Well, guess I'll just make this a new thread since the existing one was closed.
So let's talk about the recount of Maricopa County, Arizona. There have been recent developments, but before we talk about those, let's talk about how we got here.
Trump and his most devout cultists have continued to push the "Stop the Steal" as-yet-unproven conspiracy theory since he lost and all the way through a murderous insurrection and out the other side. We all saw it. This included the swing state of Arizona, of course, because Trump supporters were so adverse to the idea of their never-broke-fifty-percent-approval cult leader who murdered half a million of his own people somehow losing a popularity contest, that they just decided the only way Trump could lose, is by someone cheating. They flailed about, sometimes melting into black goo at a literal shit show (landscapers have fertilizer) and filing dozens of lawsuits, none of which worked.
However.
The Party of Trump holds the majority in the AZ Senate and they decided to hold a recount of their own.
Whoops, sorry, I meant to say, they decided to outsource it to non-AZ-govt employees. Enter Doug Logan, the CEO of Cyber Ninjas, yes that's really his company's name, who was known for such things as
-- Dec 2020I'm tired of hearing people say there was no fraud. It happened, it's real, and people better get wise fast
-- also Dec 2020With all due respect, if you can't see the blatant cheating, [sic] malfeasence and outright voter fraud, then you are ignorant or lying
The Republican Party handed over the recount to him. Yep.
So here's what we don't know about the recount, led by a QAnon supporter. Oh, right, he follows and retweets Ron Watkins, a known QAnon conspiracy theorist who claims Trump had 200,000 more votes than shown.
Things we don't know:
- How much the recount will cost
- What percent of the recount is paid for by AZ tax dollars and what percent by private donations
- Who's making those private donations
- Who's doing the recount (Logan basically said they were retired law enforcement, but nothing else. We have nothing about their party affiliation, for example)
Things we do know
- The press are not allowed.
- With one exception. One reporter managed to get a job as an observer. This reporter has publicly said that she was not given any kind of training on how to observe, in order to keep the counters honest.
- We also know the Cyber Ninjas brought blue-ink pens to the recount. As any teacher, student, or American with common sense would either suspect or outright know, Scantron forms filled in with black or blue ink tend to get read as well as pencil. That's why Arizona law prohibits black and blue ink pens in the room of a recount. Which, incidentally, the reporter already knew and had to tell Doug Logan.
- The Democratic Party tried to sue to stop what in all ways appears to be a farce, to be told by a judge they would have to pay $1 million to offset costs of pausing the recount. Understandably, the Democratic Party refused. The recount is therefore ongoing.
- And Trump has publicly praised this recount effort.
- Hey, remember when Biden said something about a court case while the jury was sequestered and Party of Trump members got upset? How do you think they fel about Trump announcing his support of an ongoing recount? That sounds like hypocrisy to me.
-- Doug Logan, Thursday, with a straight faceIt’s really, really important to us that we have integrity in the way we do this count and in the results that come out of it. And it’s really important to us that there’s full transparency in everything that we do
It's pretty clear what the intent is here.
1) A group heavily biaesd towards Trump is giving another group heavily biased towards Trump the ability to say the election was stolen, without showing their evidence, and will pay them to do it.
2) This group already has proven not just unwillingness to do the job fairly, but limited ability to do the job legally, having been caught ironically not red-handed enough bringing in tools prohibited by AZ law because they can be used to alter voting results.
3) Trump's rabid fanbase will immediately grab this opportunity by the pussy to say "WE TOLD YOU THERE WAS FRAUD!" without looking even a little into the chain of events, because they want this to be true.
4) Other states with GOP legislatures that voted for Biden will follow suit, attempting to sow as much confusion and mistrust as possible.
5) Judges won't do shit. Biden won and the results were certified. It's also highly unlikely that, not only was there such massive election fraud to flip the results (AZ was close, Biden won by 12,000 but that's still far higher than election fraud's ever been proven to be), but somehow, Doug Logan and his biased, largely unobserved, apparently questionably competent team will find this fraud that nobody else has...and that they can provide objective proof of this beyond reasonable doubt.
6) When these repeated attempts to overthrow the election continue, and continue to fail, purple states' Republican legilstatures will use it as an excuse to pass voting restrictions that just to happen to be harsher on Democrats, what a coincidence.
In other words, this seems to be a variant of a false flag attack. Cyber Ninjas are being set up to fail, get turned into martyrs, and their tragic "deaths" used as a knowingly-false excuse to block the things that didn't even happen in the first place.
My concern is, these being formerly red now purple states, that we'll be looking at parts of the country where it becomes increasingly easy to get a gun, but increasingly hard to vote. A situation that could easily lead to violence. And in case you think it won't, *ahem* murderous insurrection.
The best way I see to get off this path is, of course, for what few unbiased observers Cyber Ninjas allowed to be in the room catch them cheating. This...will be tough, they're not allowed recording devices. But when talking about people as far gone as the rabid fanbase or as desperate as a Republican in an increasingly purple state, the only way for them to say "well the Trump ally conspiracy theorist with undisclosed funding and undisclosed workers caught with tools prohibted by AZ recount law because they change ballots, they found significant fraud, but we don't believe them" is if they're caught blatantly cheating. The good news? We already know there's a reporter, even if there's just the one, willing to spil the truth about the goings-on. If Cyber Ninjas intend to have an honest, legal recount, this won't be a problem. If they eject her, we know there's an issue.
For more on the issue, I think it's highly appropriate to post Rachel Maddow. I mean, if the Arizona Republican Senate can intentionally hire a Trump-backed QAnon conspiracy theorist, I think I'm allowed a lot of leeway.
And these sources as well.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/polit...ee8_story.html
https://apnews.com/article/governmen...73fd3531799f8d
https://www.azcentral.com/story/news...ns/7352274002/