After reports that the Arizona Republican Party was going to allow an inspection of all of the documents related to its January 23rd election, a much more restricted inspection took place on Friday at the offices of the AZGOP attorneys.
The numerous State Committeemen who gathered for the anticipated audit were instead shown the contents of two boxes of materials, then only allowed to inspect much of the contents of one of the boxes, while they were not permitted to inspect the contents of the second box in any way.
In spite of this severely curtailed effort, the physical recounts of the numbers of ballots cast in the CD Member At Large races showed different numbers for one-third of the races, with the number of ballots in error in the CD2 race equal to the reported margin of error.
“The people in charge announced that Bill Beard lost by three votes, and his CD race is missing three ballots? If you wanted a clear example of why you are supposed to have proper Tally procedures and audits to confirm the validity of race outcomes, that’s as clear an example as you can get.” said one attendee of the inspection.
Most of the people in the room were frustrated by the refusal of Greg Safsten, the Executive Director of the AZGOP, to allow them to simply count the numbers of ballots cast in the January election. The Party also had refused to turn over any of the credentials information that would allow the team, which included a professional auditor, to complete a real audit.
“We were there on behalf of hundreds of State Committeemen who wanted us to count ballots and be able to report back that things were accurate or not, and the State Party blocked us every step of the way,” reported a frustrated participant.
One of the attendees was Constantin Querard, a State Committeeman and longtime conservative political consultant, who kept interested Republicans and other politicos appraised of the progress on his Twitter account.
Matter settled. If u were on the ballot, u won’t handle the ballots. Volunteers in the room include a professional internal auditor, so that’s good. Let the unboxing begin.
— Constantin Querard (@CQuerard) May 7, 2021
AZGOP attorneys don’t know if the state party has any other documents in its possession. AZGOP State Party Exec Dir is present but won’t say. Read into that what you will.
— Constantin Querard (@CQuerard) May 7, 2021
Now AZGOP not interested in allowing inspection of any races outside of CD2 and CD8 At Large races.
— Constantin Querard (@CQuerard) May 7, 2021
Total ballots cast in each CD counted and confirmed. AZGOP boxing CDs 1,3,4,5,5,7,9 without any further inspection. Just as well. In the absence of the missing docs the party won’t provide, it is impossible to confirm validity of counts anyway.
— Constantin Querard (@CQuerard) May 7, 2021
Blank ballots box has a nice large stack of filled out ballots. A few marked spoiled. Most with no indication. Party believes they are all spoiled. Never seen spoiled ballots kept with blanks before.
— Constantin Querard (@CQuerard) May 7, 2021
For its part, Kelli Ward and her team at the AZGOP HQclaimed victory and a complete exoneration in a Friday evening email:
For his part, Querard disagreed with the Party’s claims, tweeting in response:
Just got my AZGOP email claiming the counts from today’s inspection were all good when they know the CD2 race alone was off by the entire margin of victory. This is fundamentally dishonest & another reason more and more Republicans want a real audit or clean election. pic.twitter.com/W4hfoQJlXd
— Constantin Querard (@CQuerard) May 8, 2021
The AZGOP is still involved in two separate lawsuits, trying to prevent a full audit and trying to block State Committeemen from holding a Special Meeting to have a fresh election. Both of those are supposed to have additional hearings this month.