The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, led by Republicans, in Arizona says the state Senate’s audit of its 2020 presidential election results is “harming” them and should be brought to an end.
“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,” officials wrote in a letter.
They added, “Our state has become a laughingstock. Worse, this ‘audit’ is encouraging our citizens to distrust elections, which weakens our democratic republic.”
The officials accused the state Senate of repeatedly losing control “of your twitter account, which has tweeted things that appear to be the rantings of a petulant child — not the serious statements of a serious audit.”
They continued, “None of this is inspiring confidence. None of this will cause our citizens to trust elections. In fact, it is having the opposite result.”
Claiming the “auditors” do not “have the experience necessary to conduct an audit of an election,” the officials also said they “do not know the laws, nor the procedures, nor the best practices. It is inevitable that they will arrive at questionable conclusions.”
During an appearance on CNN’s “New Day,” Stephen Richer, the Maricopa County recorder, told host John Berman, “They’ve just accused us too many times of breaking the law. They’ve defamed our good employees too many times. They’ve defamed the hard-working people here and we’re humans. We’re all humans and we have our limits.”
Watch his comments below:
“Stop saying we broke the law without any evidence,” the Maricopa County elections recorder says, calling for an end to Arizona’s election audit.
— New Day (@NewDay) May 18, 2021
“If we don’t push back against this now, we’re going to be doing this all the way through 2022" and beyond.https://t.co/zeHU3WPonI pic.twitter.com/lkMC8sYizq
Richer also touched on former President Donald Trump’s latest claim, “The entire Database of Maricopa County in Arizona has been DELETED! This is illegal and the Arizona State Senate, who is leading the Forensic Audit, is up in arms.”
The county official responded, “I’m sorry … that’s just not true.”
Richer called on the state Senate to “stop saying we broke the law without any evidence.”
He warned, “If we don’t push back against this now, we’re going to be doing this all the way through 2022.”