State Sen. Townsend Calls For GOP Leader's Resignation
By Jon Dougherty, BPR Business & Politics
A Republican state representative in Arizona is calling on Maricopa County’s top GOP officials to resign after accusing them of failing to certify electronic voting machines ahead of Election Day.
“I just found our that Maricopa County GOP Chairman Rae Chornenky failed to show up to certify the Dominion / Machines. For this reason, I call for her resignation, along with her 1st Vice Chair,” Rep. Kelly Townsend wrote on Twitter Monday evening.
In a follow-up tweet Monday night, Townsend repeated her call in a post that included a photo of what appears to be a state “Certificate of Accuracy” for voting equipment.
“I formally & publicly call on Rae Chornenky & 1st Vice Chair Linda Brickman (who should have been there in her stead if she could not make it) to resign effective immediately. This is 100% unacceptable & has contributed to the collapse of Arizona voter confidence,” she wrote.
The certificate, dated Oct. 6, contains the signatures of three officials with the Arizona Secretary of State’s office and one from the Democratic Party. No Republican officials appear to have signed the document.
A Twitter account listed as “Rae Chornenky” responded to Townsend’s second tweet with this post: “I’ll tell you what, I’ll resign when you sprout even an ounce of integrity and obtain the intelligence to check your facts before spreading filth about a person whom you don’t know on a topic about which you have not the slightest clue.”
Townsend answered, “Not a surprising response. Do you want to establish publicly that I am wrong? I will be ordering the sign-in sheets from the Pre-L&A, will your name be on it? Will any Republican’s name be on it? Was Gina forced to watch from behind glass? Why were you not on top of things?”
The back-and-forth comes as ballots in Arizona continue to be counted a week after polls closed in the state. On Election Night, Fox News and some other media outlets called the state for Democratic candidate Joe Biden, though most outlets have since declared the state undecided.
