Newsflash! Trump loses Arizona...again!

Republican "forensic audit" proves that Biden won by even more votes than before

Arizona “forensic audit” in progress.

Proving voter fraud conspiracies is proving very difficult for Donald Trump and his followers, especially in the state of Arizona.  It was reported yesterday that the so-called “Arizona audit” of the presidential election in 2020 ordered by the state Senate has confirmed Biden’s election victory. 

This was not what Trump expected.  In April when Arizona Republican senate leaders subpoenaed voter records -- 2.1 million ballots, and 400 voting machines from Maricopa County -- Trump’s hopes were high.

"So many people would like to thank the brave and patriotic Republican State Senators from Arizona for the incredible job they are doing in exposing the large-scale Voter Fraud which took place in the 2020 Presidential Election," Trump said in a statement on April 23.  “I predict the results will be startling!”

A week later, Trump gave an impromptu address to a wedding party at his Mar a Lago resort bragging that the Arizona audit would be “the first domino to fall” in his continuing challenge of the 2020 election results. "Let's see what they find. I wouldn't be surprised if they found thousands and thousands and thousands of votes, so we're going to watch that very closely," Trump said in a video taken at the wedding.

But that’s not what happened.  The so-called forensic audit, which has been going on for six months, was prompted by multiple conspiracy theories about how the election had been stolen from Trump.  It was not the first time such conspiracy theories had been floated by Trump and Republicans.  The Trump campaign filed more than 60 lawsuits challenging the results of the election in November of 2020 and lost all but one.  Most were dismissed out of hand by judges who found no basis for the lawsuits to have been filed in the first place and no evidence that any of the alleged fraud took place.  In fact, lawyers involved in filing many of the lawsuits, including Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell and Lin Wood, ended up being sanctioned for knowingly filing false statements in support of their suits in a Michigan court.

Trump’s loss in Arizona fairly bristled with conspiracies.  There were the conspiracies surrounding Dominion Voting Systems, of course.  Trump supporters alleged that the machines had been designed in Venezuela by former president Hugo Chavez to automatically add votes to Biden’s totals.  Every audit of every election where Dominion machines were used failed to support the conspiracy theories.  In Maricopa County, results of the election were audited twice by the Republican-controlled county Board of Supervisors.  A hand count of sample ballots was done.  Voting machines were examined by a security firm to see if the machines or their software had been tampered with.  None of the audits of ballots or tests of the machines proved fraud.

Despite that, a Florida firm called Cyber Ninjas was hired by Arizona senate Republicans and paid with funds raised privately from Republican donors to conduct the audit.  Counters hired by Cyber Ninjas were paid $15 an hour to physically scrutinize each of 2.1 million ballots, examining the way the ballots were folded, taking close-up photos looking for machine markings and bamboo fibers in the paper because one conspiracy theory alleged that Chinese communists had supplied fake ballots to increase Biden’s vote count. No bamboo fibers were found in the paper used to print ballots.  A QAnon conspiracy theory held that Trump had secretly watermarked mail-in ballots to catch cheating, so Cyber Ninja counters held each ballot under ultra-violet light looking for watermarks. No watermarks were found.

Teams of vote counters were spread across the coliseum floor occupying 46 tables where ballots were examined. All 2.1 million ballots cast in person or by mail were shipped into the coliseum and placed under the supervision of the Republican-controlled state Senate and the firm it hired.  Every one of the 400 voting machines used in Maricopa County were turned over and examined.  All voter data held by the office of the Arizona Secretary of State, which oversees elections, was turned over.

The counters were divided into red, blue, green and yellow color-coded teams to examine the ballots.  The counting went on and on and on, through April and May into June and July. The entire operation had to be boxed up and moved several times because the sports coliseum rented for the audit had scheduled high school and college graduations and sporting events that couldn’t be canceled.  Everything would be carted away and then returned when the previously scheduled events were finished.  So many people who were not associated with the audit handled the voting machines that the Arizona Secretary of State, Katie Hobbs, had to decertify all 400 of the voting machines because chain of custody had been broken and security of the machines and their software could not be assured.  Replacing the machines will cost Maricopa County taxpayers millions.

The audit continued through July, August and September.  The Arizona audit turned into the most comprehensive test of all the conspiracy theories that have been pushed by Trump and the Republican Party about the election of 2020. 

Here’s the problem they had.  Once all the actual physical evidence from the election was put under the control of the Republican senate that ordered the audit, that was all they had to test and examine.  They could apply every conspiracy theory they came up with, but they had to apply it to the physical evidence.  Were there “bamboo fibers” in ballots shipped from China?  No.  Were there “watermarks” on ballots secretly slipped into the election by Trump to catch cheaters?  No.  Were the Dominion voting machines tampered with?  No.  Was their software used to tabulate votes and assign the counts to one candidate or the other defective?  No. 

The Cyber Ninja firm, under the watchful eyes of the senate Republicans who hired them, hand-counted 2.1 million ballots.  Was the counting done by election officials incorrect?  Well, let’s see.  Before the forensic audit, Biden’s margin of victory in Maricopa County was 45,000 votes.  That’s how many votes Republicans had to “find” for Trump to be declared the winner.  The Cyber Ninja counters, when they were finished with their audit, had counted 99 more votes for Biden than had been found before, and 261 fewer votes for Trump than had been counted before, a total of 360 more votes than the former margin of Biden’s victory. 

On Friday, Trump himself issued a statement claiming that the audit “has uncovered significant and undeniable evidence of FRAUD! Until we know how and why this happened, our Elections will never be secure.”

In fact, Arizona senate Republicans announced that they will be sending examiners to look at Maricopa County computer servers for evidence of tampering, even though the county has assured the state Senate that the county servers were never connected to any of the computer machinery or voting machines used in the election.

Biden was proven to be the winner by 360 more votes than before, but it’s not over.

Here is the problem Republicans face after this six-month fiasco of an audit.  Because they were given access by Maricopa County to every piece of evidence they demanded, they discovered that they can’t blame Dominion for Trump’s loss, they can’t blame the Chinese communists, they can’t even blame phantom watermarks. 

The further out the right-wing goes with its paranoia, the more impossible they make it for their theories to be confirmed.  So what’s next?  They didn’t find any dead people who voted for Biden.  They found 99 new live ones.  Who will they blame now?  Little Green Men flown in from outer space by Democrats and concealed in voting machines to manipulate the election for Biden?