This is an important piece with some amazing quotes:
One exchange:
Mark Finchem on September 22, 2022: We have, for example, in Yuma County ballot harvesting and votes. I mean, we’ve got people who were indicted for the very thing that we are talking about right now who pled guilty. And frankly, those votes altered the outcome of Yuma County.
Mark Finchem: Yuma County we’ve actually had indictments and people that have pled guilty to ballot trafficking.
Scott Pelley: How many ballots were involved?
Mark Finchem: I don’t know off the top of my head.
Scott Pelley: It’s four.
Mark Finchem: ‘Kay. Whether it’s four or 4,000, doesn’t matter.
Scott Pelley: It wasn’t the presidential election; it was a primary.
Mark Finchem: Doesn’t matter. It’s a defect in the system.
A miniscule defect. Two women in Yuma County pleaded guilty to collecting four ballots and dropping them in a ballot box. It’s against state law to deposit a ballot that isn’t yours or your family’s.
Scott Pelley: It’s four ballots in a primary.
Mark Finchem: In that instance. In that instance.
Scott Pelley: You have a bigger one?
Mark Finchem: Well, we’ve got information that’s been turned over to the attorney general’s office and you say that there was nothing there. OK. Then I’m gonna have to live with that. But do I know for a fact that there were other ballot trafficking operations around the country and some in Arizona? Yeah, I do.
Scott Pelley: Name one.
Mark Finchem: Yuma County, 25,000 ballots.
Scott Pelley: What happened?
Mark Finchem: Same fingerprints on those ballots for five individuals. So where’d that go? Where’s that evidence? I know it’s been turned over to the attorney general’s office. I know that the FBI field office actually did the prints.
That’s false according to the FBI. Yuma County told us that no one in law enforcement fingerprinted 25,000 ballots. Finchem often says that evidence is with Attorney General Brnovich, implying that something big is coming.
Mark Finchem: In fact, he has a mountain of evidence that’s sitting in his office.
But Brnovich told us his investigation is essentially over.
Mark Brnovich: We, as prosecutors, deal in facts and evidence. And I’m not like the clowns that throw stuff against the wall and see what sticks.
Scott Pelley: Clowns?
Mark Brnovich: Clowns. Did I say that? Yes, I think that there are a lot of clowns out there that– they saw what they wanted to see. What is that Simon and Garfunkel line that– “A man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest”? There’s a lotta that going on.
It’s going on in the top Arizona races where the Republican for governor is a denier.
Kari Lake on June 27, 2022: We had a fraudulent election, a corrupt election, and we have an illegitimate president sitting in the White House.
Mark Brnovich: It’s like a giant grift in some ways.
Scott Pelley: A grift, a swindle, is what you’re saying?
Mark Brnovich: Yes.
Scott Pelley: All of these accusations, the case in Yuma—scaremongering. The Brian Watson email—scaremongering. You called Arizona the epicenter of fraud, it’s scaremongering. It’s not the fraud that is breaking people’s faith in our elections, it’s people like you.
Mark Finchem: So you say. But when we look at the violations of state statute, this is the epicenter of the problem.
Nationwide, 190 election deniers are running for the U.S. House and 14 for the U.S. Senate, according to the Brookings Institution. Mark Brnovich lost his primary to a denier and so did Rusty Bowers, which may come as a relief.
Post-election, Trump supporters and conspiracy spinners laid siege to Bowers’ home up to three times a week. He had to fend them off—a man with a pistol—demonstrators in their own armored car.
And at the state capitol, on January 6, 2021, they came with rifles and a guillotine. In Arizona, when belief in the vote eroded, this is what filled the void.
Watch the whole thing if you have the chance.
I totally accept that there would likely always be a fair number of the population that would believe anything coming from their team. But this guy Finchem and Kari Lake are leading in the polls. A majority of Arizona either believe the lies or simply don’t care about what these people are trying to do. It’s disturbing.