Six months after President Trump’s loss, his supporters and conspiracy theorists are continuing their push for repeated examinations of ballots and finding limited success, reports The Associated Press.
A Georgia judge last Friday awarded a group the chance to review mail ballots in a large Georgia county that includes Atlanta. Officials in a rural Michigan county have expressed interest in reviewing their voting machines. A similar debate has caused sharp divisions in a town in New Hampshire. In some cases, the efforts have been inspired by the audit of votes in Arizona’s Maricopa County, an exercise engineered by the GOP-led state Senate.
A Georgia judge last Friday awarded a group the chance to review mail ballots in a large Georgia county that includes Atlanta. Officials in a rural Michigan county have expressed interest in reviewing their voting machines. A similar debate has caused sharp divisions in a town in New Hampshire. In some cases, the efforts have been inspired by the audit of votes in Arizona’s Maricopa County, an exercise engineered by the GOP-led state Senate.
Leading the Georgia ballot review effort is Garland Favorito, who’s been on the "conspiracy fringe" of American politics for decades, according to The New York Times. In 2002, he published a book questioning the origin of the 9/11 attacks. He's also promoted unproven theories about the Kennedy assassination. In 2014, he appeared in a video promoting the idea that the 14th Amendment was itself unconstitutional and argued that the federal government therefore was illegitimate and should be overthrown.
The profusion of audits is alarming election experts, who note that the Arizona audit has set a troubling new precedent of third-party, partisan review of ballots long after elections are over, says AP.
“This is bad enough to see it happen once,” says Eddie Perez, an expert on voting systems at the Open Source Election Technology Institute, of Arizona, but seeing it elsewhere in the country is “dangerous for democracy.’”
“This is bad enough to see it happen once,” says Eddie Perez, an expert on voting systems at the Open Source Election Technology Institute, of Arizona, but seeing it elsewhere in the country is “dangerous for democracy.’”
Meanwhile, Republicans who sought to undercut or overturn President Biden’s election win are launching campaigns to become their states’ top election officials next year, reports Politico.
Candidates running for secretary of state in key battlegrounds that could decide control of Congress in 2022 and who wins the White House in 2024 include, according to Politico:
Rep. Jody Hice, R-Ga., a leader of the congressional Republicans who voted against certifying the 2020 Electoral College results; Arizona state Rep. Mark Finchem, one of the top proponents of the vote audit in Arizona’s largest county; Nevada’s Jim Marchant, who sued to have his five-point congressional loss last year overturned; and Michigan’s Kristina Karamo, who made dozens of appearances in conservative media to claim fraud in the election.
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