Arizona GOP chair Kelli Ward rejects calls for audit of party elections

"We don't have the structure to be able to do an audit," she said on KFYI's radio show "The Conservative Circus with James T. Harris," adding, "But we welcome their input to make elections bigger."

She added that the structure for an audit "doesn't exist in our process, our procedures, our bylaws, in statute."

Ward, one of the most fervent proponents of former President Donald Trump's false claim that the 2020 election was stolen from him, claimed not only that an audit was not possible, but that calls for it were being pushed as a way to attack her.

She argued that the only people demanding an audit are Sergio Arellano -- a Tucson small business owner who challenged Ward for the top state party job -- and people who were part of his campaign.

Arellano did not respond to CNN's request for a response to Ward on Friday.

Last week, Ward secured a second stint as chair of the state party, beating Arellano by 3 percentage points. Arellano on Thursday requested an audit of the votes cast in the race for Arizona GOP chair and other party elections.

"I anticipate the State GOP will do a solid job here and provide election officials around the state with an example of how to conduct a timely audit and how important ballot security and paper backups are," Arellano said in a statement posted to Facebook.

He claimed that a "reversal of the stated results" in another party race prompted a "number of state committeemen" to raise concerns and reach out to him to ask that he request an audit. Sandra Dowling was announced the winner of a bid for Arizona's 8th congressional district's member-at-large committee, only to have the win pulled back because of an error.

During the radio interview, Ward went on to attack the media, saying stories about the possible audit were trying to "gin up something that just doesn't exist" and that "everything was above board" with the election.

Ward's tenure as chair of the party has been defined by her unwavering support for Trump, having repeatedly backed his maneuvers to overturn the presidential election results, including in Arizona, which Joe Biden won by more than 10,000 votes.

The former vice president became the second Democrat since Harry Truman in 1948 to win Arizona in 2020. In the wake of Biden's win, Ward lashed out at some Republicans who backed the new President, including Cindy McCain, the late Sen. John McCain's widow, and former Republican Sen. Jeff Flake.