Ken Matta has dire a warning about his state handing over election integrity to election deniers and conspiracy theorists.
Arizona is ground zero for stolen-election lies operationalized. Republicans launched an “audit” that became a symbol of voting conspiracies and made the Cyber Ninjas a household name. They transformed former President Donald Trump’s attacks into a draconian new round of election subversions. They even asked voters to be willing to die to defend the “stolen election.”
Matta told the world he’s leaving his job and decried the handover of election integrity to politicians and TV pundits, many of whom have a vested interest in destroying it. We chatted this week, and his warnings about basic election integrity and the future of democracy are dire.
KEN MATTA: Right now with the threats, the hostility, the public bashing of election workers and election officers based on misinformation, disinformation, and mal-information, it’s tough to stay. The job is fairly thankless anyway; we only get bad press.
Working out of the Arizona secretary of state’s office, you can imagine we got hit pretty hard. Just mean abuse, horrible and harassing language. Just hundreds of them. For a while there, a good part of my day was just listening to these horrible messages.
I started carrying a gun. When they started sending me to the partisan review in Maricopa County, what some people call an “audit,” as I’m driving through, there’s people out front with full autos and assault rifles. They’re looking in our cars, they’re seeing who’s going in and who’s going out. I decided I was going to start carrying. I have a concealed-carry permit in Arizona.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/pkpjy9/arizona-election-security