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The "Arizona model": Republicans trek to Phoenix, planning 2020 election audits back home

cigaretteman

HR King
May 29, 2001
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The Pennsylvanians got here first. Three Republican legislators flew in on June 2, meeting with their Arizona counterparts, then touring the Arizona Veterans Memorial Coliseum where the Republican-backed election audit was in its 39th day. And they were impressed.
“The AZ Forensic Election Audit is the most comprehensive election audit in the history of United States,” state Sen. Doug Mastriano said. Pennsylvania, he told a conservative news channel, could follow the “Arizona model” as soon as July.



News got around, and other Republican legislators started to buy their tickets to Phoenix. They came, or are coming, from Colorado, Nevada, Alaska, Virginia and Wisconsin. Several delegations arrived from Georgia — state legislators, a candidate for governor, and the activist who has been working through courts to audit ballots from Atlanta’s Fulton County.
“I’ll be bringing this information back to Virginia,” said Virginia state Sen. Amanda Chase, who was censured by Democratic colleagues after using the word “patriots” to describe people who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6. “Ensuring every legal vote counts should be a bipartisan issue.”
The review of Maricopa County’s 2.1 million ballots, which organizers hope to finish this month, has infuriated Democrats, embarrassed some Republicans, and become a genuine inspiration for conservatives who do not believe that President Biden won the 2020 election.



None of the facts that angered critics have changed. It’s still relying on private funding, disclosed only when donors have decided to disclose what they gave. It’s still run by Cyber Ninjas, a data firm that had not conducted an election audit before. The process has sped up, but not changed, with three sections of counters in blue, red and green shirts spinning ballots on lazy Susans to be monitored by multiple auditors before they are subjected to physical examination by auditors in white and gray shirts.
But as the media frenzy died down, Republican interest ticked up. Arizona’s conservative legislators held multiple meetings this week with visitors from out of state, who then got tours of a venue that once hosted Jimi Hendrix and the Beach Boys.
“I think some of it was just people watching and seeing what's going on in Arizona,” said former Arizona secretary of state Ken Bennett, a spokesman for the audit who has been stationed at the Coliseum. “It took them a few weeks to decide: Wow, that's still going? And nobody shut it down? Something must be going on that maybe we ought to go look at if we're thinking about doing something similar in our state.”



Many of the visitors were in Washington for the Jan. 6 “Stop the Steal” rally that preceded the Capitol riot — Mastriano, Chase, Alaska state Rep. David Eastman and Colorado state Rep. Ron Hanks. After touring the floor, Hanks declined to comment on what he’d seen, but Eastman told the Anchorage Daily News that he’d seen the sort of scrutiny that could give Alaskans — whose presidential election wasn’t very close — confidence that their election was fair.
“I am grateful for the efforts that those in Arizona are making to increase confidence in their elections and hope we will be able to increase the confidence that Alaskans have in our elections as well,” he said. “Following the audit, regardless of the outcome, Arizonans will have confidence in their process. Alaskans deserve to have that same level of confidence.”
Doubts about the election are largely concentrated among Republicans, with most independents and nearly all Democrats saying that the election — in Arizona and elsewhere — was conducted fairly. (That sentiment was shared by former president Donald Trump's own Department of Justice and other administration officials who monitored it, even as Trump has continued to falsely claim that the election was rigged against him.)



The most recent polling on Arizona’s process, conducted by a critical third-party group, found just 37 percent of Arizonans with doubts about November 2020, nearly all of them Republicans. While most voters told the pollster that they’d be less likely to support a senator who supported the audit, most Republicans said they’d be more likely.
That’s not surprising, given that demands for a “forensic audit” here were being made in November, when Georgia was completing its own forensic audit of the election. There is disagreement over what “forensic” means; Georgia, for example, did not subject ballots to ultraviolet light, which Arizona’s auditors did, or track down voters to verify that they cast ballots, which Arizona’s auditors hoped they could do before deciding it was impractical.
But Arizona Republicans proved that donors would fund an ersatz count, that dozens or hundreds of volunteers would staff it, that toxic media coverage could not stop it, and that Republican voters wanted it more than anything. Garland Favorito, the Georgia activist who has led the effort to audit Fulton County's votes, said in an interview here that around 80 volunteers were ready to work on an audit, and that small donations would probably be able to fund the entire process, once courts decide what it looks like.



“We would love to have as much transparency as possible, and we're suing for transparency,” Favorito said. The Arizona example, of a massive space with security and room for nonpartisan or media observers, was the one he wanted to follow. “Unless they move the ballots into a large facility like this, then we're stuck right now in doing it in a warehouse in Fulton County. That room is of such a size that it could not accommodate press or the public.”
Republican politicians want more, too, though, and ask why their colleagues aren't demanding the same. Former Georgia legislator Vernon Jones, a Democrat-turned-Republican challenging Gov. Brian Kemp (R), has run on the audit, and mocked the governor on Twitter for not coming to Arizona to see it himself. He met with Arizona's Senate GOP leadership, with a state representative running as a pro-audit candidate for secretary of state, and mixed it up with a reporter who pointed out that One America News was fundraising for the audit while covering it.
“What facts do you have that they're fundraising?” Jones asked Arizona Republic reporter Jen Fifeld.



“She announced that they're fundraising,” Fifeld said, pointing to OAN's Christina Bobb, who was standing a few feet away.
“No, no. What facts do you have?” Jones asked. “She announced it. Doesn't mean they're funding it.” Jones got friendlier questions from former Trump adviser Steve Bannon, who has made support for the audit a MAGA litmus test. The audit, Jones said, was “exactly what I hope can come to Georgia,” and he knew why Democrats and reporters were so critical of it.
“The light is being shined on this process,” Jones said, predicting on Bannon's podcast that the “rats” would be exposed, first by Arizona's audit and then by Georgia's.

Some Republicans spent less time talking to the media on their pilgrimages; approached by reporters, Hanks bolted and said he had “no comment” on what he'd seen. But nobody walked away cold to the idea of another audit in their state. Georgia state Sen. Burt Jones — no relation to Vernon — told OAN's Bobb that the scene in Phoenix helped him understand how his state could deliver the kind of election probe that Republican voters wanted.


“It was very informative,” Jones said. “The group of forensic people we brought out here, who’s working on our current case in Georgia, was very impressed. I think they learned a lot.”

 
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