Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo, who was named in a defamation lawsuit that cost her employer $787.5 million, cited a right-wing conspiracy website to suggest that Arizona's election results could be tainted.
Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, a Democrat, announced that implementation of a GOP-backed law requiring proof of citizenship could affect as many as 218,000 voters, and during an interview with Republican National Committee Chair Michael Whatley, the Fox Business host referenced tendentious statements about the situation to The Gateway Pundit.
"You mentioned Arizona, what's going on there in Arizona?" Bartiromo said. "Early voting begins Oct. 9. The ballots in Maricopa County, we want to get your take on whether or not you've got confidence there in Arizona, because apparently The Gateway Pundit reported the GOP chairwoman provided an update to allegations that there's not going to be a fair election there."
Gina Swoboda, the Arizona GOP chair, told The Gateway Pundit – whose founder Jim Hoft was infamously derided as "the dumbest man on the Internet" – that Fontes was “hiding” something from state Republican after announcing the proof of citizenship issue could affect nearly double the number of voters as initially believed.
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"We’re going to start voting on October 9, ballots are being printed [or] they are printed, and these guys are running out the clock and finding critical systemic errors," Swoboda told the website.
The state's Supreme Court ruled Sept. 20 that voters whose status had been drawn into question under the 2004 law can vote in all races this fall, following decades of legal challenges, but officials found that some voters had been classified as showing proof of citizenship although there's no record of that.
Fontes, however, told election officials those voters appeared to be citizens and should continue to receive full ballots, and the state Supreme Court agreed, and RNC chair Whatley tamped down some of the concerns voiced by Swoboda and echoed by Bartiromo.
"There is going to be a fair election," Whatley said, "and we're working very, very hard with the Arizona GOP. I actually had dinner with the chairwoman last night, and we're focusing very hard on making sure that we have the right rules of the road in place before the voting starts. We filed numerous lawsuits and we've been engaged in a lot of discussions with Maricopa [County] and the state of Arizona. We're going to have observers and lawyers who are going to be in the room whenever a vote is counted, whenever a vote is cast, to make sure that we're going to be on top of this. We want it to be easy to vote and hard to cheat."
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