Arizona county’s new elections head shared voter fraud memes

PHOENIX — A rural Arizona county the place leaders have embraced voting machine conspiracies on Tuesday employed an elections director who has promoted the false claims that voter fraud value former President Donald Trump reelection in 2020.

The 2 Republicans on the three-member Cochise County Board of Supervisors voted to rent Bob Bartelsmeyer, who shared memes on his private Facebook web page supporting Trump’s claims of fraud and selling the lie that Dominion voting machines manipulated the result.

Fox Information final week agreed to pay Dominion Voting Methods almost $800 million to settle a defamation case, after the community repeatedly aired the bogus voting machine claims after the 2020 election.

The hiring of Bartelsmeyer is the most recent controversial determination by the conservative majority within the southeastern Arizona county of 125,000 folks, which voted for Trump over Joe Biden in 2020 by almost 20 proportion factors. The 2 Republicans on the board, Tom Crosby and Peggy Judd, tried to have the ballots hand-counted in final 12 months’s midterm election, which a decide stated was unlawful. They then refused to certify the election outcomes, forcing a decide to step in once more.

Bartelsmeyer, who was beforehand the elections director in a smaller Arizona county, replaces Lisa Marra, a revered elections director earlier than she not too long ago resigned from the nonpartisan place after 5 years. Marra had refused to conduct the hand rely as a result of it was unlawful.

After Marra give up, the Republicans on the board voted to offer her duties to Recorder David Stevens, an elected Republican, prompting a lawsuit from the legal professional common.

Stevens stated Bartelsmeyer was the one individual amongst three candidates with expertise working elections.

Arizona, a presidential swing state the place 11 electoral votes and a U.S. Senate seat could possibly be determined by a fraction of a proportion level, has been on the middle of election conspiracies since 2020. Trump and his allies centered a lot of their efforts to overturn his loss on Arizona. A partisan poll overview on behalf of legislative Republicans the following 12 months confirmed Biden’s victory however raised different baseless claims of irregularities. In the meantime, Republican Kari Lake is constant to combat her loss in final 12 months’s race for governor within the court docket system.

Bartelsmeyer has served for the previous 12 months because the elections director and deputy clerk in La Paz County on Arizona’s western border. The job is preceded by an unexplained 12-year hole on his resume. Earlier than that, his resume exhibits he bounced between elections jobs in Arizona, New Mexico and Florida, and was the elected clerk in Lawrence County, Missouri, for 23 years.

He posted prolifically on his Fb web page about conspiracies within the months after Trump’s loss, sharing memes and writeups of his attorneys’ longshot authorized claims. Some have been marked as deceptive by Fb.

“Please be part of me by posting: ‘Trump legally received by a landslide,’” stated one submit he shared on Dec. 20, 2020.

“We should demand election integrity and transparency within the 2020 election for America to outlive as a democracy and for the America we all know and love!!” Bartelsmeyer wrote on Dec. 6, 2020.

He stated he was not working in elections on the time.

“As a non-public citizen between 2016 and 2021, I’m on the liberty to precise my opinion,” he advised the board.

Biden’s win has been affirmed in a number of critiques, recounts and audits within the battleground states the place Trump contested his loss, and the fraud claims made by Trump and his allies have been rejected by members of his personal administration, his former legal professional common and thru dozens of court docket circumstances, together with these overseen by judges he appointed. There was no proof of widespread fraud within the 2020 election.

Bartelsmeyer defended his {qualifications}, citing three many years of expertise working in elections and saying he needs transparency and integrity. He stated he helps utilizing machines to rely votes however needs affirmation that they are correct.

“I am not towards machines,” Bartelsmeyer stated. “I’m for machines. I believe they’re 99.9% correct. However I do need a hand rely to check to the machine rely to make it possible for all is right.”

Ann English, the board’s lone Democrat, stated she didn’t learn about plans to rent Bartelsmeyer till the choice confirmed up on the assembly agenda. She requested Stevens if he thought the Fb posts have been regarding and whether or not it was a “crimson flag” that Bartelsmeyer’s utility requested that a number of of his prior employers not be contacted.

In the meantime, spurred by the county’s latest elections strikes, critics from Crosby’s district are accumulating signatures in hopes of forcing a recall vote towards him.

The county’s plans to rent Bartelsmeyer and his on-line posts have been first reported by Votebeat. A half dozen Cochise County residents urged the board to not rent Bartelsmeyer.

“Vote no on hiring this election denying nut job,” Jeff Sturges of Sierra Vista, the county’s largest metropolis, urged the board earlier than Bartelsmeyer was authorized.