Arizona GOP Official Goes On a Tear Mocking Election Audit: ‘This Is Insane Just From a Competence Standpoint’

 

Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer blasted the audit of 2020 presidential election results in the county being conducted by the company Cyber Ninjas, which has never audited election results before. Richer is a Republican who unseated a Democratic incumbent on the same ballot that some conservatives baselessly claim were tainted.

Recently it was reported that voting data was being sent to an unspecified lab in Montana or how long it would be there. As one reporter documented, an address for the company associated with the lab leads to a cabin.

CNN’s Anderson Cooper asked Richer about the audit, calling it “meshugas,” a Yiddish word for “crazy.”

“That’s the right word for it,” said Richer, adding:

This is insane just from a competence standpoint. We’ve had [representatives from] 13 other states visit, and I would say to them, this is not the audit you want. This is far from the gold standard of audits. You’re looking for the Ernst & Young of accounting, or the Latham & Watkins of law firms. You’re not looking for a newbie company who has never done this before, who as CNN very capably showed doesn’t even have office space and is sending the data off to a mysterious house in Montana. That’s not the gold standard.

Richer has previously blasted the audit. In an appearance on CNN last month he said, “Just stop indulging this. Stop giving space for lies.”

“I mean, there is no good reason for doing this,” he said Monday. Last month an unsubstantiated rumor that 40,000 ballots were flown in from Asia prompted workers to look for traces of bamboo on the ballots. Former Republican Attorney General of Arizona Grant Woods has said the audit is a “kangaroo audit” being conducted by “some real nutcases.”

Watch above via CNN.

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Mike is a Mediaite senior editor who covers the news in primetime.