My November 2020 ballot and those of more than two million other Maricopa County voters are stored at the Arizona Veterans Memorial Coliseum, which locals used to call the “Madhouse on McDowell” when the Phoenix Suns played there. The team left in 1992, but the nickname fits even better these days—so much so that the US Department of Justice just ordered Arizona Republicans to explain why this bigoted charade does not violate federal law, starting with ballot security. At the same time we learned of the DOJ letter, AZ Mirror reported on a number of security and procedure problems.
Observers with the Arizona’s Secretary of State’s Office who were granted access to the state Senate’s audit of the Maricopa County election said they witnessed concerning issues in regards to security of computers, ballots and a general lack of procedures around the process.
“What we are seeing here is outside what is normal ballot handling procedures,” Jennifer Morrell, a former elections official and partner at Elections Group, said to reporters Thursday.
These are, after all, actual citizen ballots, sacred documents in this thing we call democracy, so there are all kinds of federal laws governing their security. But here’s our information floating around, unsafe, mishandled, in an old basketball arena with Arizona Republicans, which pretty much means white supremacists, insurrectionists, and utter crackpots.
This week The Arizona Republic published a “Who’s Who” of the principal players behind and in front of the GOP’s election audit. Another article reported on the people who are recruiting auditors:
One recruiter is a retired police officer who works as an investigator for an extremist right-wing group that warns of “the growing threat of the Marxist and the Islamic movement in America.”
Take a wild guess at the kind of patriots he’s recruiting. One hired auditor, former State Rep. Anthony Kern, not only attended the DC riot and was a well-known election fraud activist, his name is on the friggin’ ballot he’s inspecting! Sure, okay, no conflicts there.
In addition to Cyber Ninjas’ Doug Logan, the biased fraudster overseeing the recount, the other players driving this “dangerous” and “precedent setting” scam, to borrow Secretary of State Katie Hobbs’ words, add up to a frightening list, especially when you consider that these goobers have access to our records, and who knows WTF they’ll do with them? If nutters will push a lie about the November election, why wouldn’t they lie about any stage of the recount?
Start with our Big Lie piss ants in government—legislators who attended the insurrection; congressional screwballs like Gosar, who went back and voted to overturn the election immediately after the insurrection; and party officials like conspiracy queen and terrible person Kelli Ward. There must be fraud, they say, we need to investigate, no way Biden could win Arizona—ignoring all the polls that showed Dems with at least a 5-point lead. Republican lawmakers are joined by Stop-the-Steal, QAnon, and militia quacks, rightwing media outlets like OAN, corporate wackers like that pillow boob, and outright hucksters.
Up yours! I mailed my ballot to the Maricopa County Elections Department, as we’ve done for decades—not to the Arizona Republican Party. A fair recount is one thing, this ain’t that! Nowhere did I give racist clowns who wipe their ass with the Constitution the right to read, count, or otherwise examine my ballot.
By the way, Arizona GOP, you’re shitty at your job, having only processed one-tenth of the 2.1 million ballots; you’ve botched every step of this muck-off, and now you have to be out by May 14—a hard deadline, the Coliseum has other bookings. The GOP knew going into this that the company they hired, Cyber Ninjas, had zero experience, unlike other firms that bid on the project. But the CN price was lower and the Republican decision makers had to know of CEO Doug Logan’s election fraud comments, even authoring a document telling politicians how to find fraud (which he stands by), so they probably figured they were hiring someone who’d uncover something, or at least invent it.
Soon everyone knew, though, that Cyber Ninjas and the Republican Party didn’t know what they were doing—having no actual procedures in place until a judge demanded them. Then CN said, No we can’t reveal internal documents because they’re “trade secrets,” when everyone fucking knew they couldn’t produce them because didn’t have them (reporters mentioned rules made “on the fly”). The judge was having none of their bullshit and ordered the documents, which CN finally produced.
The 200 pages they literally copied from other manuals didn’t do much to disprove what election experts have said from the beginning: CN doesn’t have the time, money, personnel, experience, or plan to do what they said they’d do—a quick and fair audit. CN didn’t want anyone to know that, natch, so the media were initially kept out, nor would they disclose the dark money sources funding the audit (millions). Beyond that, given the conspiratorial membrane that links nearly everyone involved with the recount, they’ve obviously got their finger on the scale.
The whole thing’s been very unNinja, more like Flat Earthers on meth, so they’re way behind, and getting more behind because now they’re looking for bamboo in the ballots. No shit. See, election screwball Jason Pulitzer says 40,000 ballots from Asia, all for Biden, were added to the mix, because that would be an easy thing to pull off—to forge the ballots, signatures, and have all the bar codes and other identification marks match Maricopa County’s records, and then for those fake ballots to make it through the two audits that have already occurred, one a hand recount, neither finding anything. But, hey, Pulitzer said “40,000 fraud” and Asia makes paper with bamboo, so that was enough for Republicans to bring in some bamboo-sniffing machines because Pulitzer’s someone to listen to, not an absolute lunatic at all.
Soon, though, they’ll have to load up millions of ballots and tons of equipment and find a cavernous, available, and secure location (nothing found yet) to continue their electoral circle jerk, which they now say could last into summer. Arizona voters should feel secure, especially after the DOJ report, knowing this bigoted band of Keystone Kops is packing up, trucking around, supposedly protecting, and once again examining federal election records for Asian fibers. What could go wrong?
As part of their investigation, CN says they will go door-to-door and ask people about their vote. I’m not brown or black, so they probably won’t try to intimidate me, but I really, really hope one of these peckerheads knocks on my door. Come on in, have a seat, let’s talk. Here’s a diary for ya.
UPDATE: In case anyone thinks the diary is too hard on the nincompoops behind this “fraudit,” which trump is dangerously egging on, hoping other states do the same, today Gov. Ducey ordered protection for Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, who’s been a visible opponent of the recount. Only the best people …
Gov. Doug Ducey has ordered Arizona Department of Public Safety protection for Secretary of State Katie Hobbs and her family after she received death threats related to the Senate contractor’s ongoing audit of the November presidential election in Maricopa County….
“Earlier today a man called my office saying I deserve to die and wanting to know ‘what she is wearing so she’ll be easy to get,’” [Hobbs] wrote Thursday. “It was one of at least three such threats today. Then a man who I’ve never seen before chased me and my staffer outside of our office.”
Shut it down!