The Arizona GQP Senate's "audit" of the ballots from Maricopa County, the state's largest jurisdiction, is proceeding in secret, as befits a conspiracy- driven effort. The GQP senators and the state's GQP chair, certifiable nut Kelli "Low-IQAnon" Ward, has made sure fellow crackpots are in charge of the ballot counting/disenfranchising:
The private companies hired by Arizona Senate Republicans to recount millions of ballots from the 2020 election are concerned about possible Antifa attacks and planned to use UV lights to hunt for fraud, internal documents released as part of a legal battle with Democrats revealed. [snip]
The documents offer a detailed look at the conspiratorial thinking behind an extraordinary partisan hunt for fraud some six months after former President Donald Trump lost the election and began pushing the lie that it was stolen from him.
“It would be comical if it weren't so scary,” Rick Hasen, an election law expert and a professor at the University of California, Irvine, said of the audit.
The CEO of Cyber Ninjas, the group hired to count/disenfranchise ballots, is a Trump nut named Doug Logan:
Cyber Ninja's CEO, Doug Logan, reportedly advanced 2020 conspiracy theories online, and refuses to say how much money he will make on this audit. The audit is funded with $150,000 in taxpayer dollars, as well as an undisclosed number of private donations whose names are still shrouded in secrecy.
Logan and Ken Bennett, a former Republican secretary of state of Arizona who is overseeing the audit at the request of the GOP-controlled state Senate, sparred with reporters over how much the effort would cost in a contentious news conference last week.
What kind of crackpot effort is underway you didn't ask? Here's one example of the standards:
Media access to the Veterans Memorial Coliseum arena where the count is taking place was initially limited unless reporters agreed to be volunteer observers. When one reporter from The Arizona Republic did so, she noticed that proper procedures for handling ballots were not being followed after she spotted blue pens near ballots. Election officials say red or green pens are used to ensure that ink does not spoil or change a vote, because ballot-counting machines can read blue or black ink.
One America News Network, a right-wing cable channel, has been given special access to cover the audit and reported that audit workers were using ultra-violet light to search for watermarks — a possible reference to a thoroughly debunked QAnon conspiracy that Trump secretly watermarked ballots to prove voter fraud.
“It's a bunch of bull!” Hobbs said of the alleged watermarks. “They're making stuff up."
That's what Republicans do, right? Make stuff up.
In the meantime, the Department of Justice has been asked to send monitors to document the shitshow:
Election security specialists with high-powered policy groups are calling for federal monitors to oversee the Arizona Senate's hand recount of 2.1 million ballots cast in Maricopa County.
Citing violations of voting and election laws, representatives of the Brennan Center for Justice, the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights and Protect Democracy urged the Department of Justice to protect ballots and prevent voter intimidation.
"Ballots that are protected under federal law are in imminent danger of being stolen, defaced, or irretrievably damaged, and Arizona citizens are in imminent danger of being subject to unlawful voter intimidation," the four security specialists wrote in the April 29 letter. [snip]
"We believe that the Senate and its agents ... are violating their duty under federal law to retain and preserve ballots cast in a federal election," the specialists wrote. "They also risk compromising the integrity of the ballots themselves, using materials and technologies that will cause the ballot paper and marks to deteriorate."
The aforementioned GQP chair, exercising authority only existing in her fevered brain, orders the federal government to stay away from Arizona:
Arizona GOP Chair Kelli Ward lashed out at the request Friday on YouTube, saying it was a Democratic Party-led effort to derail the audit and wrest control of the election from state officials.
"Arizona is off limits to the federal government trampling on our constitutional rights and our sovereignty," Ward said. "When it comes to managing our own election, we believe in the U.S. Constitution."
Ward, who has promoted baseless conspiracy theories that the 2020 presidential election was rigged against former president Donald Trump, has championed the audit as a way to ensure election integrity in Arizona.
We're absolutely certain that will scare the feds away, Kelli, you lump.
The letter to the DOJ referenced above contains this warning that the GQP and their tinfoil hat canvassers would do well to heed:
We are very concerned that the auditors are engaged in ongoing and imminent violations of federal voting and election laws. Specifically, we believe that the senate and its agents, including Cyber Ninjas, are 1) violating their duty under federal law to retain and preserve ballots cast in a federal election, which are and have been in danger of being stolen, defaced, or irretrievably damaged, and 2) preparing to engage in conduct which will constitute unlawful voter intimidation in violation of the Voting Rights Act and other federal laws.
Should these cranks, in furtherance of the Big Lie, engage in any of the activities noted above (and it appears from reports they may have already), the full weight of the federal judicial system should come down on their tinfoil- covered heads.
(Photo: Of course, one of the ballot "auditors" is former state Rep. Anthony Kern, who was at the January 6 insurrection at the Capitol. Seems legit.)
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