XPost: alt.politics.trump, alt.fan.rush-limbaugh, talk.politics.guns   
   XPost: sac.politics, alt.politics.elections   
   From: drooler@gmail.com   
      
   That outcome is looking more and more likely.   
      
   Sitting in the press booth at the Arizona Veterans Memorial Coliseum in   
   Phoenix, several rows above where some two dozen tables of counters were   
   retallying the 2020 presidential votes of the citizens of Maricopa County,   
   Bennie Smith acknowledged something that has become readily apparent to   
   most outside observers of the process that has come to be known as the   
   “Arizona audit.”   
      
   “They’re not trying to capture an accurate count,” said Smith, a   
   Democratic Tennessee election official who had traveled to Phoenix to   
   advise the auditors. In fact, Smith said he expects the end result to be   
   “wildly different from the count.”   
      
   Smith said he was advising the audit—a process specially ordered by the   
   Arizona Senate and which began last month outside the county’s ordinary   
   recount system—because he hopes to see a standardization of independent   
   machine ballot audits of most U.S. elections. What’s going on in the   
   Veterans Memorial Coliseum, former home to the Phoenix Suns and commonly   
   used these days for gun shows and high school graduations, is not that.   
   Nor is it a hand recount done in accordance with the Arizona election   
   procedures.   
      
   Here’s how Arizona recounts are supposed to normally work: Two counters,   
   under the eye of a supervisor, tally ballots in batches of 10 at a time.   
   Their results must agree, and any discrepancies in each batch must be   
   resolved by a bipartisan board before they are added to the count. Here’s   
   what Smith had been watching inside the audit: batches of 50 ballots,   
   swinging around on a Lazy Susan, as three people speed-read votes in the   
   presidential race and the U.S. Senate race, which were won by Democrats   
   Joe Biden and Mark Kelly.   
      
   “Everybody’s got about three and a half seconds to watch two races,” Smith   
   said. For many tables, it appeared to be less time than that. If he were   
   on the floor trying to count ballots himself, Smith said, he believed he   
   would be making mistakes under those conditions. “That table is rolling,”   
   Smith says pointing at a particularly fast-counting group. “Me standing   
   there for five hours, I would not say that it would be ideal.”   
      
   To the uninitiated observer, this might seem alarming. But Smith assured   
   me it was nothing to worry about—because, he said, “they’re not recounting   
   the election.”   
      
   What were the people busily counting election ballots doing, then? Over   
   the course of three days in Phoenix, talking to participants and critics   
   and watching the event unfold, I couldn’t get a coherent answer. The   
   Arizona audit is a new kind of political ritual, whose purpose exists   
   beyond reason or consensus or fact. More than six months after Joe Biden’s   
   victory in the presidential election was certified by Republican officials   
   in Maricopa, Arizona’s largest and one of the largest in the country, this   
   audit is what the Arizona Senate has decided is necessary to resolve   
   continued accusations by the former president and his supporters that the   
   2020 election was stolen.   
      
   Acceptance of error—of alternative facts, as it were—is built into the   
   process: If two counters have the same total, but the third counter   
   disagrees by one or two votes, then the two matching counts become the   
   official tally, overruling the discrepancy. According to observers of the   
   audit, this happens often.   
      
   Around the audit site, the political fault lines are multiplying—not   
   merely between Trump supporters and Biden supporters, but between the   
   local Republican officials, who are responsible for election results being   
   verifiable and making sense, and the state Republicans, who are chasing a   
   myth. The irregularities in the numbers are the least of it.   
      
   “They destroyed the election,” former County Recorder Adrian Fontes said   
   of the Senate auditors. “And I think that they did it on purpose.”   
      
   The statement might sound like partisan hyperbole from a former elected   
   official with an ax to grind. But in the past week, similarly damning   
   calls were issued by every major Republican elected official in Maricopa   
   County. In a meeting on Tuesday, Maricopa County Board of Supervisors   
   Chairman Jack Sellers said plainly, “It’s time to be done with this   
   craziness,” as he and the county’s other top elected officials, who had   
   previously tried to work with the Republican state senators, signed a   
   letter calling for an end of the audit. On Thursday, the Democratic   
   secretary of state said that Maricopa County could no longer safely use   
   the voting equipment that had been handed over to the audit.   
      
   The Republican-controlled county board went along with the audit plan   
   initially because the Senate, Fontes said, “had given these guys   
   guarantees it wasn’t going to be a shit show.” Instead, the state Senate   
   ended up handing nearly 2.1 million Maricopa County ballots to a   
   previously unknown company called “Cyber Ninjas,” whose CEO has claimed   
   the election may have been manipulated by a firm with ties to the former   
   Venezuelan leader Hugo Chávez (who is dead).   
      
   “We’ve changed course,” Stephen Richer, the current county recorder who   
   unseated Fontes in the last election, told me of the local Republican   
   response.   
      
   That course correction appears to have come too late. Up close in Arizona,   
   it’s clear that the Cyber Ninjas are doing exactly what their CEO, Doug   
   Logan, has accused election officials of doing: miscounting the 2020   
   election. If and when that new and inaccurate result is made public as   
   part of an official audit report, local leaders believe the consequences   
   will be grave.   
      
   “I think a small mushroom cloud will go up over Maricopa County if the   
   Cyber Ninjas report that Donald Trump really was the winner of the   
   election,” Richer says.   
      
   The joke about Adrian Fontes in the Phoenix-Tempe area is that when he   
   rigged the 2020 election in Maricopa County, he forgot to fix his own   
   race. Those who have accused him of treason don’t think it’s so funny.   
      
   Just outside the audit site was a small tent of supporters holding signs   
   in favor of the audit. One was a banner depicting the swing states in the   
   2020 election as a series of dominoes, with the header “May Arizona be the   
   first Domino to Fall.” Another declared that the Maricopa County Board of   
   Supervisors “are enemies of the nation.”   
      
   I broached the joke about Fontes with some of the audit supporters around   
   the tent. “It’s a team effort,” said Joe Medina, a middle-aged Mexican   
   American Trump supporter and self-described Christian, who wore a T-shirt   
   with a Grand Canyon emblem. “He could be one of the fall guys.”   
      
   Medina and others at the audit site were convinced the audit is likely to   
   prove corruption that they are certain occurred during the 2020 election.   
   At that point, “justice” will demand somebody serve a prison sentence.   
      
   “Treason is a pretty bad crime,” Medina said.   
      
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)