PHOENIX โ Gov. Doug Ducey said he remains confident in the results of the 2020 election yet wants to see the results of a Republican-backed audit and hand count of 2.1 million ballots cast in Maricopa County.
โIโve defended our election integrity,โ the Republican governor said at a Monday news conference. โIโm not going to change my position at all.โ
Ducey said Arizona has had a series of reforms and improvements in the past three decades.
โIn many ways I think Arizona is a model state,โ he said. โWe have a compendium of best practices in our state.โ
Despite that, Ducey said it was within the power of the state Senate, as a separate branch of government, to decide whether another audit is needed.
He brushed aside a question of whether that feeds into the conspiracy theories that somehow the results of the election โ which he certified as accurate โ were wrong.
โTo give an accurate answer, Iโd have to see the results of what the Senate is well within its legal rights to do,โ he said.
All this comes as Democrats say the sole reason for the Senateโs audit is to come up with an excuse to make it more difficult to vote.
โRight now Arizona is leading the country in voter suppression bills from Republican legislators,โ said Sen. Martin Quezada, D-Glendale. โIt is no coincidence this is happening after they lost an election.โ
All five Maricopa County supervisors have said a new audit is unnecessary. But only Democrat Steve Gallardo showed up Monday for the boardโs separate news conference. There, he dealt with hecklers who insisted there was massive fraud and that Donald Trump actually defeated Joe Biden in Arizona.
โYou lost the election,โ Gallardo said. โDeal with it.โ
The Senateโs move to audit the ballots comes despite a legally required hand count of a random sample that turned up no errors.
The counting equipment was tested both before and after the election. And the Maricopa supervisors, four of whom are Republicans, hired outside auditors in a bid to prove there was no tampering with the machinery.
That still left GOP senators dissatisfied and resulted in them going to court and winning the legal right to access the equipment and the ballots. Yet on Monday, Senate President Karen Fann said she is still working to get this process started more than four months after the election was completed.
โWe hope we have some thing to get out to you very soon,โ she said.
Some of what needs to be worked out is the mechanics of having people go through 2.1 million ballots and mark down, one by one, how someone voted.
Fann said she hoped to have bipartisan teams reviewing each batch to provide a level of accountability. So far, though, Democrats see the entire effort as a purely political show and wonโt participate.
โItโs too bad the Democratic Party doesnโt believe in getting answers for our constituents,โ Fann said. โI think thatโs our job.โ
The Democrats, for their part, say the only reason people have questions is that Republicans, led by Trump, have made repeated and unsubstantiated claims of fraud. And they see no reason to participate.
It isnโt just the Democrats who question the whole premise behind the audit.
Helen Purcell, a former Maricopa County recorder, and a Republican, said she was approached by an attorney representing GOP senators asking if she would be willing to oversee the process. She refused, calling it โnot a necessary processโ and saying she trusts the results of the two independent audits already conducted by the county.
Fann said that for the time being, the plan is to limit the hand count solely to the presidential race, in which Biden outpolled Trump in Maricopa County by more than 45,000 votes. That provided a crucial edge to let Biden win Arizona by 10,457 votes.
The Senate president denied that all this does is feed into the claims, all so far with no basis, that Trump really won here.
โWe start with the presidential primarily because that was the closest one in terms of numbers,โ Fann said.
As for how the task will be handled, โAll this will be made clear as soon as we finish the contract details,โ Fann said, referring to the agreement the Senate is making with a yet-to-be-identified outside firm. She promised the contract will be made public.
