The Ongoing 2020 Election: Maricopa County Recount

[Kaleredar]

Even if this farce of a recount found “fraud,” so... what? Where does that go from there? How does that stack up against all the recounts in the country that did not find fraud? And even from there there’s no recourse for them to overturn the election.


I think the GOP is looking for some “win” amidst their crushing losses in 2020 and the lack of ways to attack the competent job Biden’s been doing and are hoping that these guys they appointed to find them fraud can hand them even the slightest sliver of controversy to fester inside to try and remain relevant.

[cubby]

Even if this farce of a recount found “fraud,” so... what? Where does that go from there? How does that stack up against all the recounts in the country that did not find fraud?

I think the GOP is looking for some “win” amidst their crushing losses in 2020 and the lack of ways to attack the competent job Biden’s been doing and are hoping that these guys they appointed to find them fraud can hand them even the slightest sliver of controversy to fester inside to try and remain relevant.

Almost guaranteed they will find "fraud" - they kicked out the only objective person they accidentally hired and two separate GOP groups are questioning the validity (yes, GOP groups).

What the GOtrumP will do with these "results" is use them as Grifting Campaign documents to siphon more money away from their unbelievably gullible followers.

[Breccia]

Where does that go from there?

It's a flimsy excuse for AZ, and maybe other states, to slap massive voter suppression on people who aren't white enough. They can point to the "fraud" and say "they found fraud, and I believe them"

[cubby]

@Breccia did a commendable job putting this as a separate thread. We're seeing active voter fraud happening from the GOP by doing this recount. They will inevitably damage and destroy live ballots that will be irreplaceable (because somehow this QNON group was given the actual ballots with no AZ SecState oversight), literally eliminating history.

It might seem like a deplorable but-no-biggie thing but this is horrifying.

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It's a flimsy excuse for AZ, and maybe other states, to slap massive voter suppression on people who aren't white enough. They can point to the "fraud" and say "they found fraud, and I believe them"

Exactly. Every GOP follower will be able to point to this event and say "they found fraud". The GOP control the vast majority of state legislatures (thank you unmitigated gerrymanding) and thanks to these AZ shenanigans, they can start suppressing even more of the vote.

[Felya]

Even if this farce of a recount found “fraud,” so... what? Where does that go from there?

It continues to justify the feeling of GOP and their loyalist, which in turn garner support for further voter restrictions.

[cubby]

Wow: as if this can't get worse. Apologies to @Breccia if you already reported the "why" regarding the need for ultraviolet lights used on the ballots, but apparently they are examining ballots using ultraviolet light in a crackpot hunt for “bamboo” particles that allegedly would suggest the ballots were planted by China.

And it gets worse. The group, headed by a conspiracy theory nut-bag, is now "demanding access to government internet routers and passwords, which the Maricopa County sheriff blasted as “mind-numbingly reckless and irresponsible” and a threat to law enforcement".

The good news? Oh wait, fuck, there isn't any. However, last week "the state Senate decided to delay the personal canvassing of voters, in which Cyber Ninjas operatives grilled residents about their voting. Republicans in the Senate backed off after receiving a complaint from the U.S. Department of Justice that such action could amount to illegal voter intimidation and civil rights violations".

This is how democracy dies.

[draynay]

Wow: as if this can't get worse. Apologies to @Breccia if you already reported the "why" regarding the need for ultraviolet lights used on the ballots, but apparently they are examining ballots using ultraviolet light in a crackpot hunt for “bamboo” particles that allegedly would suggest the ballots were planted by China.

Yes, when I heard I was impressed. After everything that's been said and done in the past five years I didn't think I could hear anything so face-palmingly stupid that I hadn't already heard before, so bravo Arizona, you outdid yourself.

Next they'll be looking for spilled General Tso's sauce, or firecracker gunpowder, or panda fur, or whatever other suitably racist substance their warped minds conjure up.

[Santti]

Didn't you get the memo? Its called "Tyranny of the Majority" now.

Which is just hilarious, when the alternative would be some minority instead.

[Edge-]

https://www.azcentral.com/story/opin...it/5027572001/

Republicans that voted for this bullshit are doing their best to slowly back away from it and hope people forget that they literally voted for this bullshit.

State Senator Paul Boyer is embarrassed at the results of his own vote, and seems to hope that nobody holds him accountable for voting for a transparent grift that puts the integrity of the AZ ballots in jeopardy.

[Breccia]

Republicans that voted for this bullshit are doing their best to slowly back away from it and hope people forget that they literally voted for this bullshit.

They had to vote for it, to see what was in it?

No forgiveness will be given unless they get to the end and say "there was no fraud" openly and publicly. What they're doing now, is the same as when they said "Oh, I wish Trump wouldn't do things like that, oh dear, oh dearie me, by the way I'm still voting for everything he wants".

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Going to re-post here, where it actually belongs.

News then reported the audit won't be finished for months.

This is both true, false, and ridiculous.

Extending Arizona ballot recount past May 14 is 'not feasible', state fair official says

May 14, you say? Why, that's this coming Friday, isn'it it?

A state official said Wednesday it is "not feasible" to extend the Arizona Senate’s lease on the Veterans Memorial Coliseum, where its contractors appear still early in the process of recounting all 2.1 million ballots that Maricopa County voters cast in last year’s general election.

Though tallying began April 23, the Senate’s liaison estimated that only about 200,000 ballots were counted as of Wednesday and that the effort likely would extend beyond the May 14 end date of the Senate’s lease on the facility.

The Republican-controlled Senate faces a hard deadline, however. When the Senate moved in, the coliseum was already booked for Phoenix Union High School District graduation ceremonies scheduled for several days later in May.

Ken Bennett, a former secretary of state acting as the Senate’s liaison, has said the Senate’s contractors could move the 2.1 million ballots off the coliseum floor but store the ballots on site and continue counting later.

“Nothing says we can’t take a break,” he said Friday.

Bennett told reporters Tuesday the Senate was working on extending the agreement so it would not have to vacate the premises entirely.

But Jen Yee, assistant executive director of the Arizona Exposition and State Fair, said Wednesday she had not heard about any extension past May 14.

“An extension is not feasible due to Phoenix Union High School graduations,” she said in an email.

Under its agreement with the Exposition and State Fair, the Senate is required to remove all materials no later than the final date of the agreement on May 14. And transporting the ballots from the county's facilities to the coliseum took an entire day.

The CEO of Cyber Ninjas, the Florida-based firm the Senate hired to lead the process, said on April 22 that he was planning for counting to last about 16 days. And Bennett previously said the process was on track for completion in the time available.

The pace so far is well short of that goal.

The Senate's contractors have created room at the coliseum to accommodate more workers for the recount but the companies are still recruiting for those jobs.

The Senate is not paying rent for the facility, which is owned by the state, but it is required to pay the costs of utilities and other services. Bennett has estimated those costs at about $1,000 a day.

Other, more recent sources, like this one and this one and this one, continue to give similiar numbers: 300,000 or fewer votes counted, about 15% of the total at the most generous. They only have half the staff needed, which makes a lot of sense because they're only bringing in members of the GOP-on-the-bed to do the recount.

Now as a reminder:
1) We do know how much the AZ taxpayers will spend for this. It's $150,000. We don't know how much it will actually cost. One would assume it's a lot, since they're paying $15/hr and are on track to take ten times longer than promised.
2) But we do know a judge told Democrats they would have to pay $1 million to pause the recount, which they refused. Therefore, it's logical to assume AZ recount's hidden backers are primed, ready, and eager to pay that same $1 million, if not more, for Cyber Ninjas to pack things up, wait for a week for the high school graduation, then one would assume continue.
3) The recount is being done further in secret than the state laws seemed to suggest was okay. We already know about the UV lights and the pens, for example. Moving the ballots an extra two times (once out, once more back in) is yet more opportunity to flat-out manufacture evidence.

"Hey! That sounds like a conspiracy theory!"

No. First of all, I said "opportunity", I didn't say they would do it. I merely implied it whilst winking and sipping coffee. Second of all, more recent reports from actual elected officials backing away from this dumpster tire diaper fire sounds less and less "we'll conspire to commit mass election fraud" and more "Your Honor, I swear, I didn't know a group called Cyber Ninjas wouldn't be trustworthy". Third of all, even if I did go full-on frothing at the mouth -- no, cappuccino doesn't count -- I'd be so fashionably late to the party that I'd need my own runway.

When the recount started, the ballots were viewed under ultraviolet light to check for watermarks. A theory popular with QAnon followers is that Trump secretly watermarked mail ballots to catch cheating.

There are no watermarks on ballots in Maricopa County. The effort has since been abandoned.

Read that bolded part back.

No, really.

I SAID FUCKING READ IT BACK.

(sip)

The theory was, Trump was marking ballots. Just going to throw it out there: pretty sure marking someone else's ballot with identifying features without their consent is a felony. Votes are supposed to be sealed.

Math guy here: the highest number I saw was 300,000 votes out of 2.1 million. I'm just going to assume they've been working weekends because I'm too lazy to look it up. Yesterday was 17 days. If that pace continues, and I have 10% or lower confidence it will because amateurs can't sprint a marathon and the money will dry up, but if it did, that means they'd be done...Oct 28th.

Oh, and there's no current law in state or federal writ that will overturn shit. Trick or treat, motherfuckers.

Granted, the point is still to manufacture enough false outrage to create election laws, which based on that timeline, will almost certainly need to be passed by Oct 27th before the smoke fades and mirrors tarnish.

So
a) it's true because, by every measurable metric they're cripplingly behind schedule
b) it's false because, they might not be able to start back up -- they might have no money, no venue, and/or no interest
c) it's ridiculous because, at this point, we're in Plan 9 from Outer Space levels of "so incompetent it's funny to watch".

And yes, I am saying the GOP are going to metaphorically prepare for alien invasion...and this recount is the probe.

[Endus]

Going to re-post here, where it actually belongs.


This is both true, false, and ridiculous.

Extending Arizona ballot recount past May 14 is 'not feasible', state fair official says

May 14, you say? Why, that's this coming Friday, isn'it it?


Other, more recent sources, like this one and this one and this one, continue to give similiar numbers: 300,000 or fewer votes counted, about 15% of the total at the most generous. They only have half the staff needed, which makes a lot of sense because they're only bringing in members of the GOP-on-the-bed to do the recount.

At this point, the best thing that could happen is A> the AZ Senate dawdles and the votes are still in the stadium at end-of-day on Friday, without any agreements with the stadium.

The Stadium says "fuck it, and fuck you", and holds the graduation anyway, because protecting the vote is not their responsibility.

The boxes of votes in the stadium are then deemed hopelessly contaminated in the aftermath of the graduation (I assume it's the Saturday immediately after), as there's no maintained security over their contents throughout. Rendering any future counting impossible.

Because it's the Senate that dropped this particular football, they'd face whatever legal responsibilities there are for letting this happen.

[Breccia]

The Stadium says "fuck it, and fuck you", and holds the graduation anyway, because protecting the vote is not their responsibility.

I agree in principle, but no, they should not say "We're going to possibly lose or damage ballots and throw ourselves open to legal risk." Yes, that'd be hilarious, but I'd just as soon see the law-abiding venue owners/managers safe.

So my issue is ethical, not moral. Morally, yes, if the ballots happened to get thrown out and the recount thusly ended I'd find that a suitable conclusion.

[Fugus]

At this point, they should already be deemed hopelessly contaminated due to them bringing in the pens that can alter the votes along with the UV lights that can damage the ink used in the voting along with them bringing in people with major conflicts of interest with the proposed purpose of the counting.

At this point already, no results they give either way should have any credibility on the overall results.

[Breccia]

hopelessly contaminated

My largely unfounded suspicion is, Democrats, all remaining reasonable Republicans, law enforcement and maybe even some feds are just letting the issues pile up, and will use them to challenge in court anything Arizona tries to do with "evidence" from this recount.

The recount itself was contaminated before it started. Considering there was no actual evidence of fraud (no, some guy on Twitter is not evidence) everyone reasonable already knows the results of the election were fine and not broken by bamboo splinters with watermarks. Meanwhile Cyber Ninjas is going to "find" evidence of fraud, even though it doesn't exist. However, everyone already knew this was just a sham anyhow. It's a lame-ass limp-dick IMPOTUS excuse needed to quickly shove in some voter supppression, with plausible deniability ("Cyber Ninjas is run by a conspiracy theorist whaaaaaaa? I had no idea! Because I never bothered to look when handing them $150,000 of taxpayer money!") That's why "hopelessly contaminated" needs to be forced down the GOP's throat. The complete circus this has turned into needs to be weaponized. "The only way you found fraud was to hire someone to manufacture it," people need to say with evidence under oath, "these laws you're trying to pass remove people's rights with no justification and are unConstitutional".

The best move for the GOP is to try to handwave this. "Yeah this particular election didn't have fraud, but others could," they need to say, "so we're passing laws for voter suppression completely unrelated to this farce of a recount which we no longer endorse."

[Lenonis]

Unless I'm missing something pretty significant there is no legal way this "recount" can be used to overturn the election results -- it's not being done by election officials so it has no official weight. It would violate any number of legal and constitutional rules to have this recount be used this way.

It seems like this is just 100% a propaganda move to continue the GOP platform of legalizing voter suppression. Didn't they even basically admit this -- that this was a step to reinforce voter confidence (by using this to enact voter suppression) rather than any attempt to actually overturn the election?

[Edge-]

It seems like this is just 100% a propaganda move to continue the GOP platform of legalizing voter suppression.

They're trying to challenge the results of the 2020 election so they can hopefully go, "SEE! FAKE STUFF IN AZ SO IT MUST HAVE HAPPENED EVERYWHERE!!!!!" which is why they're chasing down every single insane conspiracy theory from ballots Trump personally watermarked to bamboo ballots shipped from China.

Everything right now remains in service of The Big Lie.

[cubby]

They're trying to challenge the results of the 2020 election so they can hopefully go, "SEE! FAKE STUFF IN AZ SO IT MUST HAVE HAPPENED EVERYWHERE!!!!!" which is why they're chasing down every single insane conspiracy theory from ballots Trump personally watermarked to bamboo ballots shipped from China.

Everything right now remains in service of The Big Lie.

And what's truly frightening is that it just might work.

[Lenonis]

And what's truly frightening is that it just might work.

Maybe for a time. I firmly believe this is a losing fight against an inevitability of demographic and ideological shifts that will require the GOP to either adapt or die.

All it will take is a single solid turnout effort to flip control and undo all of the suppression and once that's done it's over. They'll never get back in power to put it back.

[cubby]

Maybe for a time. I firmly believe this is a losing fight against an inevitability of demographic and ideological shifts that will require the GOP to either adapt or die.

All it will take is a single solid turnout effort to flip control and undo all of the suppression and once that's done it's over. They'll never get back in power to put it back.

My newest ongoing concern is that state-controlled GOP legislatures are dramatically changing their voting laws to fully suppress the non-white vote. Which then makes it tougher to vote out the GOP idiots who believe and push the Big Lie.

[Fugus]

Maybe for a time. I firmly believe this is a losing fight against an inevitability of demographic and ideological shifts that will require the GOP to either adapt or die.

All it will take is a single solid turnout effort to flip control and undo all of the suppression and once that's done it's over. They'll never get back in power to put it back.

That depends on if they can fight off HR1 and allow the measures like they are trying to pass to actually get through.

How much of a change in demographics would it realistically take if they can effectively ignore 70%+ of the population because they either are outright not allowed to vote and/or have issues voting due to reduced polling stations and hours and increased requirements that are harder and harder to meet. And all of that along with the GOP legislatures able to throw their current people counting the votes out and replace it with their own and then replacing the Secretary of State with an unelected board whom then refuse to certify the results?

How much of a shift will it take to overcome that without violence and bloodshed?