Citing the unfounded allegations of fraud that motivated the Arizona Senate’s sham “audit,” state legislators have made the state a national leader in advancing voter-suppression legislation. #AZBigLie
This year, Arizona state lawmakers put forward a huge number of election-related bills seeking to impose new restrictions on voting. CNN called Arizona “ground zero” for election changes. #AZBigLie cnn.com/2022/02/22/pol…
Many of those bills won’t pass, but others have. In May 2021, Gov. Doug Ducey signed SB 1485 which dramatically curtailed Arizona’s popular vote-by-mail program. nytimes.com/2021/05/11/us/…
Voters are now purged from the state’s early voting list if they do not cast a ballot at least once every two years.
Those who will be disenfranchised are disproportionately people of color, young people, and women. Of the 150,000 people who are at risk of being removed from the voter rolls because of SB 1485, as many as one-third are Latino. #AZBigLie apnews.com/article/race-a…
The sham “audit” added fuel to this movement and years of fear-mongering about voter fraud under the guise of “election integrity” have contributed to this current push to erect more barriers to voting. Learn more about our ongoing investigation here: americanoversight.org/arizonas-sham-…
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NEW: A Wisc. judge found that the state Assembly and Speaker Vos had not yet done enough to avoid potential penalties over their continuing failure to turn over public records related to the partisan election review. americanoversight.org/wisconsin-asse…
The judge also ordered Vos and the Assembly to produce an affidavit from lead election investigator Michael Gableman.
The affidavit should explain who worked for Gableman on the Assembly’s contract, what steps he took to recover records from those employees or subcontractors, and what records (if any) are in his possession or were destroyed.
As other state legislatures — namely Pennsylvania’s and Wisconsin’s — have initiated their own sham election investigations, proponents of the Big Lie are increasingly looking to replicate the Arizona “audit” in their own states. #AZBigLie
Records we’ve obtained show that those activists were frequently in touch with those involved in the Arizona effort.
In June 2021, Randy Pullen, who served as “audit” spokesman, received a text from William “Sparky” Smith, who was from the Election Integrity Project group.
Smith said that he was seeking info for an audit of 13 counties that his organization was looking to conduct in California. “We would like for our 4-6 member team to meet with Az Audit officials who can give details of the logistics,” Smith wrote. Pullen asked how he could help.
Who paid for the “audit” and what was the total cost? Public records have provided details about costs and subcontractors, but the public still needs to see additional documentation regarding how much money was raised and how much was paid to various subcontractors.
What role did funders or prominent supporters play in the execution of the “audit”? We have seen a number of indications that funders or other “audit” supporters played operational roles.
NEW: In response to our litigation, the Arizona Senate has released records related to its partisan “audit” previously held by Cyber Ninjas. The records reveal new details about “audit” subcontracts and payments. americanoversight.org/records-previo…
The records include a number of invoices from individuals and firms that subcontracted with Cyber Ninjas. Several of the invoices are for amounts in the hundreds of thousands.
Payments to the firm StratTech, which led the hand count for much of the “audit,” total in the millions. documentcloud.org/documents/2202…
The Arizona Senate’s widely discredited “audit” of the 2020 election results in Maricopa County exemplifies why election reviews are so dangerous: Its widely discredited “findings” have been used to push anti-voting legislation that disproportionately harms people of color.
This year, Arizona state lawmakers put forward a huge number of election-related bills seeking to impose new restrictions on voting. In Feb., @azebtrak listed the ~100 bills submitted in the state Legislature relating to election security & voting rights. azcentral.com/story/news/pol…
Many of the bills were put forward under the guise of making elections more secure, with some taking direct aim at measures that had facilitated voting and others directly influenced by the “audit”:
The Arizona Senate’s election “audit” was led and encouraged by people with a political interest in finding evidence of wrongdoing or voting irregularities. That predetermined conclusion was the goal, and the “audit” was tainted by that bias. #AZBigLie
Partisan actors operating under the (false) assumption that voter fraud occurred in Maricopa County and elsewhere have been involved at nearly every stage of the “audit” process.
Early communications we obtained reveal that Senate President Karen Fann and others were in frequent contact with these election deniers, and messages suggest that Fann was sympathetic to calls for the election to be overturned because of alleged fraud.