On Monday (May 3), just as Arizona was accelerating its ballot auditing efforts, former President Trump issued a statement that “As of today, the 2020 presidential election will be known as the ‘Big Lie’!” On the same day, a rigorous mail-in ballot proposal in Arizona was delivered to the governor’s office, awaiting the governor’s signature to take effect.
Arizona’s comprehensive legal audit of nearly 2.1 million ballots cast in the county’s 2020 general election entered its second phase last Friday when the auditors announced the completion of the data collection process for Maricopa County’s voting machines. The number of ballot counting sites at the audit site has now multiplied and the workflow has been changed to “three shifts.”
Former Arizona Secretary of State Ken Bennett, who was appointed audit director, has said that they will verify every single ballot.
On Monday, Trump’s statement released by the Save America PAC contained only the above quote. On the same day, the Arizona State Auditor’s official Twitter feed posted a video from John Brakey, an assistant audit liaison.
Brakey is the co-founder of Audit USA and a progressive Democrat. In the video, he says, “I’m a lifelong progressive Democrat, and people used to call us liberals. I’m originally from Maine, and the work that I’m currently doing here is working for people, and people need to know if the election is real or not, and this (the audit) is a great opportunity.”
On the 4th, another video was posted on the audit’s official Twitter feed, in which Maricopa County Libertarian Party Chairman Brandon Slayton said: “I hope the public will recognize through this video that this is not just a state Republican-led audit, this is actually a bipartisan effort with Libertarians involved. As the chair of the minority party, it’s important to make sure all of our votes are counted, and it’s important to prove the election results to the ‘losers’.”
The audit is still ongoing, and Bennett revealed earlier that no further updates to the details of the audit will be made during the process, and that ensuring the security of data and information is their top priority.
Also, while the audit is underway, the Arizona legislature has been working to make changes to the election system. For example, a proposal called SB1003, after being voted on by the state House of Representatives, is now headed to the governor’s office for signature.
The proposal requires that in future elections, all voters who wish to amend or correct (Cured) their signatures on their mail-in ballots must do so by 7 p.m. on Election Day. This changes the previous deadline of five days after election day for voters to correct their signatures in an election. The content of the proposal is seen as the latest achievement of the state legislature in the area of election integrity.
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