I'm Starting to Lose Faith in the Cyber Ninjas
In Arizona, a farcical "audit" of the 2020 election is beginning to come unstrung.
By Charles P. Pierce
Apr 28, 2021
Things are getting a little unstrung down in Arizona. The extended farce that is the “audit” of the 2020 presidential election is starting to get to even the clowns doing the bidding of the clowns in the Arizona Senate who green-lighted this nonsense. Apparently, the secret Ninja skillz of the Cyber Ninjas are beginning to fade. From 12News:
"In order to complete this audit in the limited time remaining," attorney Alexander Kolodin told the court, "Mr. Kern has been working back-to-back 20-hour days … even passing out on the floor." Roopali Desai, representing the Arizona Democratic Party, later responded: "Mr. Kolodin is admitting that the workers are sleep deprived and rushing to meet an artificial deadline. That … does not instill confidence in the voters of Maricopa County."
The source of the stress became clearer later in the day, at Bennett's news conference. The audit has hand-counted almost 100,000 ballots, he told reporters. Putting the current rate at 50,000 ballots a day, the audit volunteers would have to count more than 140,000 ballots a day every day through May 14 to finish the hand count.
Meanwhile, the Arizona Democratic Party got its lawsuit to end the entire burlesque before a judge on Tuesday, and the judge, while conceding that the state senate had the power to commission the “audit,” said he had some qualms about how it was being conducted. In expressing his doubts, the judge bravely risked the wrath of the Cyber Ninjas.
"I am not yet persuaded that there has been a showing that the rights of the voters in Maricopa County are being protected," Superior Court Judge Daniel Martin said toward the end of a one-hour hearing. He had said at the start of the hearing that the "heart of this case" was the policies and procedures for handling election materials put in place by Florida-based Cyber Ninjas, and Ken Bennett, the Senate Republicans' audit liaison.
Judge Martin’s concerns seem to be well-founded.
Lawyers for the Senate argued their client's audit wasn't bound by state election laws or regulations. Bennett said at a news conference Tuesday that the Senate was pursuing the audit because half of all voters don't trust the election results. Pew Research polling done in January showed 65% of all voters accepted the results, but most Trump voters didn’t.
Also on Tuesday, reporters were allowed brief and limited access to the proceedings. Apparently, once the ballots are counted, then things get a little strange. From the Arizona Republic:
After the ballots were counted, they went to an inspection table with three people. There are many questions about what the workers there were doing and what they were looking for, but here is what we know about what each one was doing:
The first person lines up the ballot under a Canon camera hooked onto brackets.
The second person lines up the ballot under a device that displays a portion of the ballot onto a computer screen. One of the images displayed on the screen is a filled-in bubble, and it is magnified and examined.
The third person holds the ballot inside a box set up on the table. The person takes a UV flashlight and shines it on particular areas of the ballot. As The Republic observed, the ballot was being examined on one side in particular, and the middle.
It is unclear what the business with the UV lights is all about. Maybe they’re protecting themselves against COVID.
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a36279389/arizona-election-audit-cyber-ninjas/
Anon interpretation "It's Scared."