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Supporters of United States President Donald Trump gather in front of the Maricopa County Election and Tabulation Center (MCTEC) to protest the first results of the 2020 presidential election, in Phoenix, Arizona, on November 4. 2020. REUTERS / Edgard Garrido
PHOENIX – A crowd of Donald Trump supporters, some armed with rifles and pistols, gathered outside a polling place in Arizona Wednesday night after unsubstantiated rumors that votes for the Republican president were deliberately undercounting.
Screaming “Stop stealing!” and “Count My Vote,” the protesters, mostly unmasked, stood in front of the Maricopa County Elections Department in Phoenix, while Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden held a slim lead in the critical battlefield state. Some media outlets have called out to Arizona for Biden, but the Trump campaign says he’s still up for grabs.
A Biden victory in Arizona would give the Democrat 11 electoral votes, a huge boost in his bid to win the White House, while severely reducing Trump’s path to reelection, in a state that the Republican won in 2016.
On election night, Fox News and the Associated Press called Arizona for Biden, even though only just over 70% of the vote had been counted, a move that angered Trump and his aides.
Some of the 200 or so protesters, who confronted a line of armed county sheriffs, chanted “Shame on Fox!” Some said they came out after a tweet from Mike Cernovich, a right-wing activist.
Chris Michael, 40, of Gilbert, Arizona, said he came to make sure all votes are counted. He said he wants guarantees that the count was carried out “ethically and legally.”
On Tuesday night, rumors spread on Facebook that some Maricopa votes were not being counted because voters used Sharpie pens to mark their ballots. Local election officials insisted that was not true.
With the count still ongoing in several key states, Trump has accused Democrats of trying to steal the election without evidence and has filed lawsuits in several states related to the counting of votes.
A similar scene unfolded Wednesday afternoon in downtown Detroit, where city election officials prevented about 30 people, mostly Republicans, from entering a vote-counting room amid unsubstantiated claims that the vote counting was fraudulent.
Trump has filed a lawsuit in Michigan to stop the counting of votes that the secretary of state called “frivolous.”
The protests echoed the “Brooks Brothers mutiny” during the 2000 count in Florida that ultimately handed over the presidency to Republican George W. Bush. A crowd of blazer-clad Republican protesters stormed a building where a manual recount was taking place in a heavily Democratic district, forcing poll workers to stop counting the ballots.
The protest is now seen as an important event to keep Bush’s slim voting advantage in Florida intact. The United States Supreme Court eventually stopped Florida’s recount, handing Bush the presidency and defeating Democrat Al Gore.
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