Tag: GOP using Trump election fraud lie to try to overturn the 2020 election

Arizona’s GOP-backed ballot review has raised nearly $5.7 million in private donations, organizers say

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A private contractor conducting a Republican-commissioned review of 2020 presidential ballots in Arizona’s largest county announced late Wednesday that it has collected nearly $5.7 million in private donations to fund the process.

The controversial ballot review, which included a hand recount of Maricopa County’s nearly 2.1 million ballots and a review of ballot tabulating machines, has been underway since April. It was ordered by the state’s Republican-led Senate, which agreed to spend $150,000 in taxpayer money to fund the audit. But the Senate allowed Cyber Ninjas, a Florida-based firm hired to lead the process, to collect donations as well.

It has been clear for months that the lengthy ballot review, which was conducted by dozens of workers, some working nearly round-the-clock, was being largely financed by allies of former president Donald Trump. The newly released figures put that fact in sharp relief: More than 97 percent of the audit’s costs have so far been shouldered by donations from five organizations led by people who have promoted the false claim that the election was stolen. Continue reading.

Justice Dept. Warns States on Voting Laws and Election Audits

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The department said that auditors could face criminal or civil penalties if they flouted elections laws.

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department on Wednesday sent another warning shot to Republican state legislatures that have initiated private audits of voting tabulations broadly viewed as efforts to cast doubt on the results of the presidential election.

The department warned that auditors could face criminal and civil penalties if they destroy any records related to the election or intimidate voters in violation of the Civil Rights Act of 1960 and federal laws prohibiting voter intimidation.

The admonishment came in election-related guidance documentsissued as part of the department’s larger plan to protect access to the polls, announced by Attorney General Merrick B. Garland in June. Another document released on Wednesday outlined federal laws on how ballots are cast and said that the department could scrutinize states that revert to prepandemic voting procedures, which may not have allowed as many people to vote early or by mail. Continue reading.

Commentary: Inside observers say the Arizona ‘auditors’ are backtracking — and the reality only supports Biden’s win

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The “big lie” that President Joe Biden was not legitimately elected is not going away. One reason is Americans who care about their democracy are not learning how votes for president in 2020 were counted and verified — neither from the big lie’s promoters nor from most of its fact-driven critics.

Most visibly, the absence of a clear and accurate explanation can be found among former President Donald Trump’s ardent supporters. As seen in a July 15 briefing in Arizona’s legislature, the contractors hired by the state Senate to assess the 2020 election’s results unleashed a new thicket of finger-pointing and innuendo that fans doubts about Maricopa County’s election administration and votes for Biden.

Critics of the big lie, who range from state officials (including Republicans) to voting rights advocates — and, of course, Democrats— have mostly emphasized that the Arizona Senate’s inquiry and copycat efforts in other states are bad faith exercises led by Trump supporters who lack election auditing experience. Continue reading.

Pennsylvania decertifies county voting system following private company audit promoted by pro-Trump state senators

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Pennsylvania’s acting secretary of state has decertified a county’s voting system for future elections after it was subjected to a review by a private company in an effort promoted by a group of state senators supporting former president Donald Trump’s baseless claims of widespread fraud in the 2020 election.

Acting secretary of state Veronica W. Degraffenreid said in a statement Wednesday that Wake TSI’s examination of the Fulton County ballots earlier this year violated the state’s election code.

Pennsylvania is the second state where officials have decertified election equipment because of questionable audits requested by Republicans. Arizona’s Maricopa County said in June that it will replace voting equipment that was turned over to a private contractor for a Republican-commissioned review of the 2020 election. Continue reading.

Arizona’s Maricopa County will replace voting equipment, fearful that GOP-backed election review has compromised security

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Arizona’s Maricopa County announced Monday that it will replace voting equipment that was turned over to a private contractor for a Republican-commissioned review of the 2020 presidential election, concerned that the process compromised the security of the machines.

Officials from Maricopa, the state’s largest county and home to Phoenix, provided no estimates of the costs involved but have previously said that the machines cost millions to acquire.

“The voters of Maricopa County can rest assured, the County will never use equipment that could pose a risk to free and fair elections,” the county said in a statement. “As a result, the County will not use the subpoenaed equipment in any future elections.” Continue reading.

Majority of Americans believe GOP ‘election audits’ are a sham designed to undermine election processes

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As Republican lawmakers continue their efforts to conduct audits of the 2020 presidential election, the majority of Americans are raising questions about the integrity of their efforts. 

The results of a new Monmouth University poll offer insight into how Americans view the so-called election audits, like the one underway in Maricopa County, Ariz. According to Truthout, poll respondents were asked if they believed election audits were “legitimate efforts to identify potential voting irregularities” or “partisan efforts to undermine valid election results.”

Based on the poll results, many Americans see the audits as nothing more than a partisan effort to undermine the outcome of the presidential election. Continue reading.

Pennsylvania Senate GOP edges toward Arizona-style election audit

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A top Pennsylvania Republican says he supports an audit of the state’s presidential election results similar to a review being conducted in Arizona, raising the potential for other states to spend taxpayer money investigating former President Trump’s false claims of improprieties and fraud.

Pennsylvania state Sen. David Argall (R), who heads the Senate State Government Committee that has oversight of election administration, told reporters he supports another look at the Pennsylvania results.

“It’s a very careful recount, forensic audit, so yeah, I don’t see the danger in it,” Argall said during a forum with reporters from Spotlight PA, a consortium of media companies from across the state. “I just think that it would not be a bad idea at all to proceed with an audit similar to what they’re doing in Arizona.”  Continue reading.

Scathing Pennsylvania paper editorial slams far-right Republicans for pushing ‘disgraceful’ election ‘audit’

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Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election, his campaign had no problem with legitimate bipartisan recounts in Pennsylvania, Arizona, Georgia and other states that he won — and those recounts confirmed his victory. But the partisan, overtly pro-Trump GOP “audits” now being conducted in Arizona and other states are not legitimate recounts, and the editorial board of the York Dispatch in York, Pennsylvania slams State Sen. Doug Mastriano, a far-right Republican, and his allies for pushing for such an “audit” in the Keystone State.

In a scathing editorial published on June 14, the Dispatch’s editorial board writes, “It will come as small surprise to anyone following the 2020 elections and their sorry aftermath that one of the ringleaders is State Sen. Doug Mastriano. The freshman Republican from Franklin County has worked tirelessly this past year to disenfranchise his own constituents in service to disgraced, disgraceful former President Donald Trump.”

The Dispatch’s editorial board continues, “It was Mastriano, recall, who orchestrated a post-election Gettysburg panel last November to trumpet unfounded allegations of voter fraud from Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani and others; who called for Pennsylvania’s legislature to overturn Trump’s loss in the state; who plotted with Trump more than a dozen times in the weeks after the president’s overwhelming electoral defeat; who was in the nation’s capital on January 6 along with thousands of other Trump-obsessed insurgents; and who has backed a variety of politically motivated, unnecessary voting restrictions.” Continue reading.

Arizona ‘Fraudit’ Challenged By Experienced Election Auditors

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A team of seasoned election auditors has challenged the Republicans leading the Arizona Senate’s inquiries into the accuracy of 2020’s presidential election results to a demonstration where the auditors say that they will conclusively show that Joe Biden beat Donald Trump in Arizona’s most populous county.

The challenge, led by a longtime Republican Party election observer and two technologists familiar with voting systems and vote-counting data, would present the results of every race in any randomly chosen batch of ballots, as generated by Maricopa County’s 2020 election data. Those paper ballots would be hand-counted and compared to the electronic totals to attest to the election’s results. These paper and digital records are the building blocks of the county’s voting system.

“We now have the capability to determine the ballot count and vote results for all of the elections on any batch and any box of ballots that were delivered to the [Senate’s contractor, Florida-based Cyber] Ninjasunder the [Senate’s] subpoena, without ever looking at a single ballot,” Tucson’s Benny White, a longtime election observer for the Arizona and Pima County Republican Parties, wrote on June 8 in a letter to Arizona Senate President Karen Fann and the audit liaison and former Secretary of State Ken Bennett. Fann and Bennett are Republicans. Continue reading.

Stephen Colbert Breaks Down Latest Bonkers Election Conspiracy To Emerge From GOP

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“Now this is obviously insane,” the “Late Show” host said of the wild “Italygate” theory.

Stephen Colbert took on the latest wild conspiracy to emerge from the GOP — the so-called “Italygate.”

The baseless theory suggests that people in Italy used military satellites to flip votes in the 2020 presidential election from then-President Donald Trump to his Democratic challenger, Joe Biden.

The theory was even pushed by then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows in the aftermath of Trump’s defeat, according to The New York Times. Meadows reportedly pressured the Justice Department to investigate. Continue reading.