'Enough is enough': Arizona Republican election official says shoddy audit must stop

Republican election officials in Maricopa County, Arizona, have had enough of the state Senate GOP’s audit of their county’s 2020 presidential election results.

In a letter to the state Senate president and in a fiery news conference on Monday night, Bill Gates, one of four Republicans on the five-member Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, charged that the audit is “beneath the dignity of the Senate.”

“Enough is enough,” Gates said during the news conference. “It’s time to push back on the big lie.”

“I want to be clear that I believe that Joe Biden won the election, all right, and the reason that I feel confident in saying that, particularly in Maricopa County, is that we overturned every stone, and we have professionals, both with the early voting and the Election Day voting. They did everything right; we asked the difficult questions, all right, and we certified the election back in November. But now it’s time to say, Enough is enough.”

Two previous audits of the same vote found no evidence of fraud or irregularities.

“We must do this,” Gates said. “We must do this as a member of the Republican Party, we must do this as a member of the Board of Supervisors. We need to do this as a country, otherwise we are not going to be able to move forward and have an election in 2022 that we can all believe the results — whatever they may be.”

Gates’ comments came after the current auditors — who were hired by a firm run by a Donald Trump-supporting conspiracy theorist — accused Maricopa County of deleting voter databases before handing over materials for the audit.

It’s not true, but Republicans — including Trump himself — have glommed on to the lie as evidence they are right about their voter fraud claims.

Aside from holding the news conference, the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors also sent a letter to Republican Senate President Karen Fann, who forced the audit that’s currently taking place, accusing the auditors Fann hired of lying and defaming the board.

“Their stunning lack of a basic understanding for how their software works is egregious and only made worse by the false tweet sent defaming the hardworking employees of Maricopa County,” the letter reads.

The letter goes on to say that the the GOP-controlled Senate’s “so called ‘audit’ demonstrates to the world that the Arizona Senate is not acting in good faith, has no intention of learning anything about the November 2020 General Election, but is only interested in feeding the various festering conspiracy theories that fuel the fundraising schemes of those pulling your strings.”

The Republicans on the Board of Supervisors are the latest GOP officials in Arizona to come out against the audit, which has pushed baseless and racist conspiracy theories.

GOP state Sen. Paul Boyer, who initially supported the audit, now says the effort makes Republicans “look like idiots.”

Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Justice has raised concerns that the audit is violating election laws.

It’s unclear when the audit will wrap up. The count is currently paused, as the arena where it’s being held was booked for the week for high school graduations.

Even before the pause, the audit was running far behind schedule.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.