Arizona state Senate Republicans audit of 2020 election results in Maricopa County is so unprofessional and illegitimate that many election officials wont even refer to it as an audit.

But the GOPs audit fever is spreading nevertheless: Driven by the same lies about election fraud that underpin the Arizona audit, Republican lawmakers and conservative activists in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin are clamoring for their states to launch their own sham reviews. Another so-called forensic audit a term veteran election officials have not used before could soon begin in Georgias largest county. Embattled Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz (R) visited Arizona last week with dreams of convincing his state which, unlike the others, former President Donald Trump won and others to replicate the process. Other GOP lawmakers, including several with plans to seek higher office next year, have flocked to Phoenix too.

Not all Republicans are on board with the push to continue conducting conspiratorial reviews of the election. But those behind the Arizona audit, and the conservatives seeking to bring them to other states, are preying on a general misunderstanding of how election audits and reviews typically work to promote their own cynical political goals, undermining democracy and American elections in the process.

The fact of the matter is that in most states, there is already some sort of process in place post-election to ensure the accuracy and fairness of the results before those results are certified, Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs (D) told HuffPost this week. People screaming for this kind of audit dont understand how those things work, and the systems that are already in place to ensure that there are checks and balances.

We cannot continue to have people questioning these processes just because they dont like the result, she said.