It’s a pretty eye-opening number, according to Pew Research, fewer than one in four Americans is ‘very confident’ the 2024 election will be conducted fairly and accurately – only 23 percent. For many Republicans, trust was shaken after the unusual 2020 election which saw Biden grab an overnight come from behind victory over Trump. Scott Thuman reports from the battleground state of Arizona, a hotspot for claims of election fraud.
The following is a transcript of a report from “Full Measure with Sharyl Attkisson.”
Watch the video by clicking the link at the end of the page.
Hot under the collar in a political battleground as candidates spent their summer criss-crossing the grand canyon state, stumping for votes.
Tensions high ever since the last major cycle when only 10,500 votes from a total of 3.4 million, separated Joe Biden and Donald Trump. Biden, eking out the win.
Republican claims of fraud and corruption left some here wondering, is the election system itself trustworthy or broken?
Gina Swoboda is chairwoman of Arizona’s Republican Party.
Scott: Talk to me about this distrust in the election system here in Arizona.
Gina Swoboda: Yeah, it’s heartbreaking. It’s heartbreaking. It’s bad for turnout. It’s bad for the country. So we have had three election cycles in a row where we had various process issues or equipment issues and it was highly problematic.
A review by the Republican attorney general alleged real problems, like how early votes were handled, but Democrats and even some Republican administrators said that review was full of falsehoods.
While election audits confirmed Biden’s victory, voters we met still have their doubts about the system.
Scott: Do you feel confident when you cast your ballot that it’s counted properly and that winner really is the winner?
Man: I feel like it’s pretty hard to tell right now, but we want to stay hopeful.
Woman: I don’t think our votes count just based off last election. You’re supposed to fill it in with a pencil, but they gave us Sharpies. And so based off that, I don’t think it even counted last year or not last year, last election. So, no, I don’t think it counts.
As we previously reported on Full Measure, Arizona had its share of 2020 drama. A former Democratic mayor and school board member was caught on camera illegally collecting ballots in the town of San Luis and served a month in jail. And in Scottsdale, a registered Republican received two years probation for voting her dead mother’s ballot.
Hopes that the midterm elections of 2022 would go smoothly turned to dust amid widespread problems with voting machines in Maricopa County, home to six in ten Arizona voters. Republicans went to court to keep the polls open later, but they were turned down.
Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake had been leading in the polls up to election day.
Kari Lake: We had a big day today, and don’t let those cheaters and crooks think anything different!
But, in a surprise, she lost to Democrat Katie Hobbs. Lake sued over the result but lost that too.
Scott: Is there anything that you personally regret?
Lake: I wish I would’ve known that on election day they were going to roll out equipment that didn’t work, but I don’t know how I would’ve prepared for that as a candidate.
The former news anchor is now running for Arizona’s open senate seat.
Lake: People come from out of town all the time and they try to tell us everything’s fine in Arizona, but they weren’t here voting on election day. And so all we want is a fair, fair system. The laws are followed, that’s what we’re fighting for and then we live with the results. But if the laws aren’t followed, we got a problem.
Mike Noble runs his own polling company in Phoenix, and he’s studied voter confidence.
Mike Noble: It’s interesting that overall, the majority of the electorate among Arizona voters, based on our polling shows that Arizonans are confident in our elections. However, you notice that there is a group or a segment of the voter demographics that isn’t, which happens to be more on the Republican side of the aisle and typically more ideologically conservative. There’s probably about half of Republicans, or a little bit more are not confident in the elections.
In an effort to build-up public confidence in the electoral system, the local Recorder’s office, led by a Republican, has made changes, like locking mail ballots in cages, providing tours in person and online, and paying for 24/7 cameras so anyone can monitor the process in the tabulation center. They hope if people can see what’s happening, they’ll trust it.
GOP party chair Swoboda believes the key to a fair election is close monitoring. She’s hoping to recruit more than seven thousand people to monitor the polls this year.
Swoboda: We call them observers in Arizona; my goal is that we’re going to have our people, they’re going to sit, they’re going to observe, we’re going to win this election.
Win or lose, here in Arizona this election will be watched more closely than ever before.
For Full Measure, I’m Scott Thuman in Phoenix.
By the way, Pew says Democrats are thirty percentage points more likely than Republicans to express confidence that the presidential election will be fair.
Watch video here.
Ms Attkisson, we (your faithful readers and listeners) know that you are aware that the 2020 election was rigged. The fact that the Corporate Media (owned by BlackRock) fabricates narratives and censors legit information, while getting advertising dollars from Pfizer, or Gates/Soros Foundation adjuncts ought to be a red flag for most concerned Americans by now. Censorship continues to pollute the dead Fourth Estate. Big Media has not yet chosen to be truthful regarding the damage and deaths caused by the experimental mRNA (covid) drug. Big Agra remains unaccountable for GMO’d foods that poison our bodies, and still use cancer-causing herbicides and pesticides. Big Pharma finances the phony newscasters while brainwashing ill-informed viewers–convincing the consumers that a steady diet of vaccines and pills is normal. We are living in a sick society that is run by Big Tech, and we humans have been desginated as unimportant and obsolete. That’s the black pill version of reality in America. How we can have a fair election, that will not be compromised by bad actors, remains to be seen. We need more than prayers.
It is no surprise that a significant number of legal US citizen voters do not trust the process. Audits conducted with incomplete and/or faulty data don’t inspire confidence. Secretive conclaves deciding who and how the audits will be conducted contributed to the mistrust. Voter registration and identification protocols also do not inspire confidence. The unanswered question is why do Democrats object to proof of citizenship and voter ID if they have no nefarious intentions? Their rationale does not pass muster. Repeating ad nauseum in propaganda fashion that they are trustworthy isn’t objective evidence. Benedict Arnold asserted the same. The Rosenbergs did as well. Humans are all capable of nefarious deeds, if this were not the case JFK, Bobby Kennedy, R Reagan, and Pres Trump would not have been subjected to assassination attempts, sadly some were successful.
Good points!
This could be a fool proof method to vote…..voters must use their social security number AND positive ID. Once the vote is cast the computer system can confirm this person voted and link it to a National voter system. If someone else uses the same number they won’t be allowed to vote. All citizens have or should have a SSN. By the way, why is Election Day not used anymore? It becomes election season, which opens the door to “losing” votes.
While the outcome of the 2024 election is uncertain, what IS CERTAIN is that polls indicating Trump is in the lead will cause democrats to CHEAT HARDER this time than in any previous election, because while this presidential election concerns who will be president for the next 4 years, it also has much to do with whether the totally-corrupt democrat party will survive. So democrats will cheat like there’s no tomorrow, because for them there may not be very many tomorrows left.
It is NOT TRUE that the audit results confirmed Biden won. The hand recount portion of the audit confirmed more votes for Biden than Trump. HOWEVER the actual audit identified THOUSANDS of ballots more than the margin of victory that, for a variety of reasons, were not legal to count, but were included.
The media ignored this and focused on the hand recount results. But the hand count by itself means nothing. If I count 100 pieces of paper that look like dollar bills, but 20 of them are counterfeit, I don’t magically have $100.
I understand dems and media using the hand recount to deceive, but I expect Republicans involved in this to know better and be able to explain it.
Interesting “nonpartisan” article.
First of all, we got quotes from Gina Swoboda (chair of the Az Republican Party) and Kari Lake. There were no quotes from any Democrats or even any of the many Republicans that have publicly stated that the election was decided correctly. That only presents one side (that would be OK if there were a later article that provided some balance, but based on past behaviors in this newsletter, that’s not going to happen). That’s not right.
“You’re supposed to fill it in with a pencil, but they gave us Sharpies”. I’m looking at my Arizona ballot instructions right now and it says “You may use blue or black ink (no red ink)”. Pencils are NOT to be used. A clarification to this woman and to the readership that this woman’s claim is bogus would have been nice.
“A former Democratic mayor and school board member was caught on camera illegally collecting ballots in the town of San Luis and served a month in jail.” It would have been nice to provide the rest of the story. The crime occurred during the primary election and, more importantly, involved a total of 4 votes.
It was good to point out the additional safeguards that have been implemented since 2020.
The hand recounts didn’t prove that there was no fraud. What they were designed to do (and did do) was to prove that the voting machines worked correctly. And that was done because of the insane claims from people like Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani and Donald Trump who said that the voting machines switched votes. And remember how many Trump supporters went along with those claims even if they were laughable on their face (Venezuela? Really?).
What’s particularly distressing is the certainty of election fraud expressed by many who have literally zero knowledge of how elections are conducted and what safeguards there are to prevent fraud. And how they ignore the results of all of the investigations into possible voter fraud that were conducted (and, no, the investigations and audits didn’t identify thousands of suspect ballots, at least not in Arizona and Georgia). And how they ignore the statements of election officials and even prominent Republicans like Bill Barr that everything was on the up and up. Listen to the testimony of literally everyone in Trump’s inner circle (not named John Eastman) prior to January 6, and they all said that voter fraud claims were nonsense.
And how they ignore the fact that Trump told us BEFORE the election that he was going to claim fraud if he lost. And, not just that, but he told us HOW he was going to do it (the Red Mirage). In a sane world, that would tend to discredit what Trump has subsequently claimed. In our world, it’s made no difference at all.
And how they ignore the results of the court cases, none of which found any evidence of widespread fraud (Trump has claimed that the suits weren’t even heard because of a lack of standing, but at least ten of them were heard on their merits – none of them won.). Here is a quote from the Republican judge who heard one case in Pennsylvania: “One might expect that when seeking such a startling outcome, a plaintiff would come formidably armed with compelling legal arguments and factual proof of rampant corruption. That has not happened. In the United States of America, this cannot justify the disenfranchisement of a single voter, let alone all the voters of its sixth most populated state. Our people, laws, and institutions demand more.”
I wonder what he really thinks.
And how those claiming fraud have not advanced one single theory that is coherent (meaning that it is consistent with known safeguards against election fraud). How they haven’t identified specifically the people behind the fraud (it’s always “they” or “Democrats”). Or explained how it is that such a massive fraud conducted in at least five different states could have been achieved without someone spilling the beans (either accidentally or as the result of feelings of guilt or remorse) or leaving behind incontrovertible evidence.
But it’s equally distressing that a self-described nonpartisan journalist like SA would continue to play footsie with this whole conspiracy theory without bothering with a simple declarative statement that the claims have all been investigated and (at least to this point) found to have no merit. Apparently it’s better for business to pander.