On January 23rd, 2021, Arizona Republicans gathered for the annual meeting and considered a number of resolutions, many on the topic of election integrity. Given the close race between Donald Trump and Joe Biden, calls for audits, transparency, and concerns about the machines being used have become commonplace among GOP leaders and activists. With Biden declared the winner, those same calls have been widely mocked by Democrats who insist there is nothing to be learned from any audit and the process worked to perfection.
So it was with some amusement that Sergio Arellano, a national advisory board member for Latinos for Trump, and an active Arizona Republican, posted on his Facebook a resolution he had been shown by John Brakey, that had been introduced and passed by the Arizona Democratic Party exactly 11 years before.
Substitute a few words like Dominion for Sequoia and Texas for California, and the content is indistinguishable from the same content the media and Democrats made fun of the GOP for using:
PROPOSED ARIZONA DEMOCRATIC PARTY RESOLUTION
As passed Jan 23, 2010
WHEREAS Elections with the honest counting of all votes is the bedrock of any democracy and is fundamental in Arizona’s Constitution, and
WHEREAS all Arizona’s votes are counted with computers, and
WHEREAS it is unlawful to hand count the actual paper ballots in Arizona in any recount and whatever the computer reports for its second count must be accepted, and
WHEREAS our election computers can be easily rigged to falsify which person or which issue actually won any election, and
WHEREAS the Arizona Secretary of State is prohibited by law from looking inside an election computer database to check what any county has done with its computers, and
WHEREAS the Arizona Secretary of State is prohibited from looking at election computers from the outside to see if they are safely protected, and
WHEREAS Maricopa County’s “Sequoia” system was recently de-certified by the State of California and then re-certified with special security procedures not required in Arizona, (see note1) and
WHEREAS our Superior Court claims it does not have jurisdiction to consider cases about cheating, let alone do anything about future cheating,
THEREFORE, be it resolved that the Arizona Democratic Party urges the people of Arizona to elect Democratic legislative candidates who are pledged to see that the sanctity of the vote is protected.
Be it further resolved that the Arizona Democratic Party urges each county to use a graphic scanning system that would allow all political parties and persons to examine all the ballots cast in any election which would prevent election rigging by inherently flawed computers or could reveal unconstitutional computer errors.
As Arellano asked in his post, “So what the heck changed from then until now?”