Former Arizona AG who quit the GOP said the people running the recount there 'lost and they can't get over it'

• A former GOP state attorney general criticized the Maricopa County, Arizona, election recount.
• "They lost, and they can't get over it," Grant Woods, now a Democrat, told the AP.
• The recount has been panned for its sloppy execution and fixation on conspiracy theories.

A former Arizona Republican attorney general said the people running Maricopa County's much-criticized ballot recount "can't get over" losing the state in 2020.

Grant Woods, who switched to the Democratic Party while Donald Trump was president, lamented what he called a refusal to accept reality among the Republican figures pursuing the recount, the Associated Press reported.

The recount was ordered by the GOP-led Arizona state legislature following widespread conspiracy theories around the result. There had already been a partial hand recount, verified by Republican Gov. Doug Ducey, and two further audits, which all affirmed the original result.

"They lost, and they can't get over it," Woods told the AP on Monday. "And they don't want to get over it because they want to continue to sow doubt about the election."

He is not the only local politician to have distanced himself from the situation. Republican Sen Paul Boyer, who had voted for the recount to go ahead, said last week that "it makes us look like idiots," adding that it was "embarrassing to be a state senator at this point."

Arizona State Senator Katie Hobbs - a Democrat - eviscerated the process as shambolic and poorly organized last week in a letter to Ken Bennett, who is serving as the Arizona Senate's liaison with the auditors.

The loss of Maricopa County, Arizona's most populous, came as a shock to Republicans when it, along with the state itself, was lost to Democrats in the 2020 elections. Joe Biden carried the state overall with 49.4% of the vote.

Trump, whose influence over the party continues to loom large, is fixated on the recount and asks about it constantly, according to The Washington Post.

The Department of Justice has expressed concern that the process is lacking independence and qualified oversight.

The CEO of Cyber Ninjas, the obscure company hired to conduct the recount, has previously promoted false claims that the 2020 election was rigged.

"There's not even a perception of independence," Boyer told the AP on Monday.