PHOENIX (AP) – Three Pennsylvania lawmakers were in Arizona Wednesday to review the Senate GOP’s partisan review of the 2020 election. They are the latest Republicans to make pilgrimages to Phoenix, urging ground zero of the “Stop the Steal” movement to find support for conspiracy theories suggesting the election was stolen from former President Donald Trump. US MPs Marjorie Taylor Greene and Matt Gaetz cheered the exam at a rally outside Phoenix last month. The next day, several prominent Trump supporters and conspirators were promoted to speak at a mega-church in Phoenix. Enrique Tarrio, leader of the Proud Boys extremist group, recently posted a short video of himself in the Arizona Capitol. Political pilgrimages are nothing new in Arizona, where Republican politicians have long enjoyed photo ops in front of the Mexican border wall. But now the draw is the Arizona State Fairgrounds, the site of a former basketball arena where a Trump supporter who promoted electoral conspiracies oversees a hand count of 2.1 million Maricopa County ballots. Recent visitors are Pennsylvania Sens. Doug Mastriano and Cris Dush and Rep. Rob Kauffman. They met with Arizona lawmakers in the Capitol building before traveling to the audit site for a briefing from the auditors. “We’ll bring the information back to the Senate leadership, we’ll write them back on the way, and then hopefully we can find some approach here to ensure that every person in Pennsylvania can be sure that they have a vote and they count,” Mastriano told a radio host from WEEO-FM. Pennsylvania MPs and others in their delegation spent about 20 minutes on the arena floor where volunteers counted ballots and took photos. Doug Logan, the head of Cyber Ninjas, the company that ran the exam, showed them around. Mastriano then spoke to conservative media outlets but ignored journalists from the Associated Press and other mainstream news sources. When asked by a reporter if he would like to see the Arizona test replicated in Pennsylvania, Dush said, “Without question. Absolutely. ”As Trump and his allies claimed without evidence last year that his Arizona loss was marred by fraud, the Arizona Senate GOP used its subpoena to gain access to all ballot papers, counting machines, and hard drives full of election data in Maricopa County. Home of Phoenix and 60% of Arizona voters. They turned everything over to a team led by Cyber Ninjas, a small consulting firm with no prior electoral experience for hand counting and analysis of vote counting machines and data that won’t change President Joe Biden’s victory, and election experts have pointed to major flaws in the process. But it has become a role model for Republicans in other states hoping to find evidence of conspiracy theories. “I believe Arizona will be the launch pad for electoral testing and electoral integrity efforts in this great country,” said Gaetz. He listed the swing states where Trump lost in 2020. Greene said the audit was the reason she and Gaetz chose Mesa, a suburb of Phoenix, for the second stop of their America First rally? ‘”Greene said. “I said, ‘Yeah, I was following it.’ He said, ‘Let’s go to Arizona.’ I said, ‘Count me.’ “Mastriano has become a one-man force in conservative politics in Pennsylvania, leading anti-mask protests last year, pressing for Trump’s re-election loss to be overturned, and surfacing on Im 6th On November 11th, Mastriano organized a hearing in Gettysburg with Rudy Giuliani and a phone call from Trump claiming the president claimed the election was rigged and urged state lawmakers to overturn the outcome. All three Pennsylvania MPs visiting were among the 64 Republican lawmakers who signed a letter asking the state Congressional delegation to object to the Pennsylvania electoral college voting for Biden .——— The Associated Press- Author Marc Levy in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania contributed. Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed in any way without permission.
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