The top Arizona senator chastised Maricopa County officials who railed against the Republican-led Legislature’s audit of the 2020 election results.
During a hearing about the audit on Tuesday which the GOP-majority Maricopa County Board of Supervisors skipped, Senate President Karen Fann spoke about complaints it made in a blistering letter on Monday that spoke of a waste of tax dollars and cast doubt on the credentials of the people tasked with conducting the controversial review.
“This is not personal, never should be personal. I’m so disappointed and saddened that the Board of Supervisors yesterday, some of the hurtful comments that were made, which is sad,” Fann said during the hearing. “These guys have been my friends for, some of them, 20 years. This is not personal. This is about our jobs as elected officials, it is our jobs that we have to answer to our constituents, to the voters, to the taxpayers.”
“There was something that was said that was very hurtful about how the Senate is wasting taxpayer money on this. First of all, I don’t think that there is ever any waste of money if we are ensuring that our elections are good, our police forces are good, departments are being run efficiently. That’s part of government. This is what accountability is all about,” she added.
Auditors, led by private firm Cyber Ninjas, have been poring over 2.1 million ballots and 400 voting machines from the November election that saw the red state swing to blue with winners President Joe Biden and Sen. Mark Kelly.
The audit is not meant to overturn the results of the contest, although former President Donald Trump has touted how he believes it will show “massive” election fraud, and Fann has insisted that the audit is meant to restore trust in the system and influence potential changes to the law. Meanwhile, Democrats, including Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, and some Republicans have criticized the audit and pointed out that the results from two previous audits, conducted for the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, showed no irregularities in the county’s 2020 election.
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The 14-page letter from Maricopa County on Monday, in part, blasted the audit and complained, “We have wasted enough County resources. People’s tax dollars are real, your ‘auditors’ are not.”
The Arizona Senate is spending $150,000 on the audit, and the rest is coming from donors. OANN anchor Christina Bobb is helping to raise funds through a nonprofit group, Voices and Votes. The total cost has not been made public.
