Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs criticizes election audit

Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs is sharply criticizing the ongoing audit of the 2020 election in Maricopa County.

"There's really nothing going on here that gives any confidence that they're going to produce a report that is valid. They're not going to produce results that are going to be able to be replicated," Hobbs said, according to The Hill. "Their goal here is to continue to disrupt, to undermine voter confidence in our processes, and that's going to have an impact on future elections in terms of voter confidence, and that tends to reduce voter turnout," she said.

The Arizona Republic reported that Julie Fisher, assistant to the Senate's audit liaison Ken Bennett, recently sent an email to Arizona Republican Legislative District 12 Chair Mickie Niland who forwarded it to 30 GOP officials, which included 17 district party chairs. The email was titled "Another Opportunity to Help with the Audit."

The Hill said that the audit team has not included Democratic representatives within the counters, but Randy Pullen, who is dealing with media requests for the audit team, said that the team did send an email to the state Democratic Party soliciting assistance.

"If they were conducting a real audit, there would be willingness for bipartisan participation, but they're not. Now that they're blatantly recruiting partisans, there's no confidence in this at all. It is not independent, it is completely biased, being run by people who have already said that Donald Trump won Arizona with no evidence to back that up," Hobbs said. "These are folks with a highly partisan agenda who aren't based in reality."