The Republican-controlled Maricopa County Board of Supervisors slammed the ‘sham’ recount of the 2020 presidential results, calling it ‘political theater’ backed by ‘grifters and con-artists.’
The members of the board didn’t hold back when it came to expressing their disgust for the audit, which is examining 2.1 million ballots in Arizona‘s most populous county during the election between Joe Biden and Donald Trump.
It has become subject to numerous conspiracy theories including one that state elections officials shredded ballots, fed them to chickens, and then had the chickens incinerated to cover up the evidence.
Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer, a GOP official who is in charge of maintaining files on the country’s 2.6 million registered voters, blasted that claim.
‘I mean, that chickens one is probably pretty top of the charts,’ he told CNN.
The Republican-controlled Maricopa County Board of Supervisors slammed the ‘sham’ recount of the 2020 presidential results – above a contractor for Cyber Ninjas examines a ballot with a UV light as they look for evidence of bamboo to see if China conspired in the election
Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer, a GOP official, blasted a conspiracy theory that officials shredded ballots, fed them to chickens, and killed chickens to cover up evidence as ‘pretty top of the charts’
Stephen Richer, Arizona Republican who heads Maricopa County elections department, slams GOP-led election audits and accusations including:
• Chickens ate ballots and then were incinerated
• Hugo Chavez rigged voting machines pic.twitter.com/ULLayC0FhU
— The Recount (@therecount) May 18, 2021
The audit was ordered by the Republican-controlled state Senate in Arizona and is being paid for with a combination of tax payer money and private donations.
In a public meeting on Monday night and in a letter to state Senate President Karen Fann, who ordered the recount, the Maricopa county board criticized the audit as a ‘spectacle’ that is causing Arizona to be a ‘laughing stock’ and encouraging people to distrust elections.
In their letter to Fann, the county board of supervisors called out ‘the big lie,’ referring to the false claim the election was stolen from Trump. There has been no evidence of wide spread voter fraud in the presidential contest and multiple recount have confirmed Biden’s victory.
‘It is time to make a choice to defend the Constitution and the Republic,’ they wrote in the letter obtained by The Washington Post. ‘We stand united together to defend the Constitution and the Republic in our opposition to the Big Lie. We ask everyone to join us in standing for the truth.’
‘You have rented out the once good name of the Arizona State Senate to grifters and con-artists,’ they claimed.
In a show of unity Richer also signed on to the letter, as did the county’s Democratic sheriff.
‘We express our united view that your ‘audit’, no matter what your intentions were in the beginning, has become a spectacle that is harming all of us. Our state has become a laughingstock. Worse, this ‘audit’ is encouraging our citizens to distrust elections, which weakens our democratic republic,’ they wrote.
Richer told CNN the officials sent the letter to Fann because they’re exhausted.
‘It is exhausting having to respond to every insinuation when we’re trying to do the normal work of the county. I have no idea how long this will go on for. It will possibly go into 2022,’ he said.
‘Just stop indulging this. Stop giving space for lies,’ he noted.
Trump has touted the audit repeatedly and his allies are pouring money into the state but the Justice Department warned it could be in violation of federal voting and civil rights laws.
Multiple Republicans in the state have criticized the audit, saying the election was fairly conducted and the results – Biden beat Trump by 10,457 votes, or 0.3 percent of the nearly 3.4 million ballots cast – are accurate.
Two previous recounts of the ballots in Maricopa County, where Biden won by more than two points, found the results had been accurate.
The audit is being conducted by Cyber Ninjas, a Florida-based private contractor whose chief executive has promoted baseless claims that the 2020 election was fraudulent.
It no formal authority and will not change the election results in Arizona.
The board of supervisors, made up of four Republicans and one Democrat, declined to meet with Fann about issues she claimed the Cyber Ninjas found with the ballots.
‘I will not be responding to any more requests from this sham process. Finish your audit and be ready to defend what you’re finding in a court of law,’ Maricopa County Board of Supervisors Chairman Jack Sellers, a Republican, said at Monday’s public meeting.
‘This board is done explaining anything,’ he noted. ‘People’s ballots and money are not make-believe. It’s time to be done with this craziness, and get on with this county’s critical business.’
And Supervisor Bill Gates, also a Republican, said no Maricopa county official would attend Fann’s meeting on Tuesday.
‘This board was going to be part of a political theater broadcast on live stream by OAN,’ he said, referring to the pro-Trump news outlet One America News, whose hosts have been covering the audit. ‘We’re not going to be a part of that.’
State Senator Warren Petersen, the Republican chairman of the state Senate Judiciary Committee, tweeted in response he was disappointed no county officials would attend the gathering and said the letter was filled with ‘unnecessary insults.’
Contractors for Cyber Ninjas have counted about 500,000 out of 2.1 million ballots in Maricopa county, the largest county in Arizona
The ballots were put in storage this week as high school graduation ceremonies take place in the Veterans Memorial Coliseum where the recount was taking place; the audit begins again next week
Cyber Ninjas has been conducting a slow hand recount of the ballots on the floor of the Arizona Veterans Memorial Coliseum. They’ve also been examining them, with a microscope and UV light. One contractor said the workers are conducting a ‘forensic’ analysis of the ballots to determine if the paper is made of bamboo as part of their look into whether or not China interfered with the election.
Officials have decried their methods.
‘You have rented out the once good name of the Arizona State Senate to grifters and con-artists, who are fundraising hard-earned money from our fellow citizens even as your contractors parade around the Coliseum, hunting for bamboo,’ the officials wrote in their letter.
County officials, Richter said, have reached their limits.
‘It was one thing with the audit when they were looking at UV lights and looking for bamboo fibers in the paper,’ he told CNN. ‘But when they just accused us too many times of breaking the law, they defamed our good employees too many times, they’ve defamed the hard-working people here. We’re all humans, and we have our limits!’
The breaking point appears to have been when Fann sent a letter that implied that someone in the county had illegally removed critical election files from equipment and software that the Senate had subpoenaed.
Trump latched on to the claim and took it a step further, saying a statement on Saturday that the ‘entire Database of Maricopa County as been DELETED!’ He added: ‘This is illegal.’
The board learned about the claim when it went viral on Twitter.
In their letter to Fann, they said it was false and demanded a retraction.
‘We demand that you immediately rescind your false and malicious tweet asserting that Maricopa County ‘spoiled evidence’ in the days before we provided the server to the Senate,’ they wrote.
The contractors have counted about 500,000 ballots so far. They were forced to pause while high school graduation ceremonies took place in the coliseum. The ballots were packed up and placed in storage. Counting is expected to resume next week.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Dailymail.co.uk
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