Testimony on the Arizona Partisan Review before the House Committee on Oversight and Reform

On October 7, Gowri Ramachandran, senior counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice, testified before the House Committee on Oversight and Reform about the Arizona partisan review and efforts to sabotage our elections and our democracy. 

The Arizona Senate’s partisan review, and specifically the contractors who are conducting the review, fail to meet any of the basic standards that legitimate election audits should meet in order to earn confidence from the public: objectivity, transparency, and competence. Instead, the contractors’ most attention-grabbing findings fit the pattern that purveyors of voter fraud myths have long followed: they remain ignorant of basic probability, common election laws, and common election administration procedures.footnote1_iSVt0F9HUhfIRqSfCJ7N0WA7UDsnDUvAJfjyPHk0PQ_tay8tiupLcH01Brennan Center for Justice, Analysis of the September 15, 2005 Voter Fraud Report Submitted to the New Jersey Attorney General, December 2005, 1, https://www.brennancenter.org/sites/default/files/analysis/Analysis%20of%20the%209–15–05%20Voter%20Fraud%20Report.pdf.  They then raise baseless suspicions about their fellow citizensfootnote2_iSVt0F9HUhfIRqSfCJ7N0WA7UDsnDUvAJfjyPHk0PQ_sxqT8haCrg0b2Brennan Center for Justice, Analysis of the September 15, 2005 Voter Fraud Report Submitted to the New Jersey Attorney General, December 2005, 1, https://www.brennancenter.org/sites/default/files/analysis/Analysis%20of%20the%209–15–05%20Voter%20Fraud%20Report.pdf.  and the dedicated public servants who administer elections.footnote3_o97MO7yqVnEvm0Kd68Ksh3voMNhPRmchJp7qbxl0O1Q_wY5PRInIutbJ3Reuters Staff, “Fact Check: Massachusetts Election Officials Have Not Destroyed Ballots or Committed Election Fraud,” Reuters, October 2, 2020, https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-election-ballot-massachuset/factcheck-massachusetts-election-officials-have-not-destroyed-ballots-or-committed-election-fraud-idUSKBN26N2AF. 

By seeding disinformation campaigns about elections, these partisan reviewers are laying the groundwork for future sabotage of our democracy. Recent efforts to pass laws that would permit state legislatures to overturn election results have failed,footnote4_0tGc2VYeXYodKo2–7iTkeoOVQ73yfBDSht0LB4zPe6c_oCJ3n5PIjJKH4H.B. 2720, 55th Leg., Reg. Sess. (Ariz. 2021). but the continued spread of lies about elections set the stage for legitimating these efforts in the future. And these partisan reviews that continue to fuel the “Stop the Steal” movement have been spreading.footnote5_w3o-85ty8DKOQJP-9wGC1eBfZGWB453726i1L5iNaY_aHpGcNYDfMeo5Kate Brumback and Nicholas Riccardi, “It’s Not Just Arizona: Push To Review 2020 Ballots Spreads,” AP News, May 25, 2021, https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-arizona-election-2020-election-recounts-government-and-politics-4d5038b2bea05d2132cb4ada43516f67. Political actors in other states have proposed conducting their own partisan reviews, and many are treating the Arizona Senate’s venture as a model.footnote6_INsp6dEbLKYNBQeDFoTWqvYRYxym4GHzLoTuo9Kw_cY70FkRwyYZV6Jonathan Bydlak et al., Partisan Election Review Efforts in Five States, Brennan Center for Justice, July 8, 2021, 11, https://www.brennancenter.org/sites/default/files/2021–07/Partisan%20Election%20Review%20Efforts%20Across%20the%20United%20States%20in%202021%20-%2007.08.21.pdf. 

Congress should provide resources to help and protect election officials from retaliation for ensuring eligible voters can exercise their rights. Through the Freedom to Vote Act, it should protect election workers during the vote tabulation process and require (and fund) legitimate post-election tabulation audits. Finally, by providing voters a remedy if their right to vote (and have that vote counted) in a federal election is infringed, the Act would protect against the danger of a state legislature or election official succumbing to future attempts to sabotage an election.