[continued from previous message]   
      
   so, one way to tell is by looking at the fibers of the paper.”   
      
   No matter how deeply you go into the audit, it’s always supposedly being   
   done on someone else’s behalf—someone sincerely (if unverifiably)   
   concerned about whether the generally accepted facts of the election are   
   really facts. The messengers are just conveying the message, even if they   
   do it over and over again. As recently as April, Pulitzer published a 30-   
   minute video on his YouTube page endorsing separate theories that China   
   had smuggled ballots into a different state, titled “The China Connection   
   With Georgia Elections? Is There One? PROVE IT!” (Of the Georgia smuggled   
   ballot claim he endorses and the Arizona smuggled ballot claim he disowns,   
   Pulitzer said, “They have nothing to do with each other.”)   
      
   Pulitzer, for his part, refused to answer questions about how,   
   specifically, his “technology and intellectual property” were being used   
   in Arizona, what consulting he did with Cyber Ninjas CEO Doug Logan, and   
   whether or not he’s going to be responsible for conducting the bamboo   
   paper analysis, citing a nondisclosure agreement. He also wouldn’t discuss   
   what compensation he is getting from the Arizona audit or who might be   
   paying him.   
      
   He has, however, been pushing for government-backed audits across the   
   country through crowdfunding efforts. “Being an auditor myself, Jovan’s   
   price is insane, like insane, it’s so small,” said one New Hampshire   
   resident who’s been supporting a local audit effort, offering an   
   endorsement of Pulitzer’s services.   
      
   Indeed, Pulitzer has become somewhat of a folk hero among those who see   
   the 2020 election as having been stolen from Donald Trump. He even has his   
   own anthem. It is titled “Warrior” and the opening lyrics go like this:   
      
   You fight for free and fair elections/ invented scan the ballots of   
   kinematic artifact detection/ you love to read aloud, travel, and explore/   
   you’re a fearless braveheart patriot, who’s opened doors/ you’re our   
   courage, you’re our voice, Jovan we thank you for what you’re fighting   
   for/ you’re our warrior.   
      
   One of the architects behind the audit push in Arizona, Liz Harris, spent   
   one day earlier this month running the song on loop over footage of the   
   audit site on her YouTube channel.   
      
   Back in the audit site, it was very hard to tell how the paper analysis   
   techniques supposedly invented by Jovan Pulitzer were being used. What you   
   could see at the site were a handful of crews set up at tables with high-   
   definition cameras. One person would hand a ballot to the cameraperson,   
   who would snap a photo of one side, then flip the ballot and snap the   
   other side, and then hand it to a third person who reviewed it and put it   
   in a new stack.   
      
   Observers for the secretary of state’s office said that these crews were   
   looking for what they considered anomalies in ballots and elevating those   
   “suspicious” ballots for secondary “examination.” Such anomalies,   
   according to these observers, include Election Day ballots that may have   
   been folded in half by a voter, or the appearance of food stains a voter   
   might have left on his or her ballot from Cheeto fingers. (Pulitzer   
   described the notion of stained ballots being flagged as “standard   
   operating procedure,” though the official Arizona elections manual states   
   “if a ballot is slightly defaced or soiled, the board must include this   
   ballot in the hand count.”)   
      
   Above the audit site, when I asked Senate liaison Ken Bennett about the   
   paper analysis area, he insisted what’s happening is simply evidence   
   collection, and there was no actual labeling of suspicious ballots taking   
   place. “I don’t see any of that happening,” Bennett told me. “This is data   
   collection, data analysis.”   
      
   Bennett then pointed down at the floor at a camera setup. “I don’t think   
   there’s any decision-making,” Bennett said. “You see the person, she flips   
   it twice, hands it to the next, guy, he takes one picture, bang, it’s in   
   the box, man.”   
      
   After this conversation, I followed up with two of the current secretary   
   of state’s observers, and they said definitively, contrary to Bennett’s   
   account, that labeling of ballots has been happening on that floor. In   
   fact, Cyber Ninjas’ attorney, Bryan Blehm, gave the observers access to   
   the physical key being used by the photography team to categorize ballots.   
   According to secretary of state observers Ryan Macias and Jennifer   
   Morrell, the camera teams were applying color-coded Post-it flags to the   
   ballots to demarcate “suspicious” ones that needed to be elevated to   
   “paper examination two.”   
      
   “Bryan Blehm, the attorney for Cyber Ninjas, told me that I could take a   
   copy of the key and write down all of the categories,” Macias told me. “A   
   blue flag equaled ‘folded or unfolded’—I wrote down verbatim the words   
   that were there—yellow was ‘missing security feature.’ Orange was   
   ‘presidential selection mark.’ Pink was ‘weight and texture.’ Green was   
   ‘other.’ And they couldn’t describe to me what ‘other’ meant.” Macias saw   
   these keys at photography tables throughout the arena. Morrell observed   
   audit team members applying these categories in some strange ways.   
      
   “I heard them sort of mention, ‘Oh this has a stain on it, is it a normal   
   stain? This doesn’t seem right,’ ” she told me. “I heard discussion a few   
   times where they flagged ballots as being suspicious that they thought   
   shouldn’t have been folded and were folded.”   
      
   These are obviously merely “human idiosyncrasies,” Morrell said. “I think   
   if you ask any election official, they’ll tell you voters will fold   
   ballots however they want,” she said.   
      
   When I asked Bennett—who is, again, the former top election official in   
   the state of Arizona—about all this in a follow-up phone call, he again   
   simply denied knowledge of what was happening in his own audit site.   
      
   “I was not unaware of any categorization or raising of a level happening   
   at those tables. I have to confirm with Mr. Logan, but I was not aware of   
   what the SOS observers are claiming to have been told by Mr. Blehm,” he   
   said. “That’s news to me.”   
      
   I asked Bennett if he thinks that Election Day ballots that may have been   
   folded deserve to be labeled as suspicious. “To me it’s not necessarily   
   suspicious,” he said. For his part, Jovan Pulitzer told me that flagging a   
   ballot with “some funky origami shape to it” would be “standard operating   
   procedure in any inspection.”   
      
   Ultimately, this paper analysis process adds another way for auditors to   
   ultimately claim the official election count was incorrect and that Trump   
   may have won. Even if the recount itself isn’t wildly off, at the end of   
   the day there will be a pile of suspicious Cheetos-stained and folded   
   ballots that could match or exceed the very slim margin of Biden’s   
   victory.   
      
   “Right, yep, that’s exactly right,” Morrell told me when I broached this   
   possibility with her. “That’s the big unknown, but I think we all know   
   that’s what the outcome will—that’s exactly what it will look like.”   
      
   “There’s no positive outcome for this,” Morrell said of the audit after   
   her time observing.   
      
   That perspective is spreading. After the official Arizona audit Twitter   
   account accused Republican County Recorder Stephen Richer and his staff of   
   illegally deleting an elections database—and Donald Trump repeated the   
   claim—Richer started to finally push back against what he called   
   “unhinged” accusations and “insane lies.”   
      
   “This is not what we had hoped,” Richer told me of how the audit has been   
      
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   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)