Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs (left) and Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes (right)
Arizona GOP Chairwoman Gina Swoboda provided a crucial update to The Gateway Pundit on recent allegations that the Arizona Secretary of State is “hiding” something from state Republicans as well as the recent controversy with 98,000 or more voter registrations being validated without proper citizenship checks.
As The Gateway Pundit reported, Swoboda sounded the alarm in a statement on Friday night, notifying voters that “There is clearly an election integrity problem in Arizona.”
“Yesterday, Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes called a meeting of the AZGOP, and separately the State Legislative leadership, to brief us this morning on an urgent election issue. At the last minute, Secretary Fontes moved the meeting to Monday, to wait for the ‘right time,’” Chairwoman Swodoba said on Friday. “What is Fontes trying to hide from us, and why can’t he tell us now? We are holding Secretary Fontes accountable, we will make sure there is no cover up, and we will fight to resolve whatever this issue is immediately.”
Swoboda told The Gateway Pundit, “My job, as I see it, as the State Party Chair, is to inform the electorate about what’s happening, to try to mitigate the risks and secure this election. And if the Secretary of State is saying there’s something that has happened that rises to this level of engagement, the public needs to know, and if he’s going to just decide to wait three days—it’s really urgent, and now we’re going to wait three days—that’s unacceptable. So I took it upon myself to inform the public.”
Early voting begins on October 9, and the ballots in Maricopa County, where over 60% of the state’s voters reside, are being printed by Runbeck Election Services today on Monday. Other counties in the state have already begun printing ballots. It’s suspicious that the Secretary of State is waiting for the “right time” to announce another apparent election issue on the same day ballot printing begins in the state’s bellwether county, Maricopa. Swoboda told The Gateway Pundit, “We’re going to start voting on October 9, ballots are being printed [or] they are printed, and these guys are running out the clock and finding critical systemic errors.”
This comes about a week after it was discovered that a supposed error in the Arizona Motor Vehicle Department’s (MVD) system left a loophole that caused nearly 100,000 voter registrations to be validated without verifying the registrants’ citizenship. Driver’s licenses issued before Arizona required proof of citizenship to drive in 1996, regardless of citizenship status, showed as proof of citizenship on file with the MVD because Arizona did not require citizenship to vote until 2004. Therefore, the registrations of drivers who received their license before 1996 were drawn into question because of the previous nonmandatory citizenship for drivers, election officials claim. The issue had gone unnoticed for 20 years since 2004.
And in a stunning new development on Sunday, The Gateway Pundit reported that the Washington Post obtained the audio of a September 10 phone call between the Arizona Secretary of State, Governor, and Attorney General, all Democrats, in a likely staged attempt to cover up their involvement in the issue.
Still, it was revealed that the officials orchestrated a phony “friendly lawsuit” with the Republican Maricopa County Recorder, Stephen Richer, apparently to lessen the damage of 100,000 voters being registered without accurate citizenship verification. The Gateway Pundit previously reported that RINO Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer played the hatchetman, seeking in a lawsuit to disqualify the 98,000 voters, who they claim are mostly Republicans, from voting on a full ballot to help the Democrat officials avoid backlash from Republican voters.
It was also revealed that Governor Katie Hobbs, who stole the 2022 election from Kari Lake, said the issue validates “theories about illegal voting in our elections” and that the voters are rightfully “going to be calling for new 2020 and ’22 elections.” Attorney General Kris Mayes, who also stole the 2022 election by just 280 votes from Abe Hamadeh, further admitted that “all of these elections are challengeable.”
The new phone call report also leaves questions about how many voter registrations were affected by the error. As The Washington Post reports, “They believed it affected about 148,000 voters, but later lowered the estimate to about 98,000.”
Arizona GOP Chairwoman Gina Swoboda told The Gateway Pundit, “It’s my understanding that the Secretary knew and informed the Governor on like September 6.” Swoboda learned this from a member of the media, she said, further indicating that the call was staged and leaked to the regime media to set a narrative. If so, this appears to be an attempt to further sow distrust in and disenfranchise Republican voters or a failed attempt to make it appear they did their best to ensure integrity in the process. Still, despite knowing about the issue for more than a week, they did not notify the public or the GOP until Stephen Richer announced his staged lawsuit on September 17, less than two months before the election. “I don’t know how long they’ve known what they’ve known,” Swoboda said. “They’re going on the record with other members of the media and not telling the stakeholders that represent the members of the public and the voters what’s going on.”
Now, it appears they’re trying to hide something until the ballots begin printing today and nothing can be done.
On Thursday, Swobod said, she received a phone call from a staffer with the Secretary of State’s office briefing her on an important meeting and telling her to have her lawyer on the call between 9 and 9:30 am. The staffer told her, “You’re going to have to make decisions pretty quickly,” but she refused to tell Swoboda what the meeting was about.
“So, in the morning, there I am with a lawyer on call, which I pay for, and I’m waiting,” Swoboda said. After asking for several updates and receiving no response, Swoboda says she texted the staffer at 10:32 am, “Do you have an ETA?”
“And he replies, ‘believe it is now Monday. I will text and let you know when I know.’ Okay, so I said, ‘If it’s urgent, we need to be informed immediately.’ That’s the last I heard,” she recalled while reading the text messages on her phone. Similarly, Arizona Republican legislative leadership and legislative attorneys were left waiting in the dark for a phone call.
Hours later, around 2 pm, Swoboda says the Secretary of State’s legislative liaison, George Diaz, notified them that the meeting would be postponed until Monday.
“Something is wrong, something is happening, we don’t know what it is. The last call we got this magnitude involved 100,000 messed up voter files, ballots are going out, the voter registration deadline is approaching, and, oh, by the way, Runbeck is printing the Maricopa ballots on Monday,” Swoboda realized. “So I, Gina, am very concerned, as the state party chair and as the director of election integrity for the state, that there is something happening and that the Secretary is trying to run the clock and let the ballots get printed so that if I try to go to court, they’re going to tell the court, ‘Well, your Honor, it’s too late. The ballots are printed,’ right? Because they always do that to us.”
Swoboda, noting the “black pill effect” as a result of what Arizona voters have been put through in the last two elections, further stated, “It doesn’t escape me that there could be a move afoot here to wait as long as possible and cause chaos and despair and demoralization in order to suppress our turnout because we’re winning this election.” She continued, “If we’re going to light the candle and fight like hell, then we’re going to win.”
“The courts are not going to save us after voting starts, and that is why I’m fighting like hell now.”
The Arizona GOP has filed several lawsuits against the Governor and Secretary of State’s attempts to overhaul the election system and undermine Arizona’s voters. Meanwhile, Swoboda says voters must turn out in massive numbers to outvote the fraud and make it “too big to rig,” a line from President Trump.
Secretary of State Adrian Fontes is expected to debrief the Arizona GOP and Republican legislators on the unknown issue today.
This is a developing story. The Gateway Pundit will continue to provide updates on the shady Arizona elections.
The post EXCLUSIVE: Arizona GOP Chairwoman Gives Update on Secretary of State’s Election Interference Amid 98,000 Voter Registration Scandal and Maricopa County Ballot Printing TODAY appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.