Arizona Legislature has time for '2000 Mules' but not for a fiscal 2023 budget

In just 30 days, the state of Arizona will run out of money.

Oh, it’s not that we’re broke. We’ve got buckets of the stuff. The problem is, the agencies that serve the state won’t be able to spend it.

In just 30 days, the people who teach our kids and patrol our highways and run our prisons and inspect our nursing homes and investigate complaints of child abuse and on and on and on won’t be able to do their jobs any longer.

That’s because the Arizona Legislature — now 141 days into what is supposed to be a 100-day session — hasn’t approved a budget for the coming fiscal year. Hasn’t even held so much as a single hearing to get public comment on a proposed budget.

A hearing is necessary to restore voter confidence?

Meanwhile, on Tuesday afternoon our leaders will somehow find the time to hold a hearing on “2000 Mules,” the Dinesh D’Souza documentary that claims to have uncovered a massive conspiracy to steal the 2020 election — without actually providing actual, you know, proof of a conspiracy.

Sort of like the Dominion Voting Systems ballot switching conspiracy that wasn’t a conspiracy.

Or the graveyards full of dead voters conspiracy that wasn’t a conspiracy.

Or the Sharpie stealing votes conspiracy that wasn’t a conspiracy.

Or the bamboo ballots conspiracy that wasn’t, well, you get the picture.

True the Vote investigators will present their findings of supposed ballot harvesting to Republican legislators in the Arizona Senate.

“The claims made in the movie ‘2000 Mules’ are pretty incredible, and it is important that Arizona follows up on this information … ,” Senate Elections Committee Chairwoman Kelly Townsend told the Arizona Daily Independent.

“I look forward to asking questions next week and I hope that we get to the bottom of this issue so that we can restore voter confidence.”

And here I thought Senate President Karen Fann’s audit, conducted by hand-picked Trump supporters, was supposed to “restore voter confidence”?

Alas, the Senate audit showed that a hand count of the paper ballots matched the machine count and that not only did Joe Biden win Maricopa County, he actually won by a larger margin than previously thought.

'2000 Mules' provides no evidence for its claims

As blockbusters go, “2000 Mules” is more donkey droppings than it is evidence of a conspiracy.

Numerous fact checkers have called the documentary’s analysis – that ballot drop boxes in Arizona and other swing states were stuffed with pro-Biden ballots – flawed.

The movie alleges that more than 200 “mules” worked in Maricopa and Yuma counties, making an average of 20 trips each to ballot drop boxes, dropping off an average of five ballots per trip for a total of 20,000 votes.

All that’s missing is, you know, any actual evidence.

The documentary provides no evidence that anyone made more than one trip to a ballot box. No evidence of any conspiracy to stuff ballot boxes. No evidence that all those supposedly phony ballots were for Biden.

So naturally, the Republican-run Arizona Legislature is dropping everything to hold a hearing on Tuesday afternoon. Hosting the event with Townsend: Rep. Shawnna Bolick, who is running for secretary of state.

Look for all of the Legislature’s biggest conspiracy theorists to be there with bells on.

Meanwhile, the state budget …

Reach Roberts at laurie.roberts@arizonarepublic.com. Follow her on Twitter at @LaurieRoberts.

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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Arizona Legislature has time for '2000 Mules' but not the budget