> the #StopTheSteal conspiracy theory, which is based in the belief that Trump actually won, and recently appeared in a conspiracy-filled film about the election<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was clear they had no idea how elections are administered,\u201d Morrell, who served as an observer, said. \u201cThat\u2019s the concern, is that we\u2019ve suddenly left this place where we follow the rule of law, and it\u2019s like the Wild Wild West.\u201d<\/p>\n The effort, or at least its first stages, appears to be winding down. The pseudo-official Twitter account tweeted<\/a> that the \u201cpaper examination and counting\u201d of the nearly 2.1 million ballots concluded on Friday. But Ken Bennett, a former Arizona Republican secretary of state who has served as a liaison for the effort, told the Associated Press<\/a> that a report is still weeks to months away.<\/p>\n (A request for an interview sent to Bennett and a second email address associated with the effort was acknowledged repeatedly by a staffer, but nobody was made available.) <\/p>\n Elections experts are already warning that any conclusion drawn from the Arizona review will be untrustworthy. A report from the nonpartisan States United Democracy Center<\/a>, co-authored by former Kentucky Republican Secretary of State Trey Grayson and Barry Burden, the director of the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin\u2013Madison, ripped into the Arizona effort as being poorly run and not transparent.<\/p>\n Grayson also said fixation on 2020 will hurt Republicans in the long run. \u201cI want to be involved in this [report] because I\u2019m worried,\u201d he said, noting he is an active party member and just recently attended a fundraiser for a Republican senator. \u201cI want Republicans to see, \u2018Here\u2019s one of us who\u2019s telling you don\u2019t waste your time, don\u2019t waste your money. You\u2019re undermining confidence. It\u2019s backfiring.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Trump and his supporters have also glommed on to legitimate efforts elsewhere, quickly abandoning them when they did not turn up evidence of fraud the former president wanted.<\/p>\n A bipartisan group of New Hampshire lawmakers authorized an audit of a state House of Representatives race after a recount showed a Republican candidate actually received hundreds more votes than initially tallied. The New Hampshire audit was extremely unusual, election experts say, because it took place well after the election, and there were no established laws for how to conduct a post-election audit in the state. The major difference between Arizona and New Hampshire? This audit was run by well-respected election professionals.<\/p>\n Trump initially praised the audit as part of the \u201cincredible fight to seek out the truth on the massive Election Fraud which took place in New Hampshire and the 2020 Presidential Election.\u201d<\/p>\n