Journalists’ Roundtable: 12-18-20: Electoral vote certified, GOP disputes

Arizona’s electoral votes were certified this week, but we also saw that the results have yet to convince the state Republican party. Discussing these and other topics: Jim Small from the Arizona Mirror and Andrew Oxford of The Arizona Republic.

This week’s Journalists’ Roundtable covered:

• Biden Wins AZ Electoral Votes
• Election Disputes
• Other Voices, Other Claims
• Vaccinations Begin in AZ

Biden Wins AZ Electoral Votes

Oxford: “The Republican slate met on Monday as well to ceremoniously cast their vote for Donald Trump and that amounts to really nothing legally, but there were a number of legislators who signed a letter to Congress, urging the Congress to ignore/totally throw out the electoral votes cast by the electors the voters of Arizona chose.”

Election Disputes

Small: “This is an act of protest… this is essentially saying we don’t accept a Joe Biden presidency. And I think it pertains [to] a lot of divisiveness and gives us a sense of what the next four years are going to look like as the Biden administration takes over.”

Other Voices, Other Claims

Small: “We may end up in a situation where we have multiple audits of the Maricopa county election for voters to try to sift through and for all the things to be pulled out of and turned into some kind of scandal.”

Oxford: “This goes to show that there are a lot of leaders within the Republican party who aren’t going to accept the results of the presidential election and I think one thing to note is how this foreshadows the legislative session we’re going to have next month where you can expect to see a lot of legislation on elections, changing how people can vote, changing how votes are counted, etc.”

Vaccinations Begin in AZ

Small: “We saw several lawmakers clamor for the legislature to take action and to rein in what they view as an out-of-control governor who is trying to fight this public health crisis… I think the politics of that is an extremely delicate balance for the governor’s office and I would be very surprised if that wasn’t part of the calculus for why we’re not seeing the governor not responding to this current surge with anything stronger than what he is. Which is basically saying we’re going to let people decide how to handle it on their own.”