Elections

ArizonaArizona Republican ‘audit’ finds even bigger lead for Biden in 2020 electionHand count of the 2.1m ballots cast in Maricopa county found that Biden actually won 360 more votes than Trump than was reported Sam Levine and Oliver MilmanFri 24 Sep 2021 09.40 EDTLast modified on Fri 24 Sep 2021 09.41 EDTA partisan, Republican-instigated so-called “audit” of the 2020 election result in Arizona has confirmed that Joe Biden did indeed beat Donald Trump in Maricopa county, the state’s most populous county, according to a draft report of the review.A month-long hand count of the 2.1m ballots cast in Maricopa county, which includes Phoenix, found that Biden actually won 360 more votes than Trump than was reported in the November election. Biden won Arizona’s 11 electoral votes on his way to getting more votes nationally than any presidential candidate in history during the election.Cyber Ninjas, UV lights and far-right funding: inside the strange Arizona 2020 election ‘audit’Read moreTrump has repeatedly falsely claimed that he won the election and was a victim of fraud, despite no evidence of this, and state Republicans in Arizona seized upon these lies to demand an audit of vote in Maricopa county. Cyber Ninjas, a Florida-based company with no experience of election audits, owned by a man who spread election conspiracy theories, wrote the report, entitled Maricopa County Forensic Audit.The investigation is the most extensive partisan effort to date to cast doubt on the results of the 2020 election and has been widely celebrated by Trump and allies who falsely believe the election is stolen.Even though the investigation was sanctioned by the GOP-controlled Arizona senate, it was funded by $5.7m in outside money, much of which came from conspiracy theorists, including $3.2m from Patrick Byrne, the former CEO of Overstock.com and an additional $1m from a non-profit founded by Michael Flynn.Election experts have widely panned the review, which they say was rooted in shoddy practice around a pre-determined effort to show there was fraud. Ben Ginsberg, a longtime Republican election lawyer, told reporters on Thursday that Trump allies were “desperate for a win” In Maricopa county, he said, they had gotten unprecedented access to look under the hood of an election. If they were not able to prove fraud there, they were unlikely to prove it anywhere else.Regardless of what the report says, Republican efforts to conduct similar reviews are underway. Republicans in both the Wisconsin and Pennsylvania legislatures are moving forward with similar investigations into the 2020 race. And on Thursday, Trump called for a review of the 2020 race in Texas, a state he carried in 2020 by nearly six points. Experts worry that the reviews suggest a new normal, where the losers of elections simply refuse to accept the results.The draft report emerged on Thursday and has been confirmed as authentic by a spokesman for the audit effort, who said it is “close” to the final report. Maricopa County’s board of supervisors, led by Republicans, said that the report confirmed that the county had run an accurate election.“This means the tabulation equipment counted the ballots as they were designed to do, and the results reflect the will of the voters,” said board chairman Jack Sellers, a Republican. “That should be the end of the story. Everything else is just noise.”Biden won Arizona by more than 10,450 votes in November, with this narrow victory in the state secured thanks to the more than 45,000 vote margin he managed in Maricopa county. Republicans, spurred on by Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, then attempted to overturn this result despite no evidence presented of fraud.Earlier this year, Maricopa county hired two firms to audit its elections equipment and software, with these reviews finding no problems with the systems reviewed. This wasn’t enough for the state senate, controlled by Republicans, however, which hired Cyber Ninjas for the controversial audit.The recounting process was dogged with allegations of ballots being mishandled and cybersecurity concerns, with workers at one point using UV lights to check for bamboo fibers in ballots, part of a conspiracy theory that China had somehow planted votes into Arizona’s election. The review concluded in July.While the draft report does not claim that Trump did beat Biden in Arizona, it does criticize the state for the handling and integrity of how the election was run. Maricopa county’s board of supervisors has rejected this, stating on its Twitter feed that the report’s allegations are “littered with errors & faulty conclusions”.TopicsArizonaUS elections 2020RepublicansDonald TrumpUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the senior Republican in the Senate, announced Friday on Twitter that he would seek an eighth term, relieving Republicans worried about a bitter primary fight that could put the seat at risk.Mr. Grassley, who turned 88 last week and would be 95 at the end of his term, sought to emphasize his fitness in disclosing his plans that will draw attention because of his age. A tweet showed an alarm clock turning to 4 a.m. and Mr. Grassley jogging in the early morning darkness.“It’s 4 a.m. in Iowa so I’m running,” said Mr. Grassley, a habitual jogger. “I do that 6 days a week.”In a separate release, Mr. Grassley, first elected to public office as a state legislator in 1958, said that he has been encouraged to run by Iowans as he toured the state in recent months.“I’m working as hard as ever for the people of Iowa and there’s more work to do,” he said in a statement. “In a time of crisis and polarization, Iowa needs strong, effective leadership.”Senator Mitch McConnell, the Kentucky Republican and minority leader, had joined his colleagues in encouraging Mr. Grassley to run to head off a primary fight to succeed him. A bitter Republican primary could have provided an opening for Democrats to pick up a seat in what will be an intense battle next year for the Senate majority. Former Democratic Representative Abby Finkenauer, 32, who lost her re-election bid last year, has already announced she would seek the seat held by Mr. Grassley.Elected to the Senate in 1980 when Ronald Reagan won the presidency, Mr. Grassley has used his seniority to preside as chairman of both the Senate Finance Committee and the Judiciary Committee, where he was instrumental in advancing President Donald J. Trump’s nominees to the Supreme Court and also blocking President Barack Obama’s nomination of Merrick B. Garland. He easily won re-election in 2016 even though Democrats aggressively sought to topple him because of his refusal to take up the Garland nomination.Mr. Grassley was known for bipartisanship earlier in his career but became increasingly conservative as his state also shifted ideologically to the right. During the Obama presidency, Mr. Grassley engaged in negotiations with Democrats over the health care law but pulled out under a Republican backlash to his work with Democrats. He was a leading proponent of a criminal justice overhaul crafted with Democrats and signed into law by Mr. Trump.As the senior Senate Republican, Mr. Grassley was third in line to succession of the president when Republicans held the Senate majority, following the vice president and speaker of the House. He would not be the oldest Republican senator ever if he served his full eighth term. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina was 100 when he left the Senate in 2002. More

BERLIN — In central Berlin, a giant billboard shows a pair of hands, arranged in the shape of a diamond, in front of a female torso dressed in a green jacket. “Tschüss Mutti,” the billboard reads. “Bye, bye, Mommy.”Even without a face, Germans know who’s being depicted. The diamond, the colorful jacket and the word “Mutti” are iconic, just like Angela Merkel herself.After 16 years, Germany is saying “Tschüss” to its longtime chancellor. Across the country, the departure of Ms. Merkel has brought out affectionate nostalgia, tinged with a drop of irony. Yet there’s also fatigue, verging on irritation, a twitchy restlessness to see her off and start afresh. As with most farewells, feelings are mixed.For Ms. Merkel, a leader who never sought acclaim, a low-key, almost ambivalent exit feels fitting. But it also reveals an irony about her rule. The qualities that ensured her success — her caution and consistency, her firmness and diligence — are now, at the end of her tenure, leading some to regard her departure with relief. The Germany Ms. Merkel made, in nearly two decades of steady stewardship, is ready to move on.For all her calm, Ms. Merkel’s time in charge has not been without tumult. She steered Germany through a series of crises — the financial crash in 2008, the euro debt crisis that followed, the migration crisis of 2015 and, of course, the pandemic. She brokered a truce, albeit a brittle one, between Russia and Ukraine, helped to negotiate Brexit and saw Donald Trump come and go. Each event had the potential to sunder the world. In part thanks to Ms. Merkel, none did.Her role in these crises continues to be debated. Many progressives maintain that her austerity policies have done more harm than good, and many conservatives believe she should have closed Germany’s borders to migrants in 2015. The overall verdict, though, is unlikely to change. Under great pressure, Ms. Merkel was a conservative in the best sense, retaining the country’s prosperity, cohesion and purpose. Her great achievement was not what she built, but what she managed to keep.Yet preservation can quickly turn to stagnation. Many of Ms. Merkel’s policies that had an initially stabilizing effect carried hidden long-term costs. And at the very moment she is about to leave office, that’s starting to show. Her “sins of omission” — as a British historian and Germany expert, Timothy Garton Ash, put it to me — are becoming painfully obvious.Take Europe. Across nearly two decades, Ms. Merkel played an outsize role in guiding the union through a succession of challenges. But in the process, she stored up future problems.In 2016, for example, the chancellor spearheaded a deal with Turkey to take in refugees. The move ended the yearlong migration crisis, in which more than a million migrants claimed asylum in Europe. But it’s hardly a sustainable solution, neither for Turkey — where economic difficulties and growing numbers of refugees threaten to destabilize the country — nor for Europe. Migrants, especially after the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and the Taliban’s takeover of the country, will continue to seek refuge on the continent. Some workable solution, attentive to the needs of both migrants and citizens, must be found.In other areas, too, Ms. Merkel’s approach fell short. Her handling of the euro debt crisis helped secure the future of the bloc, but at the cost of leaving the underlying dynamics — overindebted southern countries and an unbalanced monetary union — untouched. Her conciliatory approach to Russia, not least over the controversial Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, looks ever more untenable as President Vladimir Putin ruthlessly consolidates his regime.And while her inclination to avoid censuring Hungary and Poland for their breaches of the rule of law protected the bloc against disintegration, it sidestepped essential questions about the character of Europe. In Ms. Merkel’s absence, European leaders — including Germany’s next chancellor, whoever that is — will need to determine the bloc’s future course. How will it navigate the increased rivalry between America and China? To what extent will it embark on a more autonomous defense strategy? And how will it combat the rise of the far right?At home, a similar pattern prevailed. Look at the economy. Yes, Germany’s export surplus came to an all-time high during Ms. Merkel’s tenure, and G.D.P. reached a record high in 2019. But it has come at the cost of an increased — some say excessive — dependence on the Chinese market, something Ms. Merkel has done little to address. What’s more, by shielding Germany’s car industry from more ambitious carbon-emission goals, Ms. Merkel has in effect exonerated managers from the need to innovate. That’s one reason German car companies are scrambling to keep up with their American and Chinese counterparts.Then there’s climate change. Trying to protect key industries and fearing to impose too much change on voters, Ms. Merkel refrained from any far-reaching plan to cut emissions until late in her tenure. And though the share of renewable energy grew to 45 percent during her time in office, many experts agree that on its current trajectory, the country will not meet its goal of being carbon-neutral by 2045. Despite being seen abroad as the “climate chancellor,” Ms. Merkel has taken only very minor steps toward confronting the defining issue of our time.It all adds up to a country at once cozy and cosseted, ignorant of the dangers waiting in the wings. Ursula Weidenfeld, an economics journalist and the author of a recent biography of the chancellor, has likened Ms. Merkel’s Germany to the Shire in J.R.R. Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings.” Peaceful and prosperous, soothingly old-fashioned, self-satisfied to the point of delusion and naïve in a likable yet unnerving way: The analogy is apt.Ms. Merkel protected the Shire, which is what Germans expected of her and why she won four national elections in a row. But in doing so, she fostered its peculiar detachment from the world and its unwillingness to change, innovate or even discuss different ways forward.The chancellor also became stuck in her ways. Humble and unpretentious, she saw herself as a servant to her country. But in return for her service, dedication and competence, she came to expect — demand, even — blind trust. She has grown increasingly impatient with the forever chatter of Germany’s political class.Her famous phrase during the migration crisis — “We can do this” — was to some a welcome dose of optimism. But to others, not least in her own party, it was a decree, a royal diktat from above silencing opposition and curtailing debate. Perhaps that tendency hardened over time. Ahead one of the endless meetings with Germany’s 16 governors during the pandemic’s first wave in 2020, she reportedly complained about the “orgies of debates on reopening the country.”It was an unusual outburst, one that underscored a growing unease about her methods and her achievements. After all, the pandemic exposed Germany’s lack of digital services, the need to modernize its public health service and the vulnerability of the economy’s supply chains. The floods in July, in which over 200 people lost their lives, were a tragic reminder that Germany will not be spared the perils of climate change. Against this backdrop, the prospect of change — no matter how familiar the candidates — has become more appealing.Just a couple of years ago, Ms. Merkel was garlanded as the “leader of the free world.” Against the chaos and disruption of Mr. Trump, her sober, judicious style was widely envied. Now, in a twist of history, different qualities are wanted. I’m pretty sure there will be many moments in the not-too-distant future when Germans will painfully miss Angela Merkel. And yet: It is time. Tschüss Mutti.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: [email protected] The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

Among the possible contenders for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination not named Donald Trump, one governor has captured more than his share of attention: Ron DeSantis of Florida.But to even get to the 2024 starting line, Mr. DeSantis will first have to make it through re-election in Florida — and the treacherous politics of Covid-19. Lately, his approval ratings have slumped, and his re-election has looked like a lot less of a slam dunk. By tacking hard right on some issues, especially on Covid mandates, he may have left himself potentially vulnerable to a Democratic challenger. His stumbles also suggest the possibility that the sort of harsh, inflexible Covid policies usually associated with Donald Trump may prove a hindrance for some G.O.P. candidates who embrace them in 2022 and beyond.Mr. DeSantis passed conservative red-meat legislation like voting reform and an “anti-riot” law (a federal judge recently blocked enforcement of it) and picked fights with proponents of mask and vaccine mandates, Big Tech, the media and even some Florida cruise lines.Mr. DeSantis’s moves were not a complete surprise. In our partisan political atmosphere, there’s a rationale for firing up your base to maximize turnout. Since 2018, the proportion of registered Republicans in Florida has inched up and moved closer to Democrats’ share. As Steve Schale, a Florida election expert, recently noted, “Sometime before the end of this year, there will be more Republicans registered in Florida than Democrats” — which, he said, has never happened before.And Mr. De Santis’s focus is not solely on Florida. He gets plenty of donations from outside the state, including from hotly pursued small-dollar donors who avidly consume Fox News and love his red-meat rhetoric. And he’s already engaging in some out-of-state travel of the kind future presidential contenders do to lay the groundwork.Yet he may be taking a risk. Donald Trump won Florida only by three points in 2020. Other famed swing states like Ohio and Iowa were redder — Mr. Trump won each by eight points — and many new residents flocking there come from more left-leaning places like the Northeast.In a broader context, there’s evidence, from places like the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, that Mr. Trump was perceived as moving too far right between 2016 and 2020, and it cost him dearly with swing voters. They are a smaller group than they used to be, but especially in close elections, they can still make a difference. Similarly, many suburban women — in areas like Central Florida — have moved away from the Republican Party in the Trump era.Worse, there is some evidence for Mr. DeSantis that right-wing-base hits are problematic even with some Republicans. Florida endured a devastating summer 2021 surge in Covid cases and deaths. Mr. DeSantis’s mandates against masks and vaccines have encountered resistance, and not just in left-leaning areas. Several counties that heavily favored Mr. DeSantis in 2018 have defied his order and instituted mask mandates (some temporary), including Sarasota County, which he won by almost nine points; Indian River County, which he won by 22 points; and Brevard County, which he won by 17 points.Mr. DeSantis’s approval numbers have also declined. A late August Morning Consult poll showed him down to 48 percent approval from 54 percent in late June — with the biggest shift coming from independents. Another survey of the governor’s approval from Quinnipiac now stands 12 points lower than it did in 2019. And while he opposed vaccine mandates for cruise ships — a significant industry in the Sunshine State, with a lot of Republican customers — over 60 percent of Floridians supported them.Mr. DeSantis isn’t the only Republican who has taken a right-wing line on Covid measures and experienced political fallout from it. Since June, the disapproval numbers for Texas governor Greg Abbott have gone up among both Republicans and independents.Next year, Mr. DeSantis could be running against a former Republican governor, Charlie Crist, or Nikki Fried, the agriculture commissioner, who would be the state’s first woman governor.By following a G.O.P. base strategy on pandemic issues in a state hard hit by Covid, Mr. DeSantis may have left himself vulnerable. To reverse this slide, he might look to the types of initiatives he has pursued that were popular beyond just his base — for example, on education and the environment — as well as policies popular among Republicans, like tax cuts.If he is to win decisively in 2022 — a prerequisite for a 2024 Republican primary contest that might include at least one person named Trump — he will need to perform a lot of tricky choreography in the Sunshine State.Liz Mair (@LizMair), a strategist for campaigns by Scott Walker, Roy Blunt, Rand Paul, Carly Fiorina and Rick Perry, is the founder and president of Mair Strategies. She has also consulted for a major cruise line.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: [email protected] The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

China has already determined the outcome, but the government is pressuring opposition parties to participate to lend the vote legitimacy.HONG KONG — As far as the trappings of a healthy democracy go, Hong Kong’s upcoming legislative election has them all.Hundreds of politicians hand out leaflets in the tropical heat. Posters remind residents of voter registration deadlines. During a preliminary ballot on Sunday, the government touted a record 90 percent turnout rate.All the ingredients are there — except one: any uncertainty about the outcome.The legislative election, set for December, is the first since the Chinese government ordered sweeping changes to Hong Kong’s election system to ensure its favored candidates win. Some opposition groups have pledged to boycott in protest, and the largest of them, the Democratic Party, will decide this weekend whether to follow.But Hong Kong officials have warned that a boycott could violate the city’s expansive national security law. After all, an election doesn’t look valid if the opposition doesn’t show up.Welcome to elections in Hong Kong now: not so much exercises in democracy as the vigorous performance of it.“They want to continue to give the illusion that they respect the Basic Law,” said Jean-Pierre Cabestan, a professor of Chinese politics at Hong Kong Baptist University. The law is Hong Kong’s mini-Constitution, which promises the city, a former British colony, certain political rights under Chinese rule. “That’s the best way to legitimize their rule.”Government officials opening a ballot box during the vote counting on Sunday.Anthony Kwan/Getty ImagesHong Kong’s elections have never been fully free, with rules that favored Beijing’s allies even before this spring’s overhaul. Even so, the opposition had long managed to win at least some influence on government policy, and polls had consistently shown that they had the majority of the public’s support. In late 2019, months of fierce antigovernment protests helped fuel an unprecedented landslide victory by pro-democracy candidates in local elections.The Chinese Communist Party was determined not to see a repeat. After imposing the security law last summer to crush the protests, it quickly followed up with election changes that allowed only government-approved “patriots” to hold office. In addition, the general public will now be allowed to choose just 20 of 90 legislators. Most of the rest will be chosen by the electors picked last Sunday — all but one aligned with the authorities.Yet the party, intent on preserving Hong Kong’s status as a global financial center, has fervently denied international accusations that it is reneging on the pledges it made upon Hong Kong’s return to China in 1997. Hence officials’ determination to make the elections look as credible as possible — even if that requires intimidating the opposition into running.One senior official has suggested that boycotting the elections would be a statement of rebellion. Carrie Lam, the city’s chief executive, said last month that it would be “strange” for a party not to run.“If there is a political party with many members, but it does not discuss or participate in politics, then we might need to question the value of its existence,” she told reporters.The government has also made it illegal to encourage others to cast protest ballots.Regardless of what the Democratic Party decides, this past Sunday’s preliminary vote has already offered a preview of what Hong Kong elections may look like in the future.“Hong Kong’s elections have always been known for being fair, open, just, clean and honest, and we take pride in that,” Carrie Lam said in a speech on Sunday.Jerome Favre/EPA, via ShutterstockThe purpose of the vote was to form an Election Committee, a group of 1,500 that under Beijing’s new rules will select many legislators, as well as Hong Kong’s next top leader. According to the government, the committee is a diverse microcosm of Hong Kong society.But fewer than 8,000 residents — 0.1 percent of the population — were eligible to vote in the Election Committee poll, all drawn from a list approved by Beijing.All the candidates had to be screened by a government panel for loyalty. No major opposition groups fielded candidates, citing the futility given the handpicked electorate. (In addition, many of the opposition’s leaders have been arrested, are in exile or have been disqualified from holding government posts.)Even the few residents who did have a vote had limited say. Of the Election Committee’s 1,500 seats, three-quarters were uncontested or set aside for designated government allies.None of that stopped officials from declaring the day a paragon of civic participation. “Hong Kong’s elections have always been known for being fair, open, just, clean and honest, and we take pride in that,” Mrs. Lam said before polls opened.At times, the authorities’ dedication to the veneer of public engagement verged on absurdism.The weekend before the Election Committee vote, the Central Liaison Office, Beijing’s official arm in Hong Kong, ordered the ranks of the city’s billionaire tycoons to staff street booths and extol the virtues of the new election system.Voters posing for a photograph before walking into a polling station on Sunday. Fewer than 8,000 residents were eligible to vote in the Election Committee poll.Louise Delmotte/Getty ImagesVirtually all the tycoons were running uncontested or guaranteed appointed seats on the committee, in keeping with Beijing’s tradition of political partnerships with the business elite. But the central government wanted residents to feel as if they had earned their positions, said Tam Yiu-Chung, a Hong Kong member of the Chinese legislature’s top committee.“It was the liaison office that asked us to do this,” Mr. Tam said. “Even though we are guaranteed members, we still believe we should tell residents what expectations we have for ourselves, and let them understand us better.”That was how Pansy Ho, the second-richest woman in Hong Kong, found herself hawking leaflets on a 92-degree day. Raymond Kwok, the billionaire chairman of one of Hong Kong’s largest developers, stayed only a few minutes, enough time to be photographed handing out fliers, before leaving.Kennedy Wong, a lawyer and member of an advisory body to Beijing, lasted longer — about an hour and a half, he said — at a booth in the working-class neighborhood of North Point. Mr. Wong acknowledged that the success of the outreach was questionable.“I didn’t receive questions on the street during my time there,” he said, adding that passers-by either flashed signs of support or “walked past and ignored us.”On the day of the election, officials touted a 90 percent turnout rate. Mrs. Lam said it “reflected the support for the new electoral system.”But that 90 percent was not calculated out of the total pool of roughly 8,000 eligible voters; it was of the number of voters in the few contested races. It represented 4,380 of 4,889 voters in that category casting ballots. There were more police deployed to guard polling stations — over 5,000 — than electors.Police officers searching a protester during a four-person demonstration near a polling station in Hong Kong on Sunday.Vincent Yu/Associated PressStill, those who voted professed to be unfazed. In an interview as she left the polling station, Chan Nga Yue said she considered the candidates representative because “many of them are people that we know.”Even with the few ballots cast, vote counting proved troublesome. The first results were not announced until nine hours after polls closed — for a seat for which 82 votes had been cast. The full results were not finalized for an additional three hours. Officials cited staff errors.Only one candidate who was not part of the pro-Beijing bloc won a seat. Officials said the victory of Tik Chi-yuen, a self-declared independent, proved that diverse voices were welcome.But Mr. Tik’s election was, in part, pure luck: After tying with two other candidates, he prevailed in a random draw.Occasionally, reminders that not everyone was thrilled with the new setup broke through.One pro-democracy group staged a four-person protest near a polling station, where the members were surrounded by dozens of police officers.Also, midway through the day, Barnabas Fung, the city’s top elections official, acknowledged that the reduction in the electorate had led “many unregistered people” to line up at polling stations mistakenly.“There were people who thought they had a vote,” Mr. Fung told reporters. “In the future, we’ll have to see if there’s a way to let everyone know that only registered voters can vote.” More

The much criticized review showed much the same results as in November, with 99 more Biden votes and 261 fewer Trump ones.PHOENIX — After months of delays and blistering criticism, a review of the 2020 election in Arizona’s largest county, ordered up and financed by Republicans, has failed to show that former President Donald J. Trump was cheated of victory, according to draft versions of the report.In fact, the draft report from the company Cyber Ninjas found just the opposite: It tallied 99 additional votes for President Biden and 261 fewer votes for Mr. Trump in Maricopa County, the fast-growing region that includes Phoenix.The full review is set to be released on Friday, but draft versions circulating through Arizona political circles were obtained by The New York Times from a Republican and a Democrat.Late on Thursday night, Maricopa County, whose Republican leaders have derided the review, got a jump on the official release by tweeting out its conclusions.“The county’s canvass of the 2020 General Election was accurate and the candidates certified as the winners did, in fact, win,” the county said on Twitter. It then criticized the review as “littered with errors and faulty conclusions.”Mr. Biden won Arizona by roughly 10,500 votes, making his victory of about 45,000 votes in Maricopa County crucial to his win. Under intense pressure from Trump loyalists, the Republican majority in the State Senate had ordered an autopsy of the county’s votes for president. The review was financed largely by $5.7 million in donations from far-right groups and Mr. Trump’s defenders.The draft reports implicitly acknowledged Mr. Biden’s victory, noting that there were “no substantial differences” between the new tally of votes and the official count by Maricopa County election officials. But they also claimed that other factors — most if not all contested by reputable election experts — left the results “very close to the margin of error for the election.”Among other alleged discrepancies, the reports claimed that some ballots were cast by people who had moved before the election, that election-related computer files were missing and that some computer images of ballots were missing.One expert and critic of the review who had seen a draft report of the findings called those red herrings.“The whole report just reflects on the Ninjas’ lack of understanding of Arizona election law and election administration procedures,” said Benny White, a Republican in Tucson who is an adviser on election law and procedures.It was not possible to determine whether the conclusions in the final version of the report being released on Friday would differ from those in the drafts. Mr. White said he had been told that some Republican Senate officials were unhappy with the findings.But if those findings stand, they would amount to a devastating disappointment for pro-Trump Republicans nationwide who have hoped the Arizona review would vindicate their belief that the presidency was stolen from him. For many loyalists, the investigation has been seen as the first in a string of state inquiries that would, domino-like, topple claims that Mr. Biden was legitimately in the White House.State Senator Wendy Rogers, a Republican who is among Arizona’s most ardent advocates of the stolen-election canard, posted on Twitter late on Thursday that the 110-page document was “simply a draft and is only a partial report,” and looked ahead to a hearing on Friday discussing the results. “Tomorrow we make history,” she wrote.On Thursday night, without acknowledging the findings of the draft reports that had been rippling across Arizona for half a day, the former president said in a statement, “Everybody will be watching Arizona tomorrow to see what the highly respected auditors and Arizona State Senate found out regarding the so-called Election!”Election experts said the inquiry run by Trump partisans with unrestricted access to ballots and election equipment failed to make even a basic case that the November vote was badly flawed, much less rigged.Critics said that would raise the bar for Republican politicians in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania who, under pressure from Mr. Trump and his supporters, have mounted their own Arizona-style investigations. Under similar pressure, the Texas secretary of state’s office on Thursday announced a “comprehensive forensic audit” of the results from four of the state’s largest counties.“If Trump and his supporters can’t prove it here, with a process they designed, they can’t prove it anywhere,” David Becker, the executive director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research, said on Thursday.In fact, the Republican inquiry may not be completely over. Senate investigators still want to examine Maricopa County computer servers for evidence of tampering, even though county officials insist they have had no connection to election machinery.In general, however, the report was a cap-gun ending to an inquiry whose backers hinted would turn up a cannonade of fraud.Republicans in the State Senate pushed for the inquiry in December, spurred in part by a daylong meeting with Rudolph W. Giuliani, Mr. Trump’s lawyer.The Republican president of the State Senate, Karen Fann, insisted that the review was a nonpartisan effort to reassure voters that the election had been well run, but faith in that pledge ebbed after she chose Cyber Ninjas, a firm with no prior experience in elections, to oversee the inquiry.The firm’s chief executive, Doug Logan, soon was shown to have suggested on Twitter that Mr. Biden’s victory in Arizona was illegitimate. Other firms and consultants hired for the inquiry also proved to have pro-Trump ties or were election conspiracy theorists.While the report’s authors declared that their monthslong review of votes in Maricopa County represented the “most comprehensive and complex election audit ever conducted,” the hand count of 2.1 million ballots and a review of voting machines and systems was plagued from the start by missteps and accusations of incompetence and partisan influence.Some elections officials said the draft reports offered an unlikely vindication of what they have been insisting for months: that Arizona ran a transparent, credible election in November.“The numbers match up,” said Adrian Fontes, who as county recorder oversaw the election in Maricopa County and is now a Democratic candidate for secretary of state.Mr. Fontes said some critiques and concerns raised in the report, such as the potential for duplicate votes, reflected a lack of knowledge about how the county conducts elections. Mr. Fontes said his office had put systems into place that reconciled in real time voter lists with records of who has voted.Trump’s Bid to Subvert the ElectionCard 1 of 4A monthslong campaign. More

Eight and a half hours after former President Donald J. Trump made a public demand for Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas to back legislation to create a “forensic audit of the 2020 election,” the Texas secretary of state’s office announced a “comprehensive forensic audit” of the results from four of the state’s largest counties.The quick response by state officials in Texas, which Mr. Trump carried last year by more than five percentage points, was the latest example of the former president’s enduring influence over the Republican Party, particularly when it comes to his efforts to undermine public confidence in the legitimacy of his loss last year to President Biden.“Governor Abbott, we need a ‘Forensic Audit of the 2020 Election,’” Mr. Trump said in a midday open letter to Mr. Abbott. “Texans know voting fraud occurred in some of their counties.”Texas is currently without a secretary of state, after the May retirement of Ruth Ruggero Hughs. Mr. Abbott, a Republican, has yet to appoint a successor.Nevertheless, the office released a two-sentence statement late Thursday stating that it would examine ballots from the 2020 election in Collin, Dallas, Harris and Tarrant Counties. The news release called those counties the “two largest Democrat counties and two largest Republican counties” in the state, but of the four, only Collin County backed Mr. Trump against Mr. Biden in the 2020 election. The statement said the audit process had already begun.Since Arizona Republicans began a review of more than 2 million ballots in Maricopa County, Trump-aligned Republicans across the country have sought to replicate the effort. In Wisconsin, a former State Supreme Court justice is investigating the election results and said Monday that an audit of ballots is possible. Pennsylvania Republicans last week sought driver’s license data and Social Security numbers for every voter in the state as part of an inquiry into the 2020 election there.The various reviews have not uncovered any significant evidence of fraud or impropriety in the vote counting. But they have created a new kind of security risk as third parties gain access to voting equipment and raised questions about the use of public resources to investigate Republican conspiracy theories.To date, there have been no serious allegations that the Texas election was flawed.Texas Democrats called the audit the latest attempt by Mr. Abbott and the state’s Republicans to cater to Mr. Trump.“This is all an organized effort to overturn the will of the people in an effort to fuel the ‘Big Lie’ and stroke Trump’s ego,” said Gilberto Hinojosa, the chairman of the Texas Democratic Party. More

US Capitol attackHouse committee on Capitol attack subpoenas Trump’s ex-chief of staff and other top aidesMark Meadows, Steve Bannon and Dan Scavino among advisers called to testify over president’s connection to 6 January events Hugo Lowell in Washington DCThu 23 Sep 2021 19.48 EDTLast modified on Thu 23 Sep 2021 20.30 EDTThe House select committee scrutinizing the Capitol attack on Thursday sent subpoenas to Trump’s White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and a cadre of top Trump aides, demanding their testimony to shed light on the former president’s connection to the 6 January riot.The subpoenas and demands for depositions marked the most aggressive investigative actions the select committee has taken since it made records demands and records preservation requests that formed the groundwork of the inquiry into potential White House involvement.House select committee investigators targeted four of the closest aides to the former president: deputy White House chief of staff Dan Scavino, former Trump campaign manager Steve Bannon, and the former acting defense secretary’s chief of staff Kash Patel as well as Meadows.“The select committee has reason to believe that you have information relevant to understanding important activities that led to and informed events at the Capitol on January 6,” the chairman of the select committee, Bennie Thompson, said in the subpoena letters.“Accordingly, the select committee seeks both documents and your deposition testimony regarding these and other matters that are within the scope of the select committee’s inquiry,” Thompson said.The select committee is expected to authorize further subpoenas and schedule closed-door interviews with key witnesses – as well as the inquiry’s second public hearing – in the coming weeks, according to two sources familiar with internal deliberations.The Trump aides compelled to cooperate with the select committee have some of the most intimate knowledge of what the former president was doing and thinking during the insurrection – and what he knew in advance of plans to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s election win.Several administration officials, such as Meadows and Scavino, remained by Trump’s side for most of the day on 6 January, while campaign aides such as Bannon strategized how to subvert the results of the 2020 election and reinstall Trump in the Oval Office.Meadows also accompanied Trump back to the White House after the conclusion of the “Stop the Steal” rally that swiftly descended into the Capitol attack, from where Trump told Republican senator Ben Sasse he was “delighted” at seeing the images of the insurrection.Patel, who was nearly appointed CIA director in the final weeks of the Trump administration four years after emerging from obscurity as a Hill staffer, may also hold the key to unlocking the full picture of the Capitol attack as one of the former president’s top lieutenants.The subpoena authorizations came after the Guardian first reported on Tuesday that House select committee investigators were considering issuing the orders to Meadows and other Trump aides as the panel ramps up the pace of its investigation.There is no guarantee that the subpoena targets will comply. Trump has suggested he will demand that the Biden administration invoke executive privilege over Trump-era executive branch records requested by the select committee and try to block damaging witness testimony.But it appears unlikely that the White House Office of Legal Counsel would assert the protection in the case of 6 January materials, given it previously allowed Trump DOJ officials to testify to Congress and the protection does not extend to an individual’s private interests.TopicsUS Capitol attackTrump administrationHouse of RepresentativesUS CongressSteve BannonUS politicsDonald TrumpnewsReuse this content More