Government

Arizona Dead Enders Demand Court Hand State Government Over To Them

Can we all chip in to buy Arizona a calendar?

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On Friday, a group of 19 Arizonans filed a quo warranto petition asking the Arizona Supreme Court to declare 19 state elected officials to be “inadvertent usurpers” illegally occupying their offices.

According to these brave patriots, the state’s 2018 and 2020 elections were illegitimate and illegal due to … uh, something.

Invalid processes, non-contracted labs and continued mismanagement and records tampering are very serious when it comes to our national security apparatus and Arizona citizens rights. An unelected commission and several [voting system test lab] contract vendors did not follow the set forth rules as to the most basic conditions for being allowed to oversee and inspect the systems and devices that protect our most precious voice. Compliance to standards set by law did not happen and contractual fraud occurred on a broad scale. These missteps invalidate the very processes set in place by law and render outcomes null.

Look, it’s complicated. They’ll lay out all the evidence in the appendix to the complaint — whenever they get around to filing it. The point is, the Arizona elections are hopelessly corrupt, and so the court should boot out the governor, secretary of state, treasurer, a couple sheriffs and mayors, the superintendent of public instruction, and several other municipal and state officials. But no one else! And certainly not the Arizona Supreme Court judges who were themselves “inadvertently” retained in office on those same defective ballots.

“The legal foundations here are solid,” they insist, while admitting that “there is not exact precedent for this complaint.”

By amazing coincidence, there are 19 petitioners and 19 inadvertent usurpers. But fear not, because these selfless citizen litigants are ready to step into the breach and take the reins of government.

“When in the past, Citizens have been appointed by the Governor to finish out a Senate term due to unusual circumstances, the Governor has typically chosen pedigreed, well known politicians,” they note, “but this is not necessary.”

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Apparently any chucklehead willing to pony up $14.74 for his one-nineteenth share of the $280 filing fee is good to go.

“Petitioners are as entitled as anyone else to step in to help in a temporary way,” they continue, adding that “it makes sense to allow entitled and qualified citizens to utilize wisdom and fair judgment under oath to serve. There is nothing that prevents it.”

Presumably the Arizona Attorney General and the current officeholders might be able to come up with one or two things that might prevent it. Like, for instance, nebulous handwaving about fraud coupled with generalized invocations of Alexander Hamilton being an insufficient basis to overturn an election that has long since been certified. Or the fact that the very same claims have been tried and rejected by multiple federal and state courts over and over again in the intervening six months.

There’s also the minor matter that the pro se petitioners seek to shield their identities “due to a reasonable concern for their safety,” while insisting that they are indeed qualified to hold the offices they seek. We should just take their word for it and hope they consent to be sworn in under their real names.

But a little sleuthing by Vice suggests that the creative litigants are GOP also-rans with ties to the QAnon community, which shared the suit widely over the weekend.

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But the group does give some indication of who they are by calling themselves “We the People,” a widely-used phrase in the QAnon community.

One of the people involved in the “We The People” group is Daniel Wood, a former Marine who was a Republican candidate for Congress in last November’s elections.

Wood, who was beaten by Democratic rival Rep. Raul Grijalva, is mentioned at the bottom of a press release about the lawsuit which was published by the right-wing website the Gateway Pundit.

Also listed on the press release is Josh Barnett, a businessman who says he is a Republican candidate for Congress in 2022.

Yes, it is very shocking. The same people demanding that auditors shine UV light on ballots to find the fugazis — this is supposed to help detect bamboo fibers in the ones shipped in from China — are basting into the state’s highest court demanding keys to the state house.

“One cannot take a counterfeit bill from a bank and call it legal tender just because the bank didn’t catch the counterfeit at first,” they insist, defending their unorthodox demand. “That fraudulent bill would be removed from circulation despite the initial mistake in tendering it.”

Well, good luck to ’em trying pass this three dollar bill off on the Arizona Supreme Court.

QAnon Has an Alarming New Plan to Steal Arizona for Trump [Vice]

Elizabeth Dye lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics.

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