Original air date: October 13th 2024

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.