Trump supporters protest in Phoenix
Organizers vow to keep demonstrating ouside key voting centre
PHOENIX—“We will win Arizona!”
That was the refrain outside the Maricopa County Elections Center Thursday at a second night of demonstrations urging election officials to count outstanding votes in Arizona.
As of 9 p.m. MT, 90 per cent of the vote had been counted in Arizona, and the lead Democratic candidate Joe Biden has been enjoying since election night had narrowed to about 46,000 votes.
The crowd attributed the favourable result to Democratic observers at the vote location, advancing a narrative pushed by the Trump campaign Wednesday that the reason Biden was ahead was that President Donald Trump’s observers had been kept out.
It was an oppressively hot 35 degrees Thursday, as workers at the county election centre worked well into the evening.
Protesters outside carried “stop the cheat” signs and a few men appeared carrying guns and wearing bulletproof vests.
Organizers with megaphones vowed Republicans would return to this spot 10 a.m. Friday, and every day until the count was complete.
Michael Morenos, a Trump supporter carrying a sign reading “Trump has won,” said the message was aspirational.
“The results of Michigan, even potentially Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, they’re all going to be challenged in court ” he said. “And depending on what way it goes, it’s very likely Trump has already won the election.”
Trump has launched lawsuits in Michigan, Georgia, Pennsylvania and demanded a recount in Wisconsin. State judges dismissed his claims in Michigan and Georgia Thursday.
The appearance of Alex Jones, an antiglobalization conspiracy theorist who runs the site Infowars, swiftly changed the tone of the Phoenix event, with the crowd swarming him, shouting “Alex.”
“Arizona put up the biggest fight in America and the world salutes Arizona patriots,” he said, after leading the crowd in a chant of “lock him up,” in reference to Biden, who he called an agent of communist China.
A brief conflict broke out shortly after Jones’s appearance, in which the crowd began running at a protester silently holding a degrading image of Trump. At least one pro-Trump protester threw a water bottle, before others stepped in to stop the crowd’s progress. Police then arrived to get the crowd off the street, and they reconvened in the vote location parking lot.
Arizona has a long political history of voting Republican. It’s the home state of Barry Goldwater, a five-term, conservative senator who was the Republican nominee for president in 1964. John McCain, the party’s 2008 presidential nominee, represented the state in Congress from 1983 until his 2018 death.
But changing demographics, including a fast-growing Latino population and a boom of new residents have made the state friendlier to Democrats.
Many of the gains have been driven by the shifting politics of Maricopa County, which is home to Phoenix and its suburbs. Maricopa County accounts for 60 per cent of the state’s vote.