A Republican-commissioned six-month, $6million review of 2020 election ballots in Arizona has confirmed Joe Biden’s win in Maricopa County, shutting down Donald Trump’s claims of voter fraud.
The audit found that not only did the current US president win the vote, but his rival actually received 261 fewer votes than the official figures initially, and Biden scooped 99 more.
Hours before the draft was made public, Trump said in a statement saying: “Everybody will be watching Arizona tomorrow to see what the highly respected auditors and Arizona State Senate found out regarding the so-called Election!”
The Republican initially lost Arizona by about 10,000 votes, which he claimed was down to fraud.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if they found thousands and thousands and thousands of votes. So we’re going to watch that very closely,” Trump told a crowd at Mar-a-Lago recently.
“And after that, you’ll watch Pennsylvania and you’ll watch Georgia and you’re going to watch Michigan and Wisconsin.”
But as it turned out, the opposite happened, with Maricopa County tweeting in the early hours of Friday morning that the election was accurate and the “candidates certified as the winners did, in fact, win”.
As you can imagine, the reaction on social media has been fierce.
Here’s what people had to say:
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