Maricopa County Attorney Argues That Voters Who Wait Until Election Day to Vote Then Encounter Problems Reap What They Sow
During day 2 of the Kari Lake election trial in Phoenix, Arizona, Maricopa County attorney Tom Liddy argued that it was “political malpractice” for a campaign to tell voters to vote in person on election day instead of voting early, and that “you reap what you sow,” meaning that Lake’s campaign lost because of strategy, not because of a printer malfunction error that rendered the ballots incapable of being machine read, long lines that led to voters being unable to vote, or other malignantly incompetent actions on behalf of Maricopa County officials.
Now, playing devil’s advocate, it may well be that even with all of the malignant incompetence on behalf of the county that Hobbs still won. However, for a county attorney to excuse all of that away with references to those who want answers as “election deniers” who shouldn’t have any expectation of working voting machines on Election Day is reprehensible.
During his closing argument, Liddy said:
But those errors, or those mishaps by machines, if you will, the effect that had on election day voters was compounded, Your Honor, not by intentional misconduct by any employee or anybody under the control of Maricopa County, but by months and months and months of communication from the current leadership of the Republican Party of Arizona and the communications specialists of the Kari Lake for Governor campaign that said, do not vote early. Even if…you got an early ballot, don’t mail it, don’t drop it off at the drop box, 2000 Mules…go on election day and vote in person.
And Lord forbid, don’t ever put your ballot in the drop box, in the ballot box, or in drawer number 3, because there’s something very scary about drawer number 3, which is nothing but a ballot box. That’s what people all over the world do with their ballots. Vote it and stick it in the ballot box. But people were terrorized by that on election day. That’s not on Maricopa County. That’s on the Kari Lake for Governor campaign. That’s on the Dr. Kelli Ward-led Arizona Republican Party communications apparatus.
So we did not see — two days of testimony and all of those affidavits came in — evidence of a botched election. We saw evidence of a botched campaign, political malpractice. Who goes out and tells their voters, don’t vote on day one of early voting, day two, day three, all the way up to day 26 of early voting. Wait until the last second. That’s political malpractice. You reap what you sow.
Your Honor, the burden has not been met. When people come into this courtroom without evidence, there should be a day of reckoning. And this has been happening all over the country, Your Honor, and it’s gotta stop, and it’s gotta stop right now, and the place to stop it is right here in your courtroom, Your Honor, right here in Mesa, Arizona. This has gotta stop.
We’ve gotta get back to respecting elections, because that’s all we have, Your Honor. Different religions, different creeds, different ethnicities, different backgrounds, there’s only one thing that makes us Americans, and that’s, we believe in choosing our own election — our own rulers, our own governors, our own mayors, our own presidents, and we do that through elections.
He’s got a slightly warped understanding of what makes us Americans, and an even more warped view of what we’re voting for when we cast our ballots, but we’ll set all that aside for a moment.
What exactly does counsel mean by “without evidence”? Simply because he doesn’t agree with the evidence doesn’t mean that there is no evidence…..
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