Mark Finchem just got caught telling a whopper
With just two days to go until the vast majority of Arizona voters get their early ballots in the mail, Republican Mark Finchem continues his quest to end the wildly popular program.
Finchem thinks the decades-old mail-in ballot system, ushered in and made popular by Republicans, is a seething petri dish of deceit – a highway to hell traveled by mythical mules who are out to steal your vote.
It matters not that there’s no evidence that 2020 election was stolen. In fact, not so much as a single donkey was caught stuffing Arizona’s early ballot drop boxes in the November 2020 election.
But then, Finchem doesn’t deal in reality. His entire campaign is contingent upon selling the Big Lie and never mind the whoppers with which he litters the campaign trail as he asks Arizona voters to put him in charge of elections.
Consider his comment in the recent secretary of state’s debate.
“I don’t care for mail-in voting,” he said. “That’s why I go to the polls.”
Except ... he doesn’t. Or at least, he hasn’t.
The Arizona Republic’s Mary Jo Pitzl reported in April that Finchem has voted via early ballot in almost every election since 2004.
Meanwhile, journalist Dillon Rosenblatt, who writes a newsletter called FourthEstate48, reported on Wednesday that Finchem has cast an early ballot in 28 of the last 30 elections. Since 2004, Rosenblatt reports that Finchem has automatically received and voted by mail in every election but two – the 2007 Tucson city election and the August 2022 primary.
That’s quite a record for someone who doesn’t care for early voting.
Finchem’s response to Rosenblatt’s finding was to fire off some Trumpian blather that had nothing to do with the facts.
“You do realize that there was an audit and we had hearings and there was this whole thing where nobody trusts the Soros press or #FakeFontes or #CrookedKatie Hobbs anymore?” Finchem tweeted, in reply to Rosenblatt. “Where have you been?”
Fact checking the candidates, it seems.
Or perhaps rereading the Senate audit that found no evidence of widespread fraud in the 2020 election.
When Finchem’s opponent, Democrat Adrian Fontes pointed to Finchem’s propensity to participate in early voting, Finchem fired back with
an excuse so flimsy as to be laughable.
“That was before you tried to mass mail ballots and made up your own election law,” he replied to Fontes. “You ruined elections in Arizona. Regardless, I will defend the law whatever that is, unlike YOU.”
Except that Finchem isn’t defending the law. He’s pushing to get rid of it.
And Fontes didn’t “ruin elections” based on any metric that takes into account actual reality.
As Maricopa County recorder, Fontes hatched a plan to mail a ballot to every registered Democrat. But it was for the March 2020 presidential preference election, not the 2020 primary or general elections. The COVID pandemic had just arrived and Fontes pitched it as a way to safeguard public health.
The plan was promptly vetoed by a judge so it’s difficult to fathom how Fontes brought about the ruination of Arizona’s entire election system – or how he undermined Finchem’s faith in early voting when months later, Finchem cast an early ballot in both the 2020 primary and general elections. Now, Finchem wants to kill the three-decade-old early ballot program, hoping the Legislature will force voters to stand in long lines on Election Day to combat election fraud that exists only in his imagination.
I can’t honestly say whether Finchem believes his traveling disnformation campaign or whether it’s a slick strategy designed to win him the state’s No. 2 job – just in time to oversee Arizona’s 2024 election.
What I do know is that for nearly two years now, Finchem has been promising to produce evidence that the 2020 election was stolen and we’re still waiting.
Meanwhile, he’s called for the decertification of the 2020 vote and the arrest of Secretary of State Katie Hobbs and Fontes.
Can you imagine having the state’s chief elections officer who makes wild accusations that he can’t back up? One who is looking to jail people without having actual evidence that they committed an actual crime?
One who misrepresents his own voting record?
Imagine it. This character could actually win.