More Election Shenanigans from Cochise County, Arizona
Cochise County, Arizona Supervisors Ignore the Voters, Do Their Own Thing in Election Manipulation
Two of the three county supervisors in Cochise County, Arizona are far right extremist election deniers and in spite of overwhelming opposition from voters, are doing their dead level best to make it as confusing and obscure as possible to count and certify ballots in their county. Tom Crosby and Peggy Judd, whose antics cost the county almost $100,000 in legal fees defending their illegal attempt to force a hand-count of ballots from the mid-term election because they didn't trust the results of ballot counting machines. Their stubborn insistence on believing completely unsubstantiated claims about election fraud, leading to their refusal to certify some 55,000 ballots cast by county voters, almost cost a Congressman and two state legislators the election and would have disenfranchised every voter in the county.
But, as you can see from the articles above, which I hope the link gets you past the paywall, they are bent on ignoring the protests of their constituents over merging the job of the county election supervisor with that of the county recorder, putting ballot counting in the hands of a partisan political official. The most recent election supervisor, Lisa Marra, who served for 30 years, was not only popular with the voters, but had a reputation for running clean and accurate elections.
The latest move by the supervisors is drawing a very critical response, including lawsuits and vocal protests by crowds turning up at meetings. The shenanigans pulled by the two Republican supervisors surrounding the mid-term elections has prompted at least one recall petition getting started against Tom Crosby.
Are you Cochise County residents fed up yet? You should be. It sounds like it. Let me offer a suggestion. Follow through with the petition against Crosby and get one going to send Peggy Judd packing, too. Take your county elections back and away from nut case conspiracy theorists and election deniers. They have no place in a county government, and their stupidity and ignorance is embarrassing your county with the entire nation.
It's more than just making the county look like a bunch of rubes. These two supervisors, Republicans, are fighting against ballot counts that are majority Republican. Their ignorance and stupidity doesn't really make any sense, and they have no evidence to back up their claim. They are in some other politician's back pocket and we all know that. But the vote counts they want to challenge are majority Republican. What they are now trying to do, with this latest move which was opposed by virtually everyone in the room except the two supervisors, is consolidate the counting of ballots into the political office of someone who is elected, the County Recorder. And as the Republican majority shrinks in Cochise County, and there are enough Democratic votes there to be decisive in statewide races, a Republican County Recorder following orders of the state's extremists in county government, would not be a fair or neutral observer.
Look, I get the frustration of many Republicans who have been waiting in their party's line to run for higher office for a long time, and seeing their hopes fade as the state transitions from a red state to a purple one, with Democrats controlling all but one of the executive offices, winning the governor's office and taking and holding senate seats, and with President Biden carrying its electoral votes. Looks like it will buck a real trend in 2024, unseating a former Democratic-now Independent Senator and replacing her with a Latino Democrat. But the big lie is a bad campaign strategy, it doesn't work and it makes those who pick it up and use it losers. Kari Lake and Blake Masters are prime examples of that.
Why does Cochise County matter? Because every vote in every county in America matters, that's why. I suspect that the Republican supervisors have noticed that there's been a slight shift to the left in the county's predominantly Republican electorate in recent years. Hobbs bested the last Democratic candidate's vote total by almost 5%, and Democrats have been creeping slowly upward, while Republican votes in the county are slowly declining. To far right extremists who are election deniers, that doesn't represent change, it represents fraud in spite of evidence to the contrary.
So, Cochise County, get those petitions signed by registered voters and then get to the polls and make sure this insanity doesn't repeat itself.
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