After nearly two years of waiting, Rep. Mark Finchem has at long last revealed the source of his certainty that Arizona’s 2020 election was stolen.
The Oro Valley Republican who held Stop the Steal hearings and supported fake electors and rushed to Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6, 2021, to ask Vice President Mike Pence not to certify Arizona’s presidential election results …
The one who raced around the country calling for the election to be decertified based upon a Maricopa County election audit that turned up no evidence of widespread fraud …
The one who believes the Legislature should be able to veto your presidential vote and who now hopes to seize control of the 2024 elections by getting himself elected secretary of state ….
Has finally explained why he is so certain that the 2020 election was rigged.
Finchem’s proof? He doesn’t know any Biden voters
It’s simple really, he explained, when a Time magazine reporter recently asked him why it was so difficult to believe that Joe Biden won Arizona.
“It strains credibility,” he replied. “Isn’t it interesting that I can’t find anyone who will admit that they voted for Joe Biden?”
When pressed about whether it was possible that plenty of people he didn’t know personally may have voted for Biden, here was Finchem’s answer:
“In a fantasy world, anything’s possible,” he said.
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So, Joe Biden couldn’t possibly have won Arizona because Finchem doesn’t know anyone who voted for him.
Forget all the safeguards built into state law that are designed to produce a fair election. Forget all the auditing and the hand counting of ballots that reinforced Biden’s narrow victory. Forget the multiple independent experts who examined Maricopa County’s tabulation machinery and determined it wasn’t hacked and, in fact, wasn’t even hooked up to the internet.
Finchem and all of his friends voted for Donald Trump; therefore, Donald Trump must have won the election and any other outcome is evidence that fraud was afoot.
A Biden win in 2024 is a ‘fantasy,’ he says
Now Finchem is hoping voters will put him in charge of the 2024 election in a key battleground states that could well decide the presidential race.
It is a fair question for Arizonans – and Americans – to wonder whether Finchem will employ the same imaginary standard in 2024, should he become the state’s elections chief.
Cue Time’s Charlotte Alter: If Biden wins Arizona in 2024, she asked, would you certify that result as secretary of state?
Finchem chuckled.
“If the law is followed, and legitimate votes have been counted, and Joe Biden ends up being the winner,” he replied. “I’m required under the law – if there’s no fraud – to certify the election.”
Then he added, “I think you’re proposing something that, quite frankly, is a fantasy.”
Are you listening, Arizona?
Save America? This slate could nix democracy
The Trump-endorsed Republican who wants to run our elections – the one who in May told his supporters in an email had he been in charge in 2020, “We would have won. Plain and simple” – just said there is no conceivable way that Biden could legitimately win Arizona in 2024.
That he would refuse to certify an election if he doesn’t like the result.
Add in the fact that Finchem could be joined by Kari Lake as governor and Abe Hamadeh as attorney general. These Trump-endorsed candidates, like Finchem, dispute the results of the 2020 popular vote.
And they, like Finchem, could very well win in November. Democrat Katie Hobbs isn’t putting up enough of a fight in the governor’s race. Former Maricopa County Recorder Adrian Fontes (secretary of state) and former Corporation Commissioner Kris Mayes (attorney general) are running decent campaigns, but their races don’t typically attract much attention from voters, who tend to toe the party line in down-ballot races.
Meanwhile, Republicans likely have a 6- or 8-point edge, given historical turnout in midterm elections.
Lake has said she would not have certified the 2020 election results. She has even called for the arrest of her opponent, Secretary of State Hobbs, despite the lack of any evidence of fraud. Hamadeh, too, has said the election was stolen. He’ll do whatever Lake tells him to do.
Save America? Arizona could well be the state that throws the country into chaos and democracy out the door.
Unless a candidate of their choosing wins, that is.
Either that, or Finchem grows a larger circle of friends.
Reach Roberts at laurie.roberts@arizonarepublic.com. Follow her on Twitter at @LaurieRoberts.
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