For Immediate Release
Friday, June 29th, 2023
Contact: communications@azdem.org
Arizona Democratic Party Statement on the Unprecedented Amount of Election Officials Resigning due to Hate Speech and Violence 

Arizona is facing an unprecedented amount of Election Officials resigning due to AZ GOP and Trump lead election conspiracy theories.

ARIZONA- The mass resignation of election officials due to fear of their safety and constant harassment from extreme far-right Arizona Republicans is a dangerous trend for Democracy. Arizona has lost election directors in Yuma County, Cochise County, Yavapai County, Pinal County three times, and County Recorders and elected registrars of voters in Pinal, Yavapai, Yuma, Santa Cruz.

“The mass resignation of election officials threatens free, fair, and organized elections. Donald Trump and extreme Arizona Republicans are complicit in election officials feeling unsafe doing their jobs,” said the chair of the Arizona Democratic Party, Yolanda Bejarano. “From denying the results of the 2020 presidential election to Kari Lake still calling herself Governor, it’s the dangerous conspiracy theories spread by the Arizona GOP that is causing election officials to resign in unprecedented numbers.”

Republicans are complicit:

• DONALD TRUMP:

1. 1. Donald Trump made multiple false claims about Arizona and election fraud in a statement about the Arizona audit-“11,000 voters were added to the voter rolls AFTER the election and still voted.”

• KARI LAKE:

1. 1. In her new book Kari Lake declares herself “the lawful governor of Arizona”
   2. In response to getting sued by an election official for defamation Kari lake tweeted “Trump won in a landslide & so did I. Everyone knows it. Corrupt elections have saddled us with disasters like Biden and hobbs. The majority of Americans KNOW our elections are fraudulent. Those who orchestrated the wide-spread fraud want us to shut-up and accept it. We won’t. Our country is GONE unless we tackle this problem. They want to stop President Trump. They want to stop me. They want to stop you.”
      Just last week Kari Lake retweeted Donald Trump’s Truth Social post with the statement “It’s time to reform our elections. I will never stop until we have elections that ALL Americans have faith in.”

• ANDY BIGGS:

1. 1. In Nov. of 2023 Biggs tweeted: “Protecting the will of the voters sometimes requires us to look at our voting system to make sure it has integrity. Simply saying that we have the best and cleanest elections in history does not make it so.”

• PAUL GOSAR:

1. 1. On the anniversary of the insurrection, Paul Gossar Tweeted: “I was elected by the people of Arizona because we are done with a broken DC. The people suffer from rigged elections & high inflation. Our tax money is sent to foreign governments to protect their borders while ours allows 5 million illegals in 2 years.”

• DAVID SCHWEIKERT:

1. 1. In defense of the January 6th Insurrection, David Schweikert went on Jay Lawrence’s radio show (Lawrence,recently spent several years in the state legislature, where he earned a reputation for bigoted comments and promoting QAnon.)”: “I don’t believe many of these people had malice in their souls, I don’t think they had malice in their hearts,”

• ELI CRANE:

1. 1. In a tweet introducing his political run in 2021, Crane tweeted out: “As a candidate running for US Congress in AZ, I’m calling on the state legislature to decertify the 2020 election, along with enlarging the efforts to audit the remaining counties in AZ. Finally our AZ AG must launch a criminal investigation to hold all involved accountable.”

• DEBBIE LESKO:

1. 1. Lesko attended a presentation by “True the Vote” and live tweeted the event’s false claims about the election: “Their data analysis of cell phone location data revealed that 202 individuals visited 10 or more ballot drop boxes from Oct. 7 – Nov. 3, 2020 in Maricopa County. AZ law permits only family or household members or a caregiver to collect and drop off someone’s ballot.”

• JUAN CISCOMANI:

1. 1. In an interview with the Arizona Daily Star, Juan Ciscomani refused to say that Biden was duly elected President after several inquiries from the reporter,  Ciscomani stated: “Joe Biden is sitting in the White House right now and we’re seeing the consequences of that. […] So no one’s denying that Joe Biden is in the White House and we’re going to have him there for two more years. Now, when you talk about voting laws though, there are things that we can do better. […] This district actually has gone through very close elections in the past in different cycles and I think with the higher threshold on the recount, some of these things could be dealt with and going into the immediate recount process vs. a lot of the speculation that happened in 2020.”

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