Voter Suppression & Election Theft by the Republican Party

[LFC]

Montana managed to infect all of one school's administrators. Mission accomplished?

One town in Montana has been hit so hard by coronavirus that a reporter heard a shocking response when he called to inquire about the state of the town's high school.

Eureka Public Schools Superintendent Jim Mepham is among those who have tested positive, NBC Montana reported Wednesday.

"Please realize that every staff member is either sick, quarantined, or overworked. We are all scared for ourselves, our families, our colleagues, our students, and our community," Mepham posted on Facebook.

Great job, Governor Giantforeskin. I see you're trying to get a piece of that Ron DeSatanist attention.

In August, Montana Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte announced an emergency rule giving parents ability to override school masks mandates.

On Thursday, Gianforte held a photo-op with unmasked students inside a different high school.

[LFC]

Crazed MAGAT Tina Peters of Colorado, who did her level best to destroy fair elections in Mesa County, is now in hiding. I wonder if she prepared supplies like a shelter, food, water, lot and lots of tin foil...

Wayne Williams, the former Colorado secretary of state who's newly in charge of Mesa County elections, said he hasn't heard from Clerk and Recorder Tina Peters since the news broke that her office was under investigation.

Williams said he hadn't tried to reach Peters.

“My focus is on trying to make the election work," he told Newsline on Tuesday. “I know the commissioners have made pleas to her to come in and start (running) the recording and motor vehicles side, but my focus is to run an election. That's what I'm charged to do, and that's what I'm going to do."

Williams, a Republican, is currently serving in a nonpartisan role on Colorado Springs City Council in addition to supervising Mesa County's November election.

Peters hasn't been seen in Mesa County since Secretary of State Jena Griswold — Williams' Democratic successor — announced Aug. 9 that she was investigating a “serious breach" of election security protocols at Peters' office. A few days later, Griswold accused Peters of allowing an unauthorized individual to attend a May software upgrade, known as a “trusted build," for Dominion Voting Systems machines.

Peters is also under investigation by the 21st Judicial District attorney's office and the FBI.

[LFC]

First round of the PA faudit is a big fail.

[goldenvalley]

The nonsense has already started in connection with the governor recall election.  As mentioned elsewhere the leading Republican contender, a right wing talk radio host named Larry Elder, is saying if he loses it's because of voter fraud.  And some group calling itself Election Integrity Project is causing issues already and won't countenance anyone, even someone affiliated with that group, suggesting that the election is being run fairly.  

Doubt over the election process drove one San Diego resident, who did not want to be named because of concern for her personal privacy, to volunteer as an Election Integrity Project observer.

“I’ve been increasingly frustrated when people say, ‘What’s the point in voting?’ because people don’t believe in the integrity of the process,” she said. She harbored her own concerns, given the “iffy” things she said she had heard about how voter signatures are verified or damaged ballots remade so they can be read by machines.

After a week of watching election workers, she said, “I’ve been absolutely astounded. ... I think if people realized how much effort goes into making sure it is a good ballot, that is very impressive to me.”

Minutes after the interview, Election Integrity Project sent out an alert telling its volunteers to not speak to The Times: “‘NO COMMENT’ is the ONLY thing they should say if contacted!!!”

[LFC]

Sept 11, 2021 2:23:12 GMT goldenvalley said:

The nonsense has already started in connection with the governor recall election.  As mentioned elsewhere the leading Republican contender, a right wing talk radio host named Larry Elder, is saying if he loses it's because of voter fraud.

Elder's voter fraud fraud is already in full swing. It's already claiming fraud was perpetrated ... BEFORE the election.

The campaign of Larry Elder, the hard-right radio host who’s been leading the pack of Republicans working to unseat California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) in today’s recall election, is promoting a website that curiously already states the results of the election even though it, uh, hasn’t started yet!

• The campaign’s website has a “Stop Fraud” link leading to “StopCAfraud.com,” which has a petition that demands the California state legislature “investigate and ameliorate” the “twisted results” of the election.

• The linked website claims that unspecified “statistical analysis used to detect fraud in elections held in 3rd-world nations” have detected fraud “resulting in Governor Gavin Newsom being reinstated as governor.”

• On the linked website site is a disclaimer that it was paid for by the “Larry Elder Ballot Measure Committee Recall Newsom,” and indicates that group received major funding from … wait for it … the Elder campaign.

• What’s incredible is that the site is still up even after the Elder campaign was asked about it by news outlets. Elder spokesperson Ying Ma acknowledged in a statement that the campaign has “provided a link to an outside website that is providing an avenue for voters to document irregularities they encounter in this election” but “we believe that Larry will win.”

• Elder refused to commit to accepting today’s election results yesterday, saying instead that “we all need to be looking at election integrity”:

Acyn
@acyn
“The leading Republican candidate would not commit to accepting the results of the election”

• Trump also put out a rant baselessly claiming (again) that the recall election is “rigged” and that the mail-in ballots “will make this just another giant Election Scam.”

• Biden warned Californians that Elder was “the closest thing to a Trump clone that I have ever seen” during his stump speech for Newsom yesterday in Long Beach, California.

[jackd]

It's right out of the Trump playbook. Trump famously claimed that no votes counted after midnight on Election Day should count, contrary to the law in virtually all American states.

[goldenvalley]

Is every candidate that loses or believes they are about to lose an election going to claim fraud?  I almost hope they do so that most rational people will come to understand that it's something that is without meaning, just like wearing a US flag pin on the lapel of a jacket.  

[LFC]

Sept 14, 2021 20:49:38 GMT goldenvalley said:

Is every Republican candidate that loses or believes they are about to lose an election going to claim fraud? 

With my fix the answer is "yes." HARD "yes."

[goldenvalley]

Looks like the recall is losing at least in the vote by mail ballots counted so far and 9.1 million of them had been returned by the morning of the election.  Lots of polling places had lines this evening but the pundit/talkers say those were probably Republicans and probably won't be in great enough numbers to pass the recall.  Now we get to anticipate the governor's primary election in June 2022, just 9 months from now.  Whoopie!

[LFC]

Total blowout. Elder conceded and isn't even attempting his voter fraud lies. I saw the concession and people MAGAts were booing. No amount of reality can get through to them.

Today, 07:20
LATEST RESULT: NEWSOM AHEAD BY 32 POINTS

With 58% of precincts reporting late in the evening in California, Governor Gavin Newsom was ahead by 32 percentage points.

66% of voters have so far said he should stay in office and 34% have said he should be removed.

[pnwguy]

Sept 15, 2021 13:33:24 GMT LFC said:

Total blowout. Elder conceded and isn't even attempting his voter fraud lies. I saw the concession and people MAGAts were booing. No amount of reality can get through to them.

Today, 07:20
LATEST RESULT: NEWSOM AHEAD BY 32 POINTS

With 58% of precincts reporting late in the evening in California, Governor Gavin Newsom was ahead by 32 percentage points.

66% of voters have so far said he should stay in office and 34% have said he should be removed.

”That proves how massive the Deep State is that they falsified over a THIRD of the votes! We must fight the Marxists. Get your guns, fellow Patriots!”

[goldenvalley]

No one seems to know why Elder conceded. On Monday he wasn't going to.  What's really interesting about the candidates to replace Newsom is that the former mayor of San Diego who is more a classic Republican was so far behind Elder.  What does that say about the California GOP? 

ETA: An estimated $276 million of taxpayer money was spent on this election. What a waste of money and time for the venting of some people's overall frustration with COVID and general state of affairs in CA.

[LFC]

Sept 15, 2021 15:14:45 GMT goldenvalley said:

What's really interesting about the candidates to replace Newsom is that the former mayor of San Diego who is more a classic Republican was so far behind Elder.  What does that say about the California GOP?

That it's no different than other state or the national GOP. They're all MAGAts now.

[LFC]

The right-wing propaganda and outright lying is working. The Congressional Republicans are in goose step.

Most Americans feel democracy is under attack in this country (56%), according to a new CNN Poll conducted by SSRS, as 51% say it is likely that elected officials in the US will successfully overturn the results of a future election because their party did not win.

Nearly all Americans feel that democracy in the US is at least being tested: 93% total say that democracy is either under attack (56%) or being tested but not under attack (37%). A scant 6% say that American democracy is in no danger.

Republicans are far more likely than Democrats to say that democracy is under attack, and that view is most prevalent among those who support former President Donald Trump. All told, 75% of Republicans say democracy is under attack, compared with 46% of Democrats. Among Republicans and Republican-leaning independents, those who say Trump ought to be the leader of the party are much likelier to see democracy as under threat: 79% in that group vs. 51% among those who say Trump should not be the party's leader.

And Republicans who support Trump continue to drive belief in the big lie that the 2020 election was stolen from him. Although there is no evidence of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election, 36% of Americans say that President Joe Biden did not legitimately get enough votes to win the presidency. That 36% includes 23% who falsely say there is solid evidence that Biden did not win, and 13% who say that is their suspicion only.

Among Republicans, 78% say that Biden did not win and 54% believe there is solid evidence of that, despite the fact that no such evidence exists. That view is also deeply connected to support for Trump. Among Republicans who say Trump should be the leader of the party, 88% believe Biden lost -- including 64% who say there is solid evidence that he did not win -- while among those Republicans who do not want Trump to lead the Party, 57% say Biden won legitimately.

Looking to future elections, 51% of all Americans say it's at least somewhat likely that an election in the next few years will be overturned by elected officials because their party lost, while 49% say that is unlikely.

[AnBr]

Sept 15, 2021 13:33:24 GMT LFC said:

Total blowout. Elder conceded and isn't even attempting his voter fraud lies. I saw the concession and people MAGAts were booing. No amount of reality can get through to them.

Today, 07:20
LATEST RESULT: NEWSOM AHEAD BY 32 POINTS

With 58% of precincts reporting late in the evening in California, Governor Gavin Newsom was ahead by 32 percentage points.

66% of voters have so far said he should stay in office and 34% have said he should be removed.

I am really thinking that the MAGAts think they are a far larger percentage of the electorate than they actually are. Never mind that they are only as high as they are by being bolstered by the likes of gerrymandering, voter suppression, and purges. But then, their loses have to be because of fraud and hacking 'cause Faux told them so.

[LFC]

Sept 16, 2021 0:44:32 GMT AnBr said:

I am really thinking that the MAGAts think they are a far larger percentage of the electorate than they actually are. Never mind that they are only as high as they are by being bolstered by the likes of gerrymandering, voter suppression, and purges. But then, their loses have to be because of fraud and hacking 'cause Faux told them so.

Absolutely. They can't IMAGINE how Trump lost when he had 74 MILLION votes!!! They simply can't / won't process that President Biden had 81 million (which is more, MAGAts). It also didn't matter when poll after poll showed Trump as the underdog. They knew he was going to win. They just knew it. That means the only "reasonable" explanation is that the election was stolen.

These people are nuckin' futs.

[goldenvalley]

Sept 16, 2021 14:14:20 GMT LFC said:

Sept 16, 2021 0:44:32 GMT AnBr said:

That means the only "reasonable" explanation is that the election was stolen. 

As someone said about California's results "That's a lot of fraud!"  Curiously, the cries of fraud died down very quickly in CA this week.  

[LFC]

The fascist party of Pennsylvania is going after voters' personal data despite have almost zero evidence of fraud. I hope this gets to the state supreme court where the majority has been named by Democratic governors and they knock it down. After seeing the mishandling of data and voting machines in the Arizona faudit this is almost guaranteed to be a f***ing disaster.

Pennsylvania state Senate Republicans on Wednesday took their long-delayed “audit” of the 2020 election results up a notch by authorizing subpoenas for personal information on every registered voter in the commonwealth.

On Wednesday, the state Senate Intergovernmental Operations Committee voted 7-4 along party lines to authorize 17 subpoenas that allows the panel to seek information from Gov. Tom Wolf’s (D) administration on registered voters’ names, addresses, driver’s licenses and partial social security numbers from last November. The GOP-led subpoenas also request lists of voters who participated in the 2020 elections and the May 2021 primary — a move that Republicans claimed would help verify the identity of voters.

The subpoenas additionally request all email and other written communications between the Department of State and elections officials in every Pennsylvania county.

The subpoenas are a follow-up to lengthy demand letters that a Trumpy state senator had previously sent three counties in an effort to investigate the 2020 election results. In some ways, this is an escalation. Senate officials indicated that the personal information from voters would be turned over to an unnamed private company that would proceed with the review. State Sen. Cris Dush (R), who’s leading the effort, declined to provide detail on which companies he is considering for the task.

Dush told Democratic senators during questioning on Wednesday that the yet-to-be-identified private company would receive compensation from taxpayer dollars, according to Spotlight PA, which noted that top Senate officials did not provide a specific budget nor a spending ceiling for their review earlier this week.

Democrats, who have been critical of the GOP’s efforts, criticized the subpoenas and Republicans’ vetting of a private company to carry it out. Dush would not indicate the committee’s authority to issue the subpoenas. The Associated Press noted that state law bars the public release of some of the information requested in the subpoenas, such as driver’s license numbers and Social Security numbers. Democrats said they plan to take the issue to court, the AP reported.

State Sen. Anthony Williams (D) argued that turning over private voter information to an outside company “should be scary to all of us.”

“This should be seen as a betrayal of those who are here to represent you,” Williams said, according to Spotlight PA.

[LFC]

TPM has a piece on the results of the poll showing who thinks our democracy is under attack. If you don't remember the upshot is that the fascist MAGAts are most likely to think democracy is under attack without a shred of recognition that it's under attack by them. Dems and independents need to wake the f*** up. This article discusses the problem and is called The Urgency Gap.

It would seem that the Trumpian made-up threats to democracy–Deep State, mass election fraud, etc–are taken much more seriously by Republicans than the actual threats to democracy – insurrection, Big Lie, political violence – are by Democrats.

As Cristina flagged in the Morning Memo, a new CNN poll shows Republicans are much more likely (75%) to say that democracy is under attack than Democrats (46%).

Digging a bit deeper into the numbers, it look like this:

American democracy is under attack: GOP 75%, Dems 46%

American democracy is being tested, but is not under attack: GOP 22%, Dems 48%

American democracy is in no danger: GOP 3%, Dems 7%

For those of us with our hair on fire that the insurrection isn’t over but merely on pause, that the threat to democracy is as great now as on the afternoon of Jan. 6, that Democrats in Congress as a whole lack the urgency of the historical moment, these numbers are daunting.

We often talk about the enthusiasm gap in electoral politics, but we now face an urgency gap. Republicans under Trump have not only succeeded in selling the lie that Democrats are out to destroy democracy, they’ve got Republicans more stoked about it than Democrats are about the verified, believe-your-own-eyes threat to democracy that reached its current pinnacle with a GOP-led violent attack on the Capitol to subvert an election.

[LFC]

Alabama is getting in on the act by giving a wet, sloppy kiss to utter nutter Mr. MyPillow.

The CEO of MyPillow was treated like a visiting dignitary in Alabama Friday, meeting with the state’s governor and secretary of state during the latest stop on his futile months-long effort to demonstrate hijinks in the 2020 election.

MyPillow honcho Mike Lindell “was very impressed by our efforts and said that Alabama had the best election system and the safest procedures he had seen in America!” the state’s top elections official, Secretary of State John Merrill, wrote on Facebook after the meeting, attaching pictures showing Lindell and his team presenting a graph on a laptop. “We look forward to our next meeting!”

The pillow magnate later claimed without any basis that despite Alabama’s best efforts, 100,000 votes had been “flipped” in the state during the 2020 election. Lindell, who has spent months and millions of dollars pushing false claims of voter fraud in the last election, also purchased a copy of Alabama’s voter rolls and plans to perform “tests” on the data, Al.com reported.

Photos from the meeting show that Lindell was accompanied by Douglas Frank, the former math and science department chair at a Cincinnati high school whose viral, smoke–and–mirrors claims about the 2020 election have made him a minor celebrity in the election truther world.

“Today, Mr. Mike Lindell of My Pillow, Inc. visited the Secretary of State’s Office. Our team discussed several topics that were of concern to Mr. Lindell and other citizens,” a press release from Merrill’s (R) office said.

“Even though Mr. Lindell indicated that Alabama has the best elections system he has seen and that our state has the safest election procedures of all of the 50 states, he still has some questions he would like to have answered. We will be looking forward to his next visit in our state.”

That’s putting things lightly: Speaking on his show “The Lindell Report” after the visit, Lindell granted that Alabama ran a “tight ship” when it came to elections — but then added, “they were hacked, just like every other state was.”

“According to my packet captures, and the numbers, we have approximately, almost 100,000 votes were flipped in Alabama,” he said later.

Could somebody please remind me again how both parties are pretty much the same?

[LFC]

Politico obtained emails confirming what we already knew about the Florida Fascist Party's voter suppression efforts being all about maintaining power and nothing about election security. The only shock about this story is that the emails got out.

Florida Republicans this spring insisted a contentious new election law curtailing access to ballot boxes was needed to prevent electoral fraud. It was not, they said, an attempt to gain a partisan advantage.

But a raft of internal emails and text messages obtained by POLITICO show the law was drafted with the help of the Republican Party of Florida’s top lawyer — and that a crackdown on mail-in ballot requests was seen as a way for the GOP to erase the edge that Democrats had in mail-in voting during the 2020 election. The messages undercut the consistent argument made by Republicans that the new law was about preventing future electoral fraud.

The law — labeled “Jim Crow 2.0” by some Democrats — was passed at the strong urging of Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, who signed the bill at an exclusive event aired by Fox News. It advanced even as local election officials, including Republicans, criticized the measure after running a trouble-free election in 2020. One official went so far as to call it “slap in the face” while one north Florida supervisor recently told DeSantis he was resigning at the end of this month in part to oppose “continuous changes” in election laws.

Yet in one remarkable text exchange obtained by POLITICO, Gruters and lead House sponsor state Rep. Blaise Ingoglia (R-Spring Hill) went back-and-forth over proposals to shorten how long mail-in ballot requests are valid.

Gruters defended a Senate proposal to cancel all existing mail-in ballot requests, saying that it would be “devastating” for Republicans to keep them valid heading into the 2022 election when DeSantis and other state GOP officials are up for reelection. More than 2.18 million Democrats used mail-in ballots compared to 1.5 million Republican voters during the 2020 election where Trump easily won Florida. Part of that was due to the ongoing pandemic, as Democrats strongly encouraged voters to change their habits nationwide.

“We cannot make up ground. Trump campaign spent 10 million. Could not cut down lead,” Gruters wrote to Ingoglia, who had been chair of the Republican Party of Florida before Gruters.

Gruters (R-Sarasota) also said it would hurt the GOP in non-partisan races, noting that “our school board member got killed” in a local race. Gruters this week filed legislation that would ask voters to make school board races partisan.

The emails and text messages obtained by POLITICO were handed over as part of an ongoing lawsuit by several groups — including the League of Women Voters of Florida — challenging the newly-enacted law that put in new restrictions on the collection of mail-in ballots and the use of drop boxes. The groups contend the new law illegally targets elderly and disabled voters, as well as minority voters. The National Republican Committee and the National Republican Senatorial Committee are helping defend the measure.

The groups challenging the law asked for the records to be turned over as part of their preparation for trial. POLITICO asked for copies of all records turned over by the House, Senate and governor’s office. These records included legislative drafts that are usually shielded from disclosure.

[LFC]

Sept 21, 2021 21:10:01 GMT LFC said:

Alabama is getting in on the act by giving a wet, sloppy kiss to utter nutter Mr. MyPillow.

Uh, oh. It looks like Mr. MyPillow's crazy isn't playing well even in Alabama.

After embracing the election conspiracy theorist and pillow magnate Mike Lindell with open arms last week, Alabama’s top elections official is scurrying to counter the false claims Lindell proceeded to make about Alabama’s 2020 elections immediately after their meeting.

After kibbitzing with Lindell Friday, Alabama Secretary of State John Merrill (R) gushed on Facebook that Lindell “was very impressed by our efforts and said that Alabama had the best election system and the safest procedures he had seen in America!” The secretary said he looked forward “to our next meeting!”

Lindell, the CEO of MyPillow who’s spent months pushing falsehoods about the 2020 election, was quite happy with the meeting as well, reporting on “The Lindell Report” that Alabama ran a “tight ship.”

Still, he couldn’t help but slip in a jab at the state.

“They were hacked, just like every other state was,” Lindell said, adding later that he estimated “almost 100,000 votes were flipped in Alabama.”

As Al.com reported Tuesday, Merrill is now trying to clean up the fallout from that claim.

“All our [voting] machines are custom-built,” Merrill told the publication. “There’s no modem component. You can’t influence them through a cell phone or a landline. There’s no way they can be probed or numbers manipulated.”

“We didn’t have any vote changes. Zero. It’s not possible to have any vote changed,” he added.

[goldenvalley]

Sept 23, 2021 16:26:34 GMT LFC said:

Sept 21, 2021 21:10:01 GMT LFC said:

Alabama is getting in on the act by giving a wet, sloppy kiss to utter nutter Mr. MyPillow.

Uh, oh. It looks like Mr. MyPillow's crazy isn't playing well even in Alabama.

After embracing the election conspiracy theorist and pillow magnate Mike Lindell with open arms last week, Alabama’s top elections official is scurrying to counter the false claims Lindell proceeded to make about Alabama’s 2020 elections immediately after their meeting.

After kibbitzing with Lindell Friday, Alabama Secretary of State John Merrill (R) gushed on Facebook that Lindell “was very impressed by our efforts and said that Alabama had the best election system and the safest procedures he had seen in America!” The secretary said he looked forward “to our next meeting!”

Lindell, the CEO of MyPillow who’s spent months pushing falsehoods about the 2020 election, was quite happy with the meeting as well, reporting on “The Lindell Report” that Alabama ran a “tight ship.”

Still, he couldn’t help but slip in a jab at the state.

“They were hacked, just like every other state was,” Lindell said, adding later that he estimated “almost 100,000 votes were flipped in Alabama.”

As Al.com reported Tuesday, Merrill is now trying to clean up the fallout from that claim.

“All our [voting] machines are custom-built,” Merrill told the publication. “There’s no modem component. You can’t influence them through a cell phone or a landline. There’s no way they can be probed or numbers manipulated.”

“We didn’t have any vote changes. Zero. It’s not possible to have any vote changed,” he added.

Like with the Georgia Secy of State, elections officials will defend the systems they put into place.  They know Pillow Man's claims are BS.  But they are Republicans and simply won't say that the basis for a lot of the proposed laws and therefore the laws are bogus.  Besides, fewer voters means less work for the elections officials.

[LFC]

Cyber Ninjas is now a criminal organization (well, they have been for a while) who are guilty of refusing to comply with a court order. So much for their bragging about "transparency."

Days before the long-delayed conclusion of an Arizona vote “audit” of the 2020 election—one that conspiracy blogs trumpeted as the “MOST TRANSPARENT AUDIT EVER”—the conspiratorial group behind the effort is fighting a court order to turn over internal documents.

Cyber Ninjas, an obscure Florida tech company with no prior elections experience, has been leading a chaotic review of Maricopa County, Arizona’s 2020 presidential election since April. The months-long effort has been a fiasco both technically (auditors caused nearly $3 million in damage to voting machines and caught COVID en masse) and politically (Cyber Ninjas CEO Doug Logan was revealed to be an election truther who collaborated with Trump attorney Sidney Powell on voter fraud theories). In August, a judge ruled that Cyber Ninjas must turn over audit-related documents by mid-September, following a pair of public records lawsuits from the Arizona Republic and the transparency group American Oversight.

But despite the judge upholding that ruling last week, Cyber Ninjas has not complied, stating that it might release some documents after its audit report this week—and in some cases, maybe never at all.

In a letter to the court on Friday, the group’s lawyer, Jack Wilenchik, suggested Cyber Ninjas would turn over some documents, if it felt like it.

“I also emphasize that, while CNI [Cyber Ninjas, Inc.] intends to produce documents out of goodwill and its commitment to transparency, by sending this communication CNI does not concede the existence or scope of any involuntary legal obligation to do so,” Wilenchik’s letter read.

Wilenchick objected to the court order on two grounds: that Cyber Ninjas should not be subject to public records laws, and that Cyber Ninjas is too busy to release court-ordered records (which a judge ordered Cyber Ninjas to preserve in August).

A judge has repeatedly dismissed the first argument, stating that Cyber Ninjas has been hired by Arizona’s Republican-led Senate and is a “custodian” of public records, making it subject to public records laws.

As for Cyber Ninjas’ alleged time crunch, the group is no stranger to delays. The group was initially supposed to release its “audit” findings in mid-May. That deadline was delayed until later in the month, then again to August, when it was delayed again because three of the Cyber Ninjas had caught COVID-19. The group now says it will release its findings on Sept. 24.

Cyber Ninjas might have good reason for withholding internal documents, which include texts and emails about the audit.

[LFC]

Sounds like the fauditors decided their best path forward was to fold and declare the obvious.

The partisan review of Maricopa County's 2.1 million ballots cast in the 2020 election found a vote count nearly identical to what the county had previously reported, a draft report detailing its findings shows.

The state Senate Republicans who seized on former President Donald Trump's lies about widespread election fraud and ordered up the report and Cyber Ninjas, the inexperienced company hired to conduct it, are set to detail their findings in a public presentation Friday.

The draft report emerged Thursday night, and audit spokesman Randy Pullen confirmed its validity to KJZZ Phoenix. "It's not the final report, but it's close," he said.

The draft report shows that the hand recount found that President Joe Biden received 99 more votes than Maricopa County had reported after November's election, while former President Donald Trump received 261 fewer votes than the county reported.

I expect the final report to be filled with innuendo and doubts about nefarious things. After all creating doubt was its primary purpose.

The end result of the partisan probe in Arizona may disappoint Trump, though local officials said it also contained many faulty conclusions that could fulfill its ultimate aim -- sowing distrust in the US election system and giving the ex-President material to cherry pick to raise new doubts among his supporters about the result.

Arizona's example has inspired Republicans in a list of other battleground states to try to hold their own sham "audits" -- all targeting elections that were free and fair and which courts ruled were not tainted by fraud. The push, in states like Wisconsin and Pennsylvania that were crucial to Biden's win, will not only deepen the pool of mistrust among Trump supporters who want to believe his lie that he actually won. It could offer further impetus to the rewriting of state voting laws by Republicans that suppress Democratic and minority votes and make it easier for partisan officials to interfere in the certification of elections in future. And it will fuel the false narrative that Trump was unfairly forced out of the Oval Office on which he is building a possible 2024 campaign and is using to continue to exert control over the GOP even when out of power.

The former President's ability to force elements of his Republican Party to reject democratic values was earlier in evidence yet again.

Hours after Trump published a public letter to Texas GOP Gov. Greg Abbott demanding an election audit, the office of Texas' secretary of state announced Thursday that the process had already begun in the two largest Democratic-leaning counties and the two biggest Republican counties, Dallas, Harris, Tarrant and Collin. Trump wrote in his letter that "Texans know voting fraud occurred in some of their counties. Let's get to the bottom of the 2020 presidential election scam!"

The audit will take place even though there is no evidence that the election in the Lone Star State was compromised or saw any significant voter fraud. And Trump won the state easily. The Texas Tribune reported in May that an official in the secretary of state's office had earlier reported to state lawmakers that 2020 voting in Texas was "smooth and secure."

In the case of Texas, the audit appears to be another sign of how Trump is able to force state officials -- especially those, like Abbott, who may be hoping to mount future presidential runs and need to stay in good standing with the ex-President's base -- to carry out his undemocratic will. The process will also raise questions about whether a partisan state administration can be trusted to report fairly on how the election was conducted in Democratic counties.

By persuading the Texas authorities to look into the election, Trump gets the veneer of authority for his false claims. And it creates yet another precedent of interference in vote counting and election certification, which was previously seen as walled off from politicization, that threatens to taint elections in 2022, 2024 and for years to come.