From ACT For America <[email protected]>
Subject Arizona Victory - Hand Count Ballots Approved!
Date November 1, 2022 7:30 AM
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Act for America Rocks Arizona’s Elections

[ACT For America]
[[link removed]]


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“NOTHING SAYS SUCCESS MORE THAN THE ENEMY DISCUSSING YOUR
ACCOMPLISHMENT”!
-Brigitte Gabriel

ACT For America is on the move in AZ. Cochise County approved hand
count ballets before the November 8th election with two new counties,
including Santa Cruz and Yavapai, voting this week to do the same! 

On Friday, prompted by a state legislator and nearly 600,000
grassroots emails, the State Attorney General Brnovich gave his legal
opinion supporting the county supervisor’s legal authority to
conduct a 100% hand count audit of the Midterm Election. 

Our grassroots work prompted George Soros funded Media Matters to
write the hit piece below about ACT For America's work in AZ touting
our victories. Thanks to all our grassroots activists, our members,
our supporters, and our colleagues working on the ground in AZ for
making all this possible.

Help us achieve more victories in AZ and beyond, click here to donate
[[link removed]].

[Media Matters banner]

ARIZONA COUNTY BACKTRACKS ON HAND-COUNTING ALL BALLOTS, AS URGED BY A
HATE GROUP, AMID LEGAL CONCERNS

_ACT for America’s communications director made a call to action on
a right-wing podcast_

MEDIA MATTERS: CLICK TO VIEW HERE
[[link removed]]

_UPDATE (10/27/22): __On October 26, the board held an __emergency
meeting_
[[link removed]]_ and __walked
back_
[[link removed]]_ its
decision, clarifying that it will hand-count only some in-person
ballots cast on Election Day, looking at just four races in the audit.
That’s a slight expansion from the 2% of ballots that state law
typically requires the county to hand count. This came after the state
elections director sent a __letter_
[[link removed]]_ “demanding
the supervisors acknowledge they cannot legally hold a 100% hand count
and must take action to change a measure they approved Monday or face
a lawsuit.” _

_Supervisor Peggy Judd __said_
[[link removed]]_ that
“all along I intended to follow every law,” despite having said
during Monday’s vote that she “might go to jail.” _

_Nonetheless, the hand count may still be blocked, as “all
recognized political parties must show up and provide enough workers
for the audit to proceed,” and the county Democratic Party has not
yet decided how it will respond. _

The Cochise County Board of Supervisors in Arizona voted
[[link removed]] on
October 24 to hand-count ballots for the upcoming midterm elections,
despite receiving warnings
[[link removed]] from
the county attorney, Arizona Legislative Council, as well as secretary
of state and gubernatorial candidate Katie Hobbs that this move would
be overly time consuming, less accurate than a machine count,
and against Arizona law
[[link removed]]. 

The three-member board received pressure from election-denying
activists, most notably led by anti-Muslim hate group ACT for America
[[link removed]] and
Arizona Corporation Commission member Jim O’Connor
[[link removed]],
and voted 2-1 along party lines to hand-count ballots.

ACT for America has promoted banning voting machines in Arizona since
at least early September, when Christine Reagan, ACT’s grassroots
and communications director, appeared with O’Connor on the September
9 edition of Everything Home with Michele Swinick to promote a tool
allowing individuals to email “every elected official in all 15
counties” asking them to ban voting machines. 

Throughout her appearance, she repeatedly claimed that a highly
organized left uses voting machines to cheat, and the only way to beat
them is to organize locally, pressing the audience to visit, call, and
email county elections offices and demand the end of electronic
voting.

Reagan insisted that “If we do this one simple thing,” they’ll
have removed “mechanisms to cheat by simply removing all electronic
devices for us. It’s like clearing the playing field.”

O’Connor added that “the big problem is laziness” on the part of
county election officials in their refusal to use paper ballots, and
he noted that it is legal for them to do so. “Guess what? We’ll
bring in a million volunteers to help you count those paper
ballots,” O’Connor said.

[MMFA Video ]
[[link removed]]


ACT for America has been active on Facebook with this call to action
since at least October 11
[[link removed]],
when it began sharing posts on its Facebook page linking to its email
tool, which reads
[[link removed]]: 

[Facebook post]

The group credits O’Connor for having “kicked off this movement,
distributing an official letter to every Arizona county official
calling on them to conduct the Midterm elections by paper ballots
processed by hand count.” According to the Tennessee Star, an outlet
connected to a network of hyperpartisan news pages
[[link removed]] masquerading
as local news, O’Connor sent
[[link removed]] this
letter on August 30, and grassroots efforts picked up soon after.

Votebeat
[[link removed]] reported
in October that a message from “an email address connected to an
advocacy group called ACT for America” that had apparently been sent
to county officials across the state read, “We are calling on all
Arizona County Officials across the state to ban the use of all
electronic voting machines, including ballot tabulators, in this
upcoming election.” The email went on to say, “All machines are a
national cyber security risk that is unsecure, hackable, and
inaccurate!”

On the podcast, Reagan directed the audience to spread the word and
use this tool “at least once a day” to flood Arizona county
officials with requests to ban voting machines.

[MMFA Video]
[[link removed]]


Reagan and O’Connor appeared again
[[link removed]] on _Everything
Home_ to promote the email tool on October 7. 

Board of Supervisors member Peggy Judd, an election conspiracy
theorist who attended
[[link removed]] the
Capitol riot on January 6, 2021, also appeared on _Everything
Home_ to say that bringing the hand count initiative to a vote was
her idea. According to Judd, she met with a concerned citizen “right
before Labor Day’ who informed her of O’Connor’s efforts, after
which she “immediately” tried to schedule a work meeting to
propose a vote to hand-count ballots.

Though the county advised her that hand-counting paper ballots would
be unrealistic and excessively time-consuming, Judd used the same
justification that O’Connor had weeks prior: “We have 200 people
at least that want to do it. 100 at least — let’s just say 100
show up and they’re trained and vetted and ready to count, those
hundred can do that in 25 hours. So this is not a big deal. This is a
two-day, three-day thing.”

[MMFA Video]
[[link removed]]


Swinick, a far-right podcaster who has appeared on Steve
Bannon’s _War Room_
[[link removed]] and QAnon
[[link removed]]-connected
[[link removed]] podcast _Patriot
Streetfighter_,
[[link removed]] frequently
uses her platform to host notable election 
[[link removed]]deniers 
[[link removed]]and QAnon 
[[link removed]]conspiracy
theorists
[[link removed]].

A Telegram post
[[link removed]] from
election conspiracy theorist David Clements
[[link removed]] promoted
Monday’s vote and asked residents to “Please show up to support
the Cochise Board Of Supervisors this Monday! Ban machines and/or Hand
Count!”

On _War Room_, precinct strategy organizer
[[link removed]] Dan
Schultz claimed that the board voted for a hand count because, in
Cochise County, “100% of the precinct committeeman slots are
filled” primarily by “MAGA people,” and board members were
“afraid” they would lose their seats if they did not move away
from electronic voting. As ProPublica explained
[[link removed]],
precinct officers are employed by political parties and, in some
states, “they have a say in choosing poll workers, and in others
they help pick members of boards that oversee elections.”

[MMFA Video]
[[link removed]]


When Cochise County announced its decision to vote on a hand count,
Secretary Hobbs pushed back and pledged
[[link removed]] to
“take all available legal action to ensure that Cochise County
conducts the 2022 General Election in compliance with Arizona law.”

The Cochise County decision shows that election deniers were able to
successfully organize the widespread rage and election denialism that
right-wing media have stoked for nearly two years into a tangible,
though illegal, outcome. This is bound to create more questions than
answers, as elections experts say
[[link removed]] that
hand-counting ballots is prone to human error. Arizona elections have
been extensively questioned
[[link removed]] since
2020, and no fraud
[[link removed]] has
been found.



ARIZONA CONSTITUENTS, HELP US ACHIEVE HAND COUNTS IN EVERY COUNTY!

[Stop Unlawful Voting Machines and Tabulators!]
[[link removed]]


[Click Here. ACTNOW]
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HELP US REACH 1 MILLION ACTIONS TODAY!

[NO VOTING MACHINES 2022!]
[[link removed]]


[Click Here. ACTNOW]
[[link removed]]




[Contribute]
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_ACT for America Education, a 501(c)(3) organization._
_All donations are tax-deductible._

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