When A. J. LaFaro, the Chair of the Maricopa County GOP, first brought the video evidence of ballot harvesting, better known as ballot box stuffing to the public’s attention, he had no idea what would come of it. His revelation has sparked a national debate and a television commercial.
Arizona Secretary of State candidate and current State Senator Michele Reagan released a commercial on Wednesday in response to her Democrat challenger Terry Goddard’s claim that there is no voter fraud. In the ad, Goddard says he’d like “to see some evidence of fraud.” With a quick fade to LaFaro’s video, the viewer sees Ben Marin with Citizens for a Better Arizona filling a ballot box with handfuls of ballots. A Narrator notes that Arizona is the only state in the Union that allows “ballot harvesting.”
Reagan, who attempted to pass legislation that would prevent the highly questionable practice, called the lapse in Arizona law, “absolutely laughable”, “not acceptable” and “provides the opportunity for fraud”.
LaFaro’s video has become known as the Yeti sighting, in reference to the fact that the practice of ballot box stuffing has been denied for years, but finally the illusive beast was caught on tape. On Wednesday, LaFaro appeared on the James T. Harris show to discuss the vitriolic reaction to his Yeti footage. Harris asked LaFaro about being “in hot water with Democrat bloggers,” who have been pouring out content attacking the popular Republican leader. LaFaro responded, “I wouldn’t expect anything less, because that’s what they do. They can’t sit there and have an intelligent discussion and debate the issues. The modus operandi is to just attack, attack, attack, and that’s all they do. I wouldn’t have expected anything less.”
“Republicans are individuals, who take personal responsibility. They don’t need a gentleman like the one in that video to gather their ballots.” Harris, who describes himself as an American of African descent responded that the Democrats “look a little brown people, and their little black brothers and sisters as ‘you’re not responsible.’ Harris said that the Democrats believe that minorities “just don’t trust the government enough to mail in the ballot, ‘go and collect them and take them in for us.’ They want us to believe that this man is going around to help the poor and the elderly, but it’s a soft bigotry, no hard bigotry of low expectations.”
Doktor Zoom, a writer with Wonkette defended the bigotry of low expectations by attacking LaFaro. Zoom begins his screed, “Finally, the right has incontrovertible evidence of voting fraud!” Zoom then blasts LaFaro claiming that he was “observing early primary balloting at the Maricopa County Elections Department in August, just to make sure the wrong kind of people didn’t try to do any voter fraud. He’s a real patriot.” Doktor Zoom clearly is not aware, or chose to ignore the fact, that in Arizona both parties send observers not only to the polls, but to the ballot processing centers.
As LaFaro and Reagan have repeatedly said that Marine’s harvesting is unfortunately legal in the state of Arizona, which is why so many are beginning to fight mail-in voting.
Related articles:
Arizona primary ballot box stuffing caught on tape
Landrum Taylor “pulling together a coalition like this doesn’t happen by accident”