The Ongoing 2020 Election: Maricopa County Recount

[Breccia]

How many of those involved stealing the vote from murdered relative?!?!?!?!

Murder? Um...zero?

[Ivanstone]

Murder? Um...zero?

I gotta ask these questions now.

[Breccia]

According to this poll, 62% of Arizona Republicans and/or Party of Trump members believe the recount will show Trump won the election.

For the record, I agree. The recount will, in fact, show that. The recount will simply be fraudulent.

[Breccia]

Related: Pennsylvania also threw some machines out because they were compromised during an audit.

[Edge-]

Related: Pennsylvania also threw some machines out because they were compromised during an audit.

Why do Republicans seem to love spending money so much?!

[beanman12345]

So to nobody with a functioning brain's surprise, this thing is imploding

Arizona GOP Audit Director Barred From Recount After Sharing Data Supporting Trump Loss

The Republican overseeing the controversial GOP-backed election audit in Arizona has reportedly been banned from entering the building where the recount process is ongoing, after he shared some data with experts that showed the results match the officially certified numbers in Maricopa County.

The Arizona Republic reported on Friday evening that Ken Bennett, Arizona's former Secretary of State who has been described as the audit's "director," was barred from entering the building on the state fairgrounds where the audit is moving forward. The newspaper reported that Bennett had shared some of the audit data with outside experts showing that the ballot recount was tracking "very closely" with Maricopa County's certified results.

[Breccia]

this thing is imploding

Good. I hope he runs straight to the press and tells them everything.

[postman1782]

https://www.azcentral.com/story/news...it/8076589002/

And the building where they are housing the ballots is leaking.

[Breccia]

And the building where they are housing the ballots is leaking.

Yeah, no kidding. We're getting damning story after damning story from anonymous...you meant physically.

So while we're on the subject, Trump continues to tell the public objective, known lies on the topic.

At an event Saturday, former President Donald Trump presented the debunked allegation as a key piece of evidence that the state’s electoral votes were stolen from him in 2020.

It was one of a number of fabricated and familiar stories Trump told the crowd in his relentless effort to deny the well-established legitimacy of his defeat at the hands of President Joe Biden.

Over nearly two hours, Trump revisited his touchstones of grievance, leveling allegations of fraud that election officials and judges have systematically refuted or brushed aside. It was Trump’s most explicit effort to insert himself into the widely discredited Arizona audit as he tries to increase the pressure on other states to embark on similar efforts.

He spoke of untold thousands of dead people voting — no such phenomenon surfaced in postelection audits. He alleged 168,000 Arizona ballots were fraudulent — there is no support for that.

A look at his remarks in Phoenix:

TRUMP: “Unbelievably, the auditors have testified that the master database for the election management system, I’m sorry to tell you, has been deleted.... Meaning the main database for all of the election-related data in Maricopa for 2020 has been illegally erased. It’s been erased.”

THE FACTS: Wholly false. The database was never deleted.

At first, auditors hired by Republican state senators sympathetic to Trump reported that a database directory was deleted from an election management server. The official Twitter account tied to the audit said the deletion amounted to “spoliation of evidence.”

The Republican-dominated Maricopa County Board of Supervisors responded by calling the auditors incompetent and threatening to file a defamation lawsuit. Board Chairman Jack Sellers said the auditors “can’t find the files because they don’t know what they’re doing.” Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer, a Republican who took over the elections office after defeating a Democrat, called the allegation “unhinged.”

The next day, Ben Cotton, founder of a digital forensics firm working on the audit, confirmed he had recovered all of the files. “I have the information I need,” he acknowledged, and the auditors deleted their tweet.

TRUMP: “There were 18,000 people who voted in Arizona in 2020 who were then purged from the rolls immediately after the election.”

THE FACTS: This didn’t happen. His insinuation that people were stricken from the rolls because they voted for him is baseless.

Actually, 13,320 voters were removed from the rolls in the two months after the election, not 18,000 right away, and there were routine reasons why.

Voting rolls are updated constantly as people move, die, get convicted of felonies or have their voting rights revoked because of incapacitation. Trump was repeating a claim made by Doug Logan, CEO of Cyber Ninjas, the inexperienced firm leading the state Senate Republicans’ audit of the 2020 election.

Maricopa County officials said their analysis of the data shows 7,916 voters were removed from the rolls because they moved out of the county or died between Nov. 3, which was Election Day, and Jan. 2. An additional 5,404 people were removed for other reasons, including felony convictions, incapacitation or the voters’ own request to cancel their registration.

Trump is forced to lie to sell his point, because anything even close to the truth says the same: he lost, he lost fairly, and there was no Deep State actions or coverup.

[Kaleredar]

Why do Republicans seem to love spending money so much?!

Now now now, it's not about how much of the taxpayer's money they have to spend, it's about how much in personal "donations" they can raise to keep this farce going.

[Flarelaine]

So to nobody with a functioning brain's surprise, this thing is imploding

Arizona GOP Audit Director Barred From Recount After Sharing Data Supporting Trump Loss

not with a bang but with a whimper

[BronzeCondor]

Q-Tard CEO
Bars Audit Director

Really bad optics.

[PhaelixWW]

Q-Tard CEO
Bars Audit Director

Really bad optics.

This whole thing has been bad optics since day one. I'd honestly be surprised if we ever hear any "final" result from this process.

[Breccia]

I'd honestly be surprised if we ever hear any "final" result from this process.

I would be surprised about the opposite. Bear in mind, they need the rabid fanbase to point to something and shrill "See? SEE? There was fraud!" If they just slowly back away in silence, not only will they lose all their backing, but they'll lose support from their only remaining backers.

Their best bet is to make a MyPillowGuy kind of reveal, just long enough for AZ to pass some election repression laws, or if they're feeling especially frisky during the 2022 election. Because they'll destroy anything remotely like evidence, proving them wrong will be a chore -- and they don't need to prove themselves right, they just need to claim they won.

Now, we might agree if you said "because if they claim they found fraud, they'll be arrested and sue". Normally, I'd split on that because lying to the American people isn't a crime. At some point they will be called before the AZ Senate, which will of course refuse to press charges. This comes down to federal prosecution and lawsuits. Cyber Ninjas need to avoid saying "the machines were compromised" or they'll get lumped in with everyone else. So this needs to come down to the House or Senate calling them to testify on the "fraud" they announce, demanding they produce evidence, and hitting them with a DoJ referral or anything else they can throw when Cyber Ninjas refuses to testify, produces no evidence under subpoena, or admits they did the whole thing as a big joke.

Or, you could be right, and they could decide they'd rather not burn out than fade away.

[PhaelixWW]

I would be surprised about the opposite. Bear in mind, they need the rabid fanbase to point to something and shrill "See? SEE? There was fraud!" If they just slowly back away in silence, not only will they lose all their backing, but they'll lose support from their only remaining backers.

Yeaaaah, but no.

They've never needed actual "proof" before, merely the implication. An investigation serves that purpose. And we all know they're not going to find actual proof.

Tell me: how many Benghazi hearings were there? And yet, do we not still hear chants of "lock her up"? You're mistaken if you think they need to be able to point to a definitive result in order to rile up the rabid fanbase. I mean, they've literally already tried to use the line that the lack of tangible proof of fraud is itself proof of a coverup of fraud.

Their best bet is to make a MyPillowGuy kind of reveal, just long enough for AZ to pass some election repression laws, or if they're feeling especially frisky during the 2022 election. Because they'll destroy anything remotely like evidence, proving them wrong will be a chore -- and they don't need to prove themselves right, they just need to claim they won.

They can't really get away with the same lack of data that Lindell can in this situation. It's more likely to be "leaks" and "statements" and less likely to be an actual report. The final report, if it's released, will likely be relatively swept under the rug.

Now, we might agree if you said "because if they claim they found fraud, they'll be arrested and sue". Normally, I'd split on that because lying to the American people isn't a crime. At some point they will be called before the AZ Senate, which will of course refuse to press charges. This comes down to federal prosecution and lawsuits. Cyber Ninjas need to avoid saying "the machines were compromised" or they'll get lumped in with everyone else. So this needs to come down to the House or Senate calling them to testify on the "fraud" they announce, demanding they produce evidence, and hitting them with a DoJ referral or anything else they can throw when Cyber Ninjas refuses to testify, produces no evidence under subpoena, or admits they did the whole thing as a big joke.

And this is why I see them continuing to rely on those "leaks" and "statements" which are far less able to be litigated than an official published report in which they lie to the state legislature.

Or, you could be right, and they could decide they'd rather not burn out than fade away.

I guess we'll see.

[BronzeCondor]

I would be surprised about the opposite. Bear in mind, they need the rabid fanbase to point to something and shrill "See? SEE? There was fraud!" If they just slowly back away in silence, not only will they lose all their backing, but they'll lose support from their only remaining backers.

Their best bet is to make a MyPillowGuy kind of reveal, just long enough for AZ to pass some election repression laws, or if they're feeling especially frisky during the 2022 election. Because they'll destroy anything remotely like evidence, proving them wrong will be a chore -- and they don't need to prove themselves right, they just need to claim they won.

Now, we might agree if you said "because if they claim they found fraud, they'll be arrested and sue". Normally, I'd split on that because lying to the American people isn't a crime. At some point they will be called before the AZ Senate, which will of course refuse to press charges. This comes down to federal prosecution and lawsuits. Cyber Ninjas need to avoid saying "the machines were compromised" or they'll get lumped in with everyone else. So this needs to come down to the House or Senate calling them to testify on the "fraud" they announce, demanding they produce evidence, and hitting them with a DoJ referral or anything else they can throw when Cyber Ninjas refuses to testify, produces no evidence under subpoena, or admits they did the whole thing as a big joke.

Or, you could be right, and they could decide they'd rather not burn out than fade away.

Mike Lindell is a national treasure.

[jonnysensible]

Mike Lindell is a national treasure.

isnt he losing all his money because he cant stop posting?

and all the con artists have surrounded him because hes giving out cash like candy.

[Kaleredar]

Yeaaaah, but no.

They've never needed actual "proof" before, merely the implication. An investigation serves that purpose. And we all know they're not going to find actual proof.

Tell me: how many Benghazi hearings were there? And yet, do we not still hear chants of "lock her up"? You're mistaken if you think they need to be able to point to a definitive result in order to rile up the rabid fanbase. I mean, they've literally already tried to use the line that the lack of tangible proof of fraud is itself proof of a coverup of fraud.



They can't really get away with the same lack of data that Lindell can in this situation. It's more likely to be "leaks" and "statements" and less likely to be an actual report. The final report, if it's released, will likely be relatively swept under the rug.



And this is why I see them continuing to rely on those "leaks" and "statements" which are far less able to be litigated than an official published report in which they lie to the state legislature.



I guess we'll see.

I’m driven to wonder why they went through all this pageantry, though.

Any actual findings will point to there being no evidence of fraud, because it didn’t happen. Any “findings” they simply make up don’t stand up to the barest bit of scrutiny, especially due to the absolutely comic travesty of how they’re running this “recount.”

So if they’re so convinced that their followers (or whomever they’re trying to convince) will accept proof of malfeasance just because they say so… why go through this whole rigamarole at all? If they could have just claimed their was fraud without any evidence all along? Because again, it’s not like this investigation is going to give them any evidence that would hold up to the barest bit of scrutiny.

Unless they, the lawmakers (at least some of them,) actually believe that there was fraud. They’re starting to believe their own grift.

Could it just be that these people doing this aren’t 5D chess playing masterminds, and are actually just dumbasses? I know it’s about a different topic but Greene comes to mind. No cold calculating GOP vulture would have stuck their neck out for Gaetz like she did and then lost a bunch of money on what was clearly a bad idea unless they truly believed that obvious scumbag gaetz was being framed by Jewish space lasers of lizard people or whatever.

[PhaelixWW]

I’m driven to wonder why they went through all this pageantry, though.

Oh, they loooooooove the pageantry. All the spectacle, none of the consequence. They get their soundbites, claim to be fighting hard for whatever-have-you, and until/unless they're forced to release official results, they can lie about the process 'til the cows come home, and with impunity.

They much prefer the pageantry to the results; this is the GoP playbook.

Could it just be that these people doing this aren’t 5D chess playing masterminds, and are actually just dumbasses? I know it’s about a different topic but Greene comes to mind. No cold calculating GOP vulture would have stuck their neck out for Gaetz like she did and then lost a bunch of money on what was clearly a bad idea unless they truly believed that obvious scumbag gaetz was being framed by Jewish space lasers of lizard people or whatever.

If it were just one or two people, then sure, they could just be dumbasses. With this many people involved, though, there's enough overlap that even a gaggle of dumbasses couldn't fail to see the problems. And people are rarely elected to that position if they're that monumentally stupid. Greene is one of those exceptions, however.

[postman1782]

Mike Lindell is a national treasure.

The fuck he is. His pillows suck, and he has gone off the deep end. His crack use has literally caused brain damage if he believes this bullshit.