(Eli Pacheco, Headline USA) An Arizona county on Monday voted under duress against hand-counting ballots for the 2024 election, the Epoch Times reported.
The county board of supervisors voted 3-2 against the proposal after Democrat state Attorney General Kris Mayes threatened litigation if Mohave County approved the measure.
Mayes claimed approval would force election workers to violate the law.
In August, Board Chairman Travis Lingenfelter cited a budget deficit as a factor. County election officials estimate it would need 245 new workers for hand-counting. Mohave County’s budget deficit is about $16 million, according to a report in the Epoch Times.
Jeanne Kentch, Mohave County GOP chair, promised 300 volunteers for hand-counting. She said the contingent expected “zero compensation” for their service.
Nonetheless, Mayes’s intervention in the matter offered further evidence for many that Democrats were actively seeking to meddle in the state’s free and fair elections in order to rig the outcome for themselves.
It was at least the second time the county, in northwestern Arizona, has been forced to nix its hand-counting of ballots.
In the 2022 election, then-Secretary of State Katie Hobbs threatened to arrest Mohave board members and charge them with a felony if they went through with a planned hand count that would have potentially derailed her own election as governor rather than certifying the election as it stood.
One supervisor, Colton Duncan, publicly stated that the board was coerced into the decision by the Democratic candidate.
Ok.
Mohave County official certifies the election UNDER DURESS
"I have no choice but to vote 'Ave'
or will be arrested and charged with a felony"@katiehobbs is FORCING officials to certify an election, THREATENING THEMKatie is a TYRANT
Does this bother anyone else?
— Colton Duncan (@duncan_colton) November 29, 2022
After her loss to Hobbs, Republican Kari Lake released a statement saying election integrity wasn’t a partisan issue.
“This is about our sacred right to vote, a right that many voters were, sadly, deprived of on November 8th,” the statement read.
A poll last December from Rasmussen Reports regarding concerns about fraud in the 2022 election found that 71% of eligible American voters believed fraud had a major impact on the results.
Hobbs also oversaw Arizona’s highly suspicious 2020 election, where an forensic audit by the state legislature of the most populous county, Maricopa County, revealed numerous irregularities that could not be accounted for.
Donald Trump carried Mohave County in a narrow loss to Joe Biden in 2020 for Arizona’s electoral votes. (Biden won Arizona by less than 11,000 votes).
