Dozens of state lawmakers from around the country have signed onto a letter falsely referring to the 2020 elections as “corrupted” and insisting on “forensic audits” in all 50 states.
The letter also calls for states to “scrub” their voter rolls, and to “decertify” their electors if they determine that the results of the 2020 race were certified “prematurely and inaccurately.” It then demands that the U.S. House of Representatives to hold its own vote for president if enough states cast doubt on the November results. Those latter two action items are impossible, given Joe Biden was sworn in as President nine months ago.
“This is our historic obligation to restore the election integrity of the vote as the bedrock of our constitutional republic,” the letter, which has been signed by 138 state lawmakers from 38 states, reads. “If we do not have accurate and fair elections, we do not have a country.”
The effort to gather signatures has been spearheaded in recent weeks by Arizona State Sen. Wendy Rogers (R), an outspoken and militant booster of the so-called “audit” of Maricopa County, led by the Trump-friendly firm Cyber Ninjas.
In September, after the release of the final report from that politicized “audit,” Rogers announced the letter and described it as “our new Declaration of Independence” and a “manifesto of freedom.” Since then, its list of signatories has grown.
She’s also repeatedly called for Arizona’s election results to be decertified, and at one point for Maricopa County, Arizona officials to be jailed.
Though the letter’s signatories represent a tiny fraction of the roughly 7,400 state legislators across the country, they include some prominent names: Colorado State Rep. Ron Hanks, for example, is a contender for the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate.
Pennsylvania State Sen. Doug Mastriano, another signatory, has deep ties to Trumpworld and is the leading voice for a politicized election investigation in his own state.
Election truther Mark Finchem, a signatory and state representative from Arizona, is Donald Trump’s pick to be that state’s next secretary of state. Finchem began selling t-shirts over the summer with the phrase “#proveit” — as in, “prove that there was no fraud in the election.”
In light of the results from the Maricopa County, audit — which, to the great disappointment of many Trump dead-enders, failed to find election fraud and may have actually bungled the counting of thousands of votes — Finchem called for an audit of Arizona’s second-largest county, Pima. Donald Trump on Friday upped the ante, demanding that either a new election to be held, or that he immediately be declared the winner of the 2020 race there. (“Pima County conducted a free, fair, secure, and accurate election,” County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry said Friday.)
Nearly a third of the Arizona statehouse’s Republicans signed Rogers’ letter, which claimed that “an inaccurate election was held” in that state and others.
At least a dozen signatories of the letter, as listed on Rogers’ website, also attended pillow millionaire Mike Lindell’s August “Cyber Symposium,” where attendees analyzed sensitive leaked election software and bonded over the myth of a stolen election.
At that conference, Rogers and another state senator, Virginia’s Amanda Chase — who was not listed as a signatory on Rogers’ letter — announced their intention to form a multi-state “Election Integrity Caucus.”
In a recent interview with “Intercessors for America,” a conservative prayer network, Chase said the group would be calling for “audits” of all 50 states, and noted that the caucus was working on creating a political action committee and website for the group, “so that other legislators can simply click and find us.”
