“Did Cochise County’s election director really suggest some supporters of the Senate’s audit of Maricopa County’s election are liars?”
That was the question a reader posed to Arizona Daily Independent. The answer is yes, she did, sort of.
She is Lisa Marra, a registered Republican from Cochise County who works at the pleasure of the Board of Supervisors as the county’s top non-elected elections official. Marra is also the President of the Arizona Elections Officials Association (AZEOA).
A review of Twitter shows Marra has not been shy when expressing her opinion of claims by tens of thousands of voters in Maricopa County that some type of election fraud led to Donald Trump’s loss in the 2020 General Election. Nor has she held back when commenting about the Senate’s current audit of that election.
“We are living in a twilight zone. This has set such a bad precedence in our great state. It makes me, as an election director here, literally sick because there is nothing in the law that allows this especially when no irregularities were found. Just because people claimed fraud.” April 23, 2021
Then later that evening, Marra suggested the call for a Senate audit was based on lies.
“People lie. This is what they based audit on. People lied. They didn’t like the results.” April 23, 2021
Normally it would be unimportant what someone who lives in a county of approx. 82,000 registered voters in southeast Arizona has to say about the integrity of an election three hours away involving nearly 2.1 million Maricopa County voters.
But Marra’s position as head of the AZEOA and the fact she has publicly pushed back on voter integrity claims made by AZ GOP chair Kelli Ward and even the chair of the Cochise County Republican Committee about Maricopa County’s election has drawn attention.
Such as a Feb. 26 tweet in which Marra asserted there was no fraud in Maricopa County’s elections, but “Nothing will convince some people.” Then on March 5 she called out the former President and others for driving the continued call for a Senate audit.
“Because voter confidence should never have been undermined in the first place by elected officials or a President telling people it would be rigged. It wasn’t. #TheBigLie” March 5, 2021
Also in March, Marra called for an end to “this imaginary election conspiracy,” noting it was “plain ridiculous. Not to mention dangerous.”
On April 23, the same day attorneys argued before a Maricopa County judge and a justice of the Arizona Supreme Court about whether the Senate audit would go forward, Marra made a series of tweets, including one in which she noted feeling “embarrassed for Arizona and its elected officials.”
Then on Sunday evening, Marra tweeted about QAnon and the deliberate undermining of voter confidence. The irony that her own dismissive comments may be having a negative impact on the confidence of Cochise County voters who also support the Senate’s audit appears to be lost.
