Frustrated by the ongoing refusal of Arizona Republican Party Chairman Kelli Ward to allow for an audit of the January 23rd party elections, and informed by the party’s own lawyers that it is up to the State Committeemen to resolve the situation, the process of setting aside the January election results and redoing that election has begun, as State Committeemen from around the state have reported receiving a call that they can sign if they want the process to carry on.
The call is for a special meeting to be held April 24th, for the specific purposes of determining whether or not the previous election results should be set aside and then, assuming the answer to the first question is yes, conducting a new election that the call says must be “a proper election that follows the rules and bylaws, that is transparent, and that is auditable and sets an example for elections in Arizona to follow.”
“This is amazing that Ward has let things get to this point.” said one State Committeeman who was a previous Ward supporter, but who says he will be supporting the call and a new election. “We have bylaws she is ignoring, we care deeply about election integrity, and she has turned us into a laughing stock, and why? What happened in January that is so bad that she’d rather get run out of office and publicly humiliate herself than allow the public to see?”
For her part, Ward was insistent that there was no support for any such efforts and that her opponents would not be able to get the 20% of the state committeemen that would be needed to call a special meeting. Ward faced questions about the situation during the State GOP’s Executive Committee Meeting earlier in the week, and brushed off the audit effort as the actions of a small and meaningless group of protestors.
All of this is happening against the backdrop of the fight for election integrity that has been ongoing since November of 2020, with Ward fighting for audits and transparency for the November election, while fighting to block both for her own re-election in January, where she was reported to beat Sergio Arellano, a Hispanic activist who was on the National Advisory Board of Latinos for Trump, by just 42 votes.
According to a party official, any such call needs the signatures of 20% of the state committeemen and needs to be turned in 30 days prior to the date the proposed meeting is being called for, which means organizers have just one week to get the numbers they need.