By DEXTER DUGGAN
PHOENIX — Questions about election integrity that stretched across the United States and even down to Brazil were embodied in the result of Arizona’s November 8 midterm elections, which were centered in scandal in the state’s most populous county, Maricopa.
This was highlighted in the surprising alleged narrow loss of Arizona’s conservative Republican gubernatorial nominee, Kari Lake, to left-wing pro-abortion extremist Democrat Katie Hobbs.
Lake, a dynamic and charismatic public speaker, was considered a national threat to leftist politics, a sort of female potential Gov. Ron DeSantis, of Florida. Hobbs, meanwhile, mainly sheepishly hid in her basement and absolutely refused to debate Lake even once.
Even some liberal interviewers wondered how Hobbs thought she was ready to govern a state of more than seven million people if she was this skittish. However, once she supposedly won, Hobbs seemed deeply offended if she couldn’t march straight to the governor’s desk.
But when a candidate as dedicated and able as Lake feels she has seen her victory blatantly stolen, she may prove even more of a threat to the establishment. Lake said she was getting the best attorneys for her legal team to challenge the voting scandal.
During one pre-election national interview, Fox News’ Tucker Carlson had asked Lake if she thought Hobbs’ general refusal to campaign indicated the Democrat believed the fix already was in for her to win, but Lake didn’t rise to that bait.
The Arizona attorney general’s office election-integrity unit called on Maricopa County officials to explain numerous serious difficulties that suddenly sprang up on November 8, when more Republicans were expected to vote at the polls, but had not occurred during weeks of early voting, when more Democrats were expected.
Republicans nationwide were said to have underperformed expectations in the midterms, but the possible use of fraud needed a wider discussion.
The establishment preferred to think that Democrat Joe Biden’s intentionally ruinous policies inflicted on the nation were of little importance to voters.
Supposedly most people weren’t very upset by a Democratic Party responsible for, among various nightmares, soaring inflation, a border wide open to millions of illegal aliens accompanied by unlimited drug- and sex-trafficking, massive tax-paid permissive abortion, attacks on religious conscience, and government promotion of left-wing racism and serious sexual confusion and transgenderism.
Even on the surface, the Democrat Party preference for flooding the system with ballots, a practice that first came into use with the 2020 pandemic emergency, was said to change campaigning radically. It no longer was a question of how many voters could be persuaded, but how many floating ballots could be collected — or thwarted — in any way.
Elections were turned into “a tournament of ballot collection,” national conservative activist Charlie Kirk, who lives in Maricopa County, told listeners to his widely available radio program.
In Brazil, incumbent conservative president Jair Bolsonaro filed a challenge over his narrow loss in an October 30 runoff election to leftist Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who was preferred by the globalist establishment. Bolsonaro pointed to problems with electronic voting machines.
Millions of Bolsonaro’s supporters repeatedly turned up for demonstrations across Brazil to protest what they saw as his unjust loss. Can similar dedication be found in Arizona or elsewhere in the U.S. over what examination can reveal to be fraud in this nation?
The UK-based Financial Times posted on November 22 that Bolsonaro’s political party was “calling for the cancellation of ballots from electronic voting machines with alleged malfunctions” after his rival “picked up 50.9 percent of votes in the tightest presidential election in the history of the South American country.”
The ZeroHedge blog reported on November 22 that Bolsonaro “has filed a lawsuit asking a court to invalidate 250,000 votes from ‘malfunctioning ballot boxes,’ according to Gazeta Do Povo.”
In Arizona, on November 19 the state attorney general office’s election-integrity unit emailed a letter more than three pages long to Maricopa County’s civil-division chief attorney, Tom Liddy, asking for a detailed response regarding a number of serious issues.
Assistant Attorney General Jennifer Wright said a reply was needed by November 28 because this related to the county’s ability lawfully to certify election results to the secretary of state on or before that date.
November 28 was the Monday following when this hardcopy issue of The Wanderer went to press on November 23, one day early because of the November 24 Thanksgiving holiday. This article was written overnight on November 22-23.
It remained to be seen how seriously the state attorney general’s office would press its inquiry, because this required stepping on some powerful toes, but at least this letter sounded impressive.
Early in her letter, Wright said that hundreds of voters’ “complaints go beyond pure speculation, but include firsthand witness accounts that raise concerns regarding Maricopa’s lawful compliance with Arizona election law.”
Nearing her conclusion, she said, “Arizonans deserve a full report and accounting of the myriad problems that occurred in relation to Maricopa County’s administration of the 2022 general election.”
Wright went into detail about three major areas: 1) many Election-Day on-site ballot tabulators that rejected ballots, 2) procedures for properly “checking out” voters who couldn’t cast their ballots at one location, so that they could try to vote elsewhere, 3) ballots that couldn’t be tabulated on-site and were deposited in “Door 3,” supposedly to be counted later at the downtown Phoenix central office.
“Door 3” was a slot that received ballots at the numerous voting centers around the county. Not only was there concern that at least some of these ballots weren’t counted, but also that Maricopa County itself admitted some “Door 3” ballots were commingled with ballots already counted.
“Maricopa County appears to have failed to adhere to the statutory guidelines in segregating, counting, tabulating, tallying, and transporting the ‘Door 3’ ballots,” Wright wrote. “. . . Further, we have received a sworn complaint from an election observer indicating that more than 1,700 ‘Door 3’ non-tabulated ballots from one voting location were placed in black duffle bags that were intended to be used for tabulated ballots.”
Precision about an accurate vote count was all the more necessary because, out of a total of more than 2.5 million votes cast, one of the state races was separated by just over 500 votes between winner and loser, another by fewer than 9,000 votes, and a third by just over 17,000 votes.
Even 17,000 votes is just a fraction of one percent difference, and a 500-vote margin is infinitesimal in a total of more than 2.5 million votes.
Seeing how close some of these contentious races were, a curious member of the public might wonder if some of the voting machinery had been adjusted so that each time an actual Republican vote was counted, a false Democratic vote was generated, too. This is only speculation, but, given such numbers, a person may wonder.
One blogger with knowledge of vote fraud in Louisiana said that when Maricopa County Door 3 votes came in from presumed heavy Republican areas, it would be easy to estimate how many offsetting votes would be needed to come in the back door for the other side.
On November 22 the Just the News conservative website headlined a story, “Bombshell Arizona report: Election Day problems in Maricopa far wider than county admitting.”
The story, by Natalia Mittelstadt, said that a team of 11 roving attorneys with the Republican National Committee’s Election Integrity program in Arizona gathered findings that were reported in an affidavit by one of them, Mark Sonnenklar.
The attorneys visited 115 of the 223 voting centers in Maricopa County, the story said.
It added: “Noting that there were many cases where printers and tabulators had issues throughout Election Day, from the opening to the closing of polls, Sonnenklar said these reports ‘directly contradict the statements of county election officials that (1) printer/tabulator issues were limited to only 70 of the 223 vote centers, (2) the printer/tabulator problems were resolved as of 3 p.m., and (3) the printer/tabulator issues were insignificant in the entire scheme of the election’.”
No Shame
Maricopa County election officials didn’t seem embarrassed publicly that after their handling of the 2020 presidential election here had raised deep suspicions, their appalling conduct with the 2022 midterms almost immediately incited outrage that grew as days passed, even though the officials and their media allies tried to minimize and brush off blame.
Former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich told activist Charlie Kirk during an interview that it was strange Maricopa County had such serious problems for two elections in a row.
The Wanderer asked commentator Barbara Simpson how Maricopa County’s problems looked to her from her perch in northern California’s Bay area, about an hour-and-a-half flight time distant.
“What has surprised me in the local coverage of the Arizona vote count is that, for the most part, it’s almost a non-story,” Simpson said on November 22. “You might find something about it on pages 4 or 5. I can’t explain that, except that the media are pleased Democrats won! Why there is no outrage concerning the many issues of errors in the Arizona vote count is astonishing.
“I would have hoped there would be concern that the whole election system there is broken — and it certainly seems to be,” Simpson said. “If I were in Arizona, I would want not only a recount — but a re-vote. Do it all over again and monitor every bit of it. I’m not holding my breath.”
During an interview on Steve Bannon’s War Room program, Caroline Wren, senior adviser to Kari Lake, said that on Election Day, people voted 3-to-1 in favor of Lake, even though 48 percent of the voting centers went down.
Wren noted that none of these problems occurred during the weeks of the early-voting period that began on October 12, when more Democrats are assumed to vote.
Observers noted that such suspicious timing would bring in hordes of federal voting-rights investigators if the circumstances were a bit different, such as heavy black turnout at a certain time being similarly suppressed.
Charlie Kirk Notes Suspicions
On his November 22 radio program, Charlie Kirk, the founder and president of the national Turning Point USA conservative organization, said 248,000 people cast their ballots in person here on Election Day, but he wondered how many more were turned away because of “sabotaged machine malfunction and failure.”
He also noted lines of people that were frustrating hours long — amid descriptions of voters repeatedly having their ballots rejected once they reached the machines and kept trying to insert them.
Kirk noted that Bill Gates, chairman of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, said problems were spread all across the county on Election Day, not only in Republican areas. Kirk replied, “This guy is such a liar” because Gates knows that more Republicans turn out on Election Day itself. “You are a fraud,” Kirk said.
In a separate comment, Kirk noted the surprise over Lake’s alleged loss because none of the “leading indicators” had indicated trouble for her.
Stories in dominant media seeking to defend Maricopa County’s scandal sometimes cited Gates and County Recorder Stephen Richer as being Republicans, as if this meant they could be trusted to give fair treatment to GOP political candidates. However, the county and state have a long history of establishment, “uniparty” Republicans fighting conservatives.
Both the late Sen. John McCain’s widow, Cindy, and former Sen. Jeff Flake style themselves as Republicans, but they both endorsed Biden for president in 2020, instead of Republican incumbent Donald Trump, as part of an establishment ploy to rush Arizona into the Biden column on election night. Biden later rewarded the two by naming them as ambassadors.
The Post Millennial website posted an article on November 14 saying that Supervisor Gates and Recorder Richer started a political action committee (PAC) in 2021 to stop MAGA candidates. Lake and some other losing Arizona GOP candidates identify themselves as MAGA.
The PAC, Pro-Democracy Republicans (prodemocracygop
.com), says it’s “fighting to keep our democratic institutions alive.”
In addition, investigative journalist Mollie Hemingway recounted more of Richer’s active involvement in electoral politics that should be beyond him as county recorder. Her October 20 article at The Federalist website reported on Richer’s active opposition to Proposition 309 on this year’s Arizona ballot, which would have strengthened election integrity.
The proposition narrowly lost, by 50.38 percent to 49.62 percent — another of the items on the ballot that strangely failed by a fraction.
Hemingway wrote in October, “This ballot measure is supported by the state’s major conservative groups and all Republican lawmakers, who passed the bill that sent this measure to the ballot. Left-wing groups and Democratic state lawmakers are opposed to the measure.”
Richer got in trouble here, she wrote, when he posted his advocacy on his county website: “‘[T]he County Recorder’s website is a publicly funded website, and using it as a vehicle to promote Mr. Richer’s political agenda is not only inappropriate, it is illegal,’ a complaint filed with Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich said. ‘This website is not at Mr. Richer’s disposal to use as a campaign website for his favored political causes’.”
Finally, Jenna Ellis, who became famous as an attorney for Donald Trump, garnered more than a half-million views for a video just over two minutes long that she posted of a Lake volunteer attorney on the phone with Maricopa County attorney Tom Liddy — the same man mentioned earlier in this article to whom the assistant attorney general, Wright, sent her letter about election problems.
Liddy’s voice on the phone is angry and profane as the Lake attorney politely says he’s seeking accurate information. Liddy says the other man sounds like he’s threatening him, to which the other attorney immediately denies threatening Liddy.
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