Hobbs’s remarks came during a Monday night interview with CNN’s Chris Cuomo on “Cuomo Prime Time.”
“A group of Republicans are continuing to try to appease their base who refuse to accept that … Trump lost Arizona and that he’s not the president anymore,” Hobbs told Cuomo.
Katie Hobbs, Arizona's Secretary of State, dismisses the GOP's review of the 2020 election ballots in the state as a "group of Republicans…trying t o appease their base who refuse to accept that Trump lost Arizona."
"We have so many concerns about this exercise," she says." pic.twitter.com/uyxwBrHHCv
— Cuomo Prime Time (@CuomoPrimeTime) April 27, 2021
Last week, Maricopa County, which is one of the largest counties in Arizona, “handed over nearly 2.1 million ballots and nearly 400 tabulation machines” to the state Senate after Republicans subpoenaed the materials, bolstered by the falsehood crafted by former President Donald Trump that the election had been stolen.
Hobbs also noted that her office has been focused on working “with a lawsuit that’s been filed to try to address the security’s concerns at a minimum, but at this point, this seems like such a farce that it would be a good idea to stop it.”
“We have so many concerns about this exercise,” Hobbs said Monday. “I kind of don’t want to call it an audit. I think that’s an insult to professional auditors everywhere because they’re making this stuff up as they go along.”
She added, “I think there was a high level of expectation that whoever had their hands on the ballots and the equipment would adhere to some level of security measures and transparency, and that clearly has not happened.”
Despite the certification of Biden’s narrow victory in states like Arizona, Trump’s yet-unfounded claims of election fraud are still embroiling many states with large conservative bases.
Arizona’s state legislature has seen a flurry of bills restricting the right to vote in the name of election security, although they’ve been held up by a paradoxically supportive rogue Republican legislator until the audit is completed.
On Monday, a new judge was assigned to oversee a legal challenge to the election audit in Arizona after the judge originally hearing the case withdrew.