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Mark Finchem is a craven liar.
Finchem is the Donald Trump-endorsed extremist and Colonel Sanders look-alike vying to become Arizona’s secretary of state and take control of the state’s elections.
And he’s an enemy of democracy. He’s a member of the Oath Keepers extremist militia; he appeared outside the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6; he has parroted Trump’s lies about fraud costing him the 2020 presidential election; and he unsuccessfully tried to ban voting machines in Arizona.
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Finchem’s campaign emerged from a muck of Republican lies, and weeks out from Election Day, those lies — along with his hopes of running Arizona’s elections — seem like they’re crumbling in humiliating fashion.
Remember a couple of weeks back, when Finchem effectively admitted that Trump’s lies about election fraud were baseless?
Now, Finchem has been caught in a lie from that same debate, where he said: “I don’t care for mail-in voting — that’s why I go to the polls.”
Arizona-based journalist Dillon Rosenblatt reported Wednesday that public records show that Finchem has voted by mail in 28 of Arizona’s previous 30 elections. In other words, as Rosenblatt wrote, “Finchem votes by mail almost 100% of the time.”
If not for Finchem’s crusade against mail-in voting, his use of a mail-in ballot would not be an issue. An overwhelming majority of Arizonans — that is, across the political spectrum — vote by mail. That’s part of the reason that Finchem and fellow right-wing conspiracy theorist Kari Lake, the Republican nominee for Arizona governor, have been denounced by voters of all stripes.
As of now, Finchem could be feeling the sting of those denunciations more than Lake. Don’t believe me? Even some Republicans in Arizona, from a sports team owner to Republican staffers to former GOP lawmakers, are beginning to circle the wagons around Finchem’s Democratic opponent, Adrian Fontes:
Arizona voters will start receiving their mail-in ballots in a week. As they fill them out, they should remember that it’s a right that Finchem has repeatedly claimed they shouldn’t have … despite the fact that he clearly believes he should.