In the wake of the independent forensic audit of the 2020 election in Maricopa County, Ariz., the state may step in to take control of the county’s election administration before the next election.
Arizona Senate President Karen Fann hinted about the possible takeover during an interview with John Solomon on his podcast.
On September 24, the results of the audit were presented to the Arizona state Senate. Many in the mainstream media claimed that the audit proved Joe Biden was the legitimate winner, but more than 50,000 ballots were found to have been impacted by irregularities, requiring further investigation. Joe Biden’s state-certified margin of victory was a mere 10,457 votes. Some of the irregularities include ballots mailed from prior addresses, potential voters who cast ballots in multiple counties, more ballots returned than received by voters, and others.
It is up to Republican Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich to investigate whether any laws were broken during the 2020 election, and to what extent.
“If you didn’t do your job, and the laws were broken, somebody has to answer for it, whether it was intentional or not,” Fann told Solomon. She said she believes Brnovich will find evidence of laws broken, and said one of the biggest takeaways from the audit was that “if you don’t watch over your own elections, people start breaking the rules.” She also expressed frustration with Maricopa County officials’ refusal to cooperate with the audit. “They have refused time and time and time again [to sit down with us],” she explained.
If “you are breaking the laws, and you can’t do the election yourself, then maybe the state ought to step in and do it,” Fann warned. “Maybe that’s the penalty.”
A takeover of the Maricopa Country elections will certainly be controversial. The narrative of the mainstream media is that the audit confirmed Biden’s victory.
“The partisan review of Maricopa County’s 2.1 million ballots cast in the 2020 election found a vote count nearly identical to what the county had previously reported,” CNN reported. Like other liberal outlets, CNN focused on the results of the hand-recount part of the audit. As we know, hand recounts may account for slight discrepancies in counting but do not address irregularities or potentially illegally cast ballots.
The audit report also made a series of recommendations for legislative fixes to ensure future elections are more secure, which will also meet resistance from the Democrats.
“This baseless ‘audit’ has been a massive waste of taxpayer money and a dangerous attempt by extremist Republicans to undermine our democracy,” DNC spokesperson Ryan Thomas said in a statement. He also accused the Arizona GOP of “relitigating an election they know President Joe Biden won fairly and spreading dangerous misinformation about the security of our elections as a ruse to restrict voting rights across the country.”
The effort to make elections more secure has, sadly, become a partisan issue, with Democrats making outlandish claims that efforts to make elections more secure are racist. But, according to a recent poll, most people aren’t buying their rhetoric. Forty-four percent of American adults think rules around voting aren’t strict enough, while only 33 percent say they make voting too difficult. Democrats are the only group of people who overwhelmingly believe it’s difficult to vote.