The post election audit Clown Show of Maricopa County ballots has been a complete disaster from the first moment it was conceived.  Ordered by Senate Republicans in March, said 60 day audit is now going on 6 months and has probably set the state GOP back, oh, say to the Reagan era.  Everyone associated with the “audit” have made fools of themselves in front of the entire nation, and Trump has happily led them down this primrose path dropping hints of “they can’t believe what they’re finding” when in fact they’ve found nothing.  In the process, God knows how much damage they’ve done, and the elections commission for the county has already said they’ll have to replace all the voting machines after they were compromised by the “auditors”.

To pour gasoline on the fire of incompetence, the report of the results of this months long fiasco has been once again delayed because…wait for it…the CEO of Cyber Ninjas and some of his key staff are “quite ill” with COVID.  Dollar to a donut that none of these idiots were vaccinated because, well, they’re idiots, and Karen Fann, the Arizona Senate President didn’t answer the question if they had been vaccinated.

You just can’t make this up.

It’s all out war right now in Arizona, specifically Maricopa County, where Republicans have been presiding over an audit shitshow of the 2.1 million ballots from the 2020 election.  We’ve talked about the sham that was cooked up by the Arizona State Senate, where they decided that it would be a really good idea to pander to Trump by pretending to count ballots and look for Chinese bamboo in the paper.  The Arizona secretary of state has opposed the audit from the beginning, and now the Maricopa Board of Elections has weighed in with an open letter to the senate demanding that the audit be halted immediately.  The letter was sent after Karen Fann, president of the senate, accused the board on Twitter of deleting the entire data base from the 2020 election, which, of course, is completely false.

Jack Sellers, the chairman of the elections board, both in public statements and in the letter ripped Fann, senate Republicans, and especially the “auditor”, Cyber Ninjas, for their incompetence.  He also has refused to answer any more questions and demands.  Here’s a quote from Sellers in that regard:

Jack Sellers, chair of Maricopa county board of supervisors, ends meeting by saying he is not responding to any more requests from state senate on Arizona audit. "Finish your report and be ready to defend it in a court of law," he says.

— Sam Levine (@srl) May 17, 2021

I had the opportunity to read the letter today and it’s a long, but fantastic read.  Once choice paragraph I reproduce here:

At least one Arizona state senator has awakened from his stupid coma and realized how the botched and completely unnecessary “audit” of Maricopa County election ballots has made his state a laughingstock.  In an interview with the NYTimes, state senator Paul Boyer said,

“It makes us look like idiots.  Looking back, I didn’t think it would be this ridiculous. It’s embarrassing to be a state senator at this point.”

Well, no shit.  You’ve just now figured that out, Paul?  Just how ridiculous did you think it was going to be? What in ANY of your party’s efforts gave you the slightest impression that all of you wouldn’t look like idiots?  You approved an audit that hired an unqualified partisan company whose CEO buys into The Big Lie.  Then they didn’t hire anyone who’s ever audited an election.  Then you barred the press, and now keep the ballots in an insecure place.  No matter the result of this “audit” (and I know what the result will be), at least half of Americans won’t believe it because you made ZERO effort to make it even appear to be impartial. This “audit” is not about restoring faith in our elections, it’s about destroying faith in our elections so you and your other partisan pals around the country can justify passing voter suppression laws and even authorizing yourselves to TAKE OVER THE PROCESS if you don’t like the results.

So, FUCK YOU, Paul, and the partisan nag you rode in on.  You’re the problem and most certainly should have nothing to do with the solution.  Late repentance makes you yet another charter member of The Jeff Flake I’m a Coward Club.  You only speak out AFTER it matters.

That is all.

Having found nothing in their sham “audit” of 2020 election ballots from Maricopa County, they’re now using 5g cameras and black lights searching for bamboo in the paper of the ballots.  Because presence of bamboo is the smoking gun that the ballots came from China, right?  The Arizona GOP is hanging their entire Big Lie premise on the unfounded conspiracy theory that China flew in 40,000 fraudulent ballots on a Korean airliner on election day and then smuggled them into polling places all over Maricopa County.  No matter that China LIKED Trump being president since he handed them Pacific Trade dominance, international markets because of his idiotic trade war, and allowed them to run rampant in the South China Sea during his entire infestation of the WH.

Not only is the Arizona GOP’s efforts to overturn the election dangerous, it makes them look like idiots.

The Arizona State Senate is conducting a behind closed doors audit fishing expedition that targets only Maricopa County which Biden won in 2020.  The effort is backed by the Arizona GOP peddling the Big Lie to discredit Biden’s win.  As if that’s bad enough, HOW it’s being done will most certainly yield a predetermined result, and is being given cover by the State Senate and the courts, all Republican controlled.

The fishing expedition is being conducted by a firm called Cyber Ninjas, whose founder, Doug Logan, has repeated and supported the conspiracy theories of the Big Lie.  Worse, their is no oversight of the count by outside parties, the press is banned from observing, and the ballots are being housed in an unsecured room in the Veterans Memorial Coliseum on the Arizona State fairgrounds.  Some members of the press have been able to get into the room and observed that workers were using blue pens which could be used to tamper with the ballots to change the votes.  That’s against state law; all audits are mandated to be conducted with red pens to prevent tampering.

It gets worse: Yesterday, conservative judge Christopher Coury temporarily halted the count after Arizona Democratic party petitioned to halt the count.  He expressed doubts about the process, but, and it’s a big but, he ordered the party to post a $1 million bond to cover any costs of a delay.  That bond more than 5 times the amount budgeted by the State Senate for the audit.  Coury’s effort to appear non-partisan is belied by the excessive bond he required of the Dems and they declined to post the bond.  The judge is well known in Arizona for his conservative rulings and was the target of Dems in 2020 be removed for his ruling against an education reform measure on the ballot.

Arizona (along with Texas and other red states) shows the danger of extended single party rule including the courts.  The effort to discredit the Arizona presidential election is brazen, and so far the courts are aiding and abetting the effort.  There is no reason for this fishing expedition except to shore up the Big Lie to give the GOP more cover to pass voter suppression laws to tilt the balance in their direction.  The effort is dangerous and anti-democratic.

I understand the gravity of eliminating the filibuster for when the Dems lose the Senate again, but if they don’t, they’ll lose the House and Senate in 2022, and risk never winning again in our lifetimes.  Having lost the WH, the House and the Senate during  the last 4 years, Republicans have launched a full frontal assault on voting  in 43 states, filing over 250 bills with the goal of making it harder to vote.  These bills include new laws that reduce voting hours, shorten early voting days, purge mail voter lists, limit polling locations, reduce drop box locations, require printed voter ID in mail in ballots, severely restrict eligibility for absentee voting, and in Arizona, allow the Legislature to overturn election results by simple majority.  If successful, Republicans will have such a locked in advantage that it will be impossible for voters to control their own destiny in the states, and therefore the US Congress.

These Republicans are lying, of course, that their intent is to “restore faith” in the election system after they joined Trump in claiming non-existent voting fraud, CAUSING that loss of faith.  One politician even said it out loud this week; he’s Arizona Rep John Kavanaugh, who chairs the Government and Elections Committee in the Arizona House.  Talking about the 24 bills filed to suppress voter turnout, Kavanaugh said,

“There’s a fundamental difference between Democrats and Republicans.  Democrats value as many people as possible voting, and they’re willing to risk fraud. Republicans are more concerned about fraud, so we don’t mind putting security measures in that won’t let everybody vote — but everybody shouldn’t be voting.”

“Not everybody wants to vote, and if somebody is uninterested in voting, that probably means that they’re totally uninformed on the issues.  Quantity is important, but we have to look at the quality of votes, as well.”

The translation of Kavanaugh’s statement from GOPish to English is, “We only want people who agree with us to vote.”  It’s that simple, and it is a desperate last ditch attempt to keep power even if it means trampling all over the rights of millions and millions of Americans.  There should be no doubt in all Americans’ minds the seriousness of this issue.  Having a cemented in a gerrymandered advantage, these laws could achieve what Tom DeLay and Turd Blossom sought twenty years ago, a permanent majority for the GOP.  These laws, if passed and not stopped in the courts, would mark the end of democracy in the US.  With the Roberts Court’s record of laying waste to the Voting Rights Act and other anti-democratic opinions, I have zero confidence that, with a 6-3 majority, the court will suddenly regain its sanity and overturn these new laws.

The Congress must pass a new Voting Rights Act 2.0 that reinstates federal oversight to changes in voting laws by Jim Crow states that went nuts after the tragic 2013 Shelby ruling and went right back to doing precisely what Roberts said they wouldn’t do, suppressing minority voting rights.  They also need to make non-partisan redistricting a federal law and to standardize voting systems to protect the rights of all voters.  The Congress can only do this by eliminating the filibuster and passing these laws as quickly as possible before the 2022 elections.  Not doing so could have disastrous consequences for American voters, and fulfilling DeLay’s and Turd Blossom’s dream of a permanent majority.