Biden win in Maricopa is certified
PHOENIX — The elected leaders of Arizona’s most populous county certified election results Friday that showed Democrat Joe Biden won the presidential race and set the stage for state leaders to certify results once one holdout county follows suit next week.
The five-member Maricopa County Board of Supervisors acted after lawsuits backed by the Republican Party and others supporting President Donald Trump failed to halt the normally routine action of verifying election results.
One Democrat and four Republicans are on the Phoenix-based board that voted unanimously to accept the election results.
Protesters marched outside the board chambers urging members not to approve the canvass, but Republican Chairman Clint Hickman said there’s no question about the accuracy of the count and no legal reason not to certify it.
“In a free democracy, elections result in some people’s candidates losing,” Hickman said. “I was disappointed in the outcome of a couple races, and I was extremely happy with the outcome in others. But I’m not going to violate the law or deviate from my own moral compass as some have pushed me to do.”
The Arizona Republican Party had asked a court to order an audit of a larger sample of ballots, saying there were questions about the counts, but a judge in Phoenix threw out that effort Thursday.
The action by the Maricopa County board comes as the state GOP has been pressuring county officials statewide to delay certifying their election results, leading officials in Republican-heavy Mohave County to postpone their certification until Monday.
That’s the deadline for them to act, unless there are outstanding votes that have not been counted. That is not the case; all 15 Arizona counties had completed their tallies by the end of last week.
Board members heard extensive reports from county elections officials who said the vote count was correct and noted that all tests and hand-count reviews showed the electronic ballot count was 100 percent accurate. Those tests are done with help from Democrats and Republicans.
“In all those instances, the political parties themselves found zero variance in all three elections,” said Scott Jarrett, Maricopa County’s director of election day and emergency voting, referring to three elections this year. “This is determined by the political parties themselves that this system is accurate.”
Around 70 Trump supporters gathered outside the site where the supervisors were meeting. Various speakers took turns lambasting the board, saying any certification would be an act of “treason.”
Several people said an independent, forensic audit of ballots and voting machines would make them feel comfortable accepting whatever election outcome.