Arizona's Republican voters are increasingly becoming unhappy with the audit of the 2020 presidential election votes that is now entering its seventh week, reports the New York Times.
According to the report, many GOP voters in the state were apprehensive about the controversial audit seeking to prove that there was election fraud that prevented Donald Trump from winning the state, and now they are becoming more vocal about it.
According to the Times' Michael Wines, "... the review of 2.1 million votes in Arizona's most populous county has ballooned not just into a national political spectacle, but also a political wind sock for the Republican Party — an early test of how its renewed subservience to Mr. Trump would play with voters," before adding, "The returns to date are not encouraging for the party. A late-May poll of 400 Arizonans by the respected consulting firm HighGround Inc. found that more than 55 percent of respondents opposed the recount, most of them strongly."
Those numbers appear to be borne out by comments from GOP voters interviewed by Wines.
"There's a lot of folks out there trying to make something out of nothing," explained former Marine and self-described lifelong Republican Rob Goins. "I don't think there was any fraud. My opinion of this is that it's a big lie."
Jane Davis, a member of the Republican Party for over 40 years added, "I think it's ridiculous, and I object to their spending any taxpayer money."
According to Dan Harlan, who admits he changed his Republican registration to Democrat so he could influence who the Democrats picked as their nominee, the Arizona Republican Party made a big mistake condoning the audit.
"This audit is being conducted because the Republican Party refuses to look at long-term demographics and realize they can no longer be the party of the white male. And they're doing everything they can to maintain power," he explained. "It's not about democracy; it's about winning. And when any organization becomes more concerned with maintaining itself, losing its core values is no longer important."
Former Rep. Jim Kolbe (R-AZ) claims, if local Republicans had to do it over again, they likely would not have approved the audit.
"If they were voting on it again today, they would have withheld doing this, because it's been nothing but a headache," he lamented before warning, "It's a black mark on Arizona's reputation."
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