They position themselves as victims of a fraud who are trying to β€œstop the steal.”

They cloak themselves in righteous rhetoric about audits and election integrity.

They declare themselves part of a β€œsilent majority.”

But in reality they aren’t victims, just a deluded electoral minority. They’re aspiring perpetrators who want to victimize you by taking away your vote.

Arizona officials have certified Joe Biden’s narrow victory over President Donald Trump in the state. Democratic Secretary of State Katie Hobbs and Republican Gov. Doug Ducey stood up for the integrity of the election even as lawyers for Trump were across town Monday arguing without evidence to nine Republican lawmakers that the election was marred by fraud.

Pro-Trump extremists are converging on Washington, D.C., where anti-democracy radicals in Congress will try to disenfranchise Arizona voters Wednesday, Jan. 6 by rejecting the electors we chose.

This isn’t hyperbole β€” that’s what’s really happening. The radicals in D.C. are out to undermine American democracy by acting as if they are being victimized and leveraging that position to install the loser of the election, Donald Trump, as president.

Some of those trying to take away Arizonans’ votes are from out of state. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz will formally object to certifying Arizona’s electors Wednesday, the Washington Post reported.

Cruz, of course, comes from the same state as Attorney General Ken Paxton, who filed suit to overturn election results in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. They apparently have a thing about messing with other states in Texas.

But Arizona members of Congress are also eagerly pursuing the disenfranchisement project. Reps. Andy Biggs and Paul Gosar plan to object to certifying Arizona’s presidential election results. Yes, the same votes that put them back in Congress were fraudulent when it came to the presidential election, they claim.

Along with the congressmen, we have right-wing extremist legislators in Arizona trying to disenfranchise the same voters who put them in office by posturing as defenders of election integrity.

Rep. Mark Finchem, the Oro Valley legislator and longtime conspiracy enthusiast, has been leading efforts to overturn Arizona’s election result and got a boost from Trump Monday night.

At a Georgia rally, Trump read a letter from Finchem, who identified himself as chair of the House Federal Relations committee, a committee that no longer exists.

In the letter, as read by Trump, Finchem said: β€œSubsequent to the election members of the legislature were inundated with complaints from constituents relating to the integrity of the general election and the accuracy of canvassed results. In many instances constituents reported that their early or in-person ballots may not have been correctly tabulated.”

β€œIn Pima County and Maricopa County, it appears that 143,000 illegal votes were actually injected into the ballot system.”

Sen. Kelly Townsend, a Mesa Republican, has zoomed right past demanding a β€œforensic audit” to demand that the Arizona Legislature vote to seat Trump’s electors. She’s no longer interested in proving any wrongdoing. She just wants to race to the end of this transparently fake pursuit and declare Trump the victor.

All of this, of course, is false. How do we know?

There were about a dozen lawsuits filed in Arizona and federal courts about the conduct of the state’s election. Not one was filed in Pima County. Not one, even though Trump, through Finchem, now insists that thousands of illegal votes were β€œinjected” here.

Most of the lawsuits were thrown out with disdain because they were baseless and ridiculous. One revealed a handful of mistakes in recording the votes on ballots that had to be duplicated to be counted. This was a problem, for sure, but not fraud and not a problem that would change the outcome.

β€œA judge cannot change election rules whenever someone has β€˜questions’ or β€˜concerns’ about the results,” Maricopa County Superior Court Judge John Hannah said in his Dec. 22 ruling on a lawsuit by the Arizona Republican Party asking the judge to order new hand counts.

β€œThe plaintiff baldly asserted that this relief was necessary to maintain β€˜confidence in the integrity of our elections,’ without alleging any facts to show that the machines might have miscounted the votes.”

Reviewing the plaintiffs’ pursuit of the case, Hannah concluded: β€œThe real issue, evidently, was the outcome of the 2020 election.”

Trump has worked his extremist supporters into this frenzy by appealing to their sense of persecution by elites, or globalists, or the media, or whoever the big β€œthem” of the moment may be. But Trump didn’t invent that persecution delusion β€” it has been built for decades in the right-wing media.

β€œThe world view on the right is that the dominant mainstream globalist conspiracy, the elite conspiracy, is out to get them,” said Jennifer Mercieca, a Texas A&M professor of communication and author of β€œDemagogue for President: The Rhetorical Genius of Donald Trump.”

Trump has played into the perception by arguing, β€œβ€˜They’re out to get you, and I’m the thing standing between you and them,’” Mercieca said. β€œSo much of why this is successful in this moment is because the way the narrative has been built up over the decades.”

In today’s conflict, their perception of victimhood is the reverse of the truth. They are perpetrators.

Trump proved that in his call with the Georgia secretary of state, in which he pleaded, β€œI just want 11,780 votes” β€” the number of votes that would eliminate Joe Biden’s margin in Georgia.

They are not victims, nor a majority. They aren’t trying to stop any steal or election fraud.

They are trying to steal the election for Trump by disenfranchising Arizona voters.

Become a #ThisIsTucson member! Your contribution helps our team bring you stories that keep you connected to the community. Become a member today.

To contact opinion columnist Tim Steller: tsteller@tucson.com or 807-7789. On Twitter: @senyorreporter.