Voter Suppression & Election Theft by the Republican Party

[goldenvalley]

May 8, 2021 0:49:42 GMT LFC said:

It just keeps going further and further off the rails. The fauditors are demanding passwords ... F***ING PASSWORDS!!!!! ... for accounts with access to critical election infrastructure. If this had been a real audit they would have requested to have their own accounts set up in advance and they would have had only the read permissions they needed. Why didn't they? First, that takes competence. Second, once the faudit ended the accounts would be locked. Third, changes and inappropriate access can be tracked to individual accounts. They don't want ANY of that shit.

clip

Yep, they want passwords that give them access to source code. How long before THAT tidbit of info ended up in Vladimir's hands?

The more you read about this "audit" the more you realize how we've entered a bizarre, dangerous state of affairs.  This audit consists of amateurs chasing down every bullshit fraud allegation made in the fever dreams of conspiracy driven paranoia.  And now they seek passwords because they're not finding what they wanted to find. So they have concluded it's because it's all hidden away in password protected places.  Yet again the norms of governance aren't putting a brake on any of this because 1. people in authority like the AZ Senate are not just doing nothing, but actively seeking out this "audit" and 2. when people act so completely outside of the norms and expectations of laws currently in place, there is no way to stop them.  

[goldenvalley]

Interesting assessment by David Graham at The Atlantic.

...As Donald Trump and his allies grasped at straws to cast doubt on the results of last year’s presidential race, they settled on a few common complaints. They said that the election process was tainted by procedures that had been hastily changed in the lead-up to voting, that it was run by partisan hacks, that outside observers were provided insufficient access to oversee the process, and that the election was corrupted by private money given by philanthropists to boards of elections to help them adapt to the pandemic.

Now, more than six months after the election, the circus in Arizona, ordered by the state Senate, has become the last stand of the denialists. The review has attracted the close attention of Trump himself, who has fired off repeated, blustery statements about the count from his Mar-a-Lago exile. But Arizona is committing all the same sins that Trump’s supporters have been denouncing, using a brazenly partisan process run by apparently unqualified parties, with procedures kept secret and subject to change. Observers are being asked to sign nondisclosure agreements, reporters have been kicked out of the site, and the exercise is being largely funded by interested outside parties—even though the Arizona legislature recently passed a law that prevents local boards from accepting outside funding.

And why are they seeking outside money?

The state Senate allocated just $150,000 for the audit, far too little to cover all the costs. So despite recently banning boards of elections from using private money, the Senate has turned to private donors to fill the gap. Cyber Ninjas hasn’t disclosed all of its funding sources, though some have emerged. Unsurprisingly, much of it has come from people invested in the idea of fraud. Patrick Byrne, the eccentric former head of Overstock.com, has donated $1 million and set a goal to raise almost $2 million more. Employees of One America News Network, the conspiracist pro-Trump news outlet, have also raised hundreds of thousands of dollars, and the outlet has been given special access as the official broadcast partner of the audit.

The official broadcast partner of the audit???  Is this the Olympics coverage? This is crazy and dangerous.  OAN will want a big exposure of fraud to boost their viewership so we know what the "results" of the audit will be and the reaction it will generate.  How do we stop the insanity?

[jackd]

I don't think we can stop the insanity. We simply have to beat them at the polls and that is going to be extremely hard work since state legislatures that are controlled by Republicans are free to gerrymander and change procedures without interference from the courts. The only solution is a determined ground game to get out our vote regardless of obstacles. We are highly unlikely to be able to convert Trumpers.

[LFC]

Apparently going to jail for the Arizona faudit is not in the cards and they backed off of their direct voter contact scheme once the DOJ brought up legality issues. Imagine if it was Sessions or Barr in charge. They would have sent federal agents to help intimidate people.

The Arizona Senate has said it will hold off on a controversial plan to knock on voters’ doors as part of a Republican-commissioned election recount that raised concerns about voter intimidation.

State Senate President Karen Fann (R) said in a letter to the Department of Justice Friday that the door-to-door effort to interview voters as part of an audit of Maricopa County’s 2020 election results would not go forward after federal officials raised concerns that the canvassing could violate civil rights laws protecting against voter intimidation.

[pnwguy]

what Republicans in places like Arizona need next is to ban secret voting. Your votes must now be public record, so that "decent citizens" can be sure you voted Republican. Otherwise, maybe something bad might happen to you.

[AnBr]

[goldenvalley]

May 9, 2021 1:31:52 GMT pnwguy said:

what Republicans in places like Arizona need next is to ban secret voting. Your votes must now be public record, so that "decent citizens" can be sure you voted Republican. Otherwise, maybe something bad might happen to you.

I agree.  And vote by mail is the most secret ballot of all. That's why it must be reduced and/or eliminated.  You can't intimidate people by driving large trucks blasting candidate ads through the parking lots of polling places or parked in front of drop boxes, staring at them and taking photos and videos with smart phones when people simply mail their ballots to the elections office.

[LFC]

A bit of truth from an Arizona Republican.

Arizona state Sen. Paul Boyer (R) apparently has regrets about backing his fellow GOP senators’ push for a shady audit of Maricopa County’s 2020 election ballots to boost ex-President Donald Trump and his allies’ bogus conspiracy theories about voter fraud.

“It makes us look like idiots,” Boyer told the New York Times in an interview published on Sunday. “Looking back, I didn’t think it would be this ridiculous. It’s embarrassing to be a state senator at this point.”

Now if he and the rest of the crew can just realize how long the list of things is of things that make you look like idiots then they could be on the verge of rejoining reality. I'm not holding my breath.

[Deleted]

"Looking like idiots" is just representative democracy at work.

[LFC]

The crank at the center of the Arizona faudit is now a folk hero for the MAGAt crowd in Windham, NH. They know he'll find fraud for them and guaranteed outcomes are what this is all about.

In April, Windham’s board of selectmen chose Mark Lindeman, the acting co-director of voting technology firm Verified Voting, as its auditor. But Trump supporters in Windham grew furious at the Lindeman pick after discovering that he had co-signed a letter, along with a list of election experts that includes the Brennan Center for Justice and the Carter Center, questioning the need for the Arizona audit and claiming it would only “stoke conspiracy theories.”

For the MAGA faithful in Windham, there’s only one choice for auditor: Jovan Hutton Pulitzer, an inventor and controversial treasure hunter who has become a sort of internet folk hero to hardcore Trump fans. Hundreds of Pulitzer’s supporters turned raucous at a Board of Selectmen meeting last week, waving American flags, chanting “Stop the Steal,” and turning their backs on the selectmen who refused to reconsider Lindeman’s selection.

Many of the protesters demanded that Pulitzer inspect the ballots instead. One Pulitzer supporter held a sign with Lindeman’s name crossed out, with Pulitzer’s name in its place. At one point, a Pulitzer supporter asked attendees how many people wanted Pulitzer to count the ballots, prompting many of them to stand up in support of Pulitzer.

“It was humbling, and scary as shit at the same exact time, right?” Pulitzer told The Daily Beast. “What an honor, but what a weight on someone’s shoulders.”

Bruce Breton, a longtime Windham selectman and the only one who voted against Lindeman’s selection, said he backed Pulitzer as the auditor pick after receiving roughly 3,000 emails from Pulitzer’s fans.

“It’s just amazing the groundswell of people that wanted Pulitzer,” Breton said.

Gee, Bruce. If a groundswell of people want the MyPillow Guy as town treasurer should you pick him too?

[LFC]

At least one journalist is trying to hold AZ Republican state senator Paul Boyer's feet to the fire for his support of, and now attempted slinking away from, the Arizona Republican faudit.

In a biting column for AZCentral, columnist Elvia Diaz called out State Sen. Paul Boyer (R) for now attempting to distance himself from the Republican-led "audit" of the 2020 presidential election votes that Donald Trump demanded and Boyer once supported.

Boyer made news earlier this week when he turned on the organizers of the audit, saying it was making his party look like "idiots," before adding, "Looking back, I didn't think it would be this ridiculous. It's embarrassing to be a state senator at this point."

According to Diaz, Boyer shouldn't be allowed to walk away that easily.

"Sen. Paul Boyer wants to be the forgettable villain in a really bad movie called the Arizona election audit," she wrote. "Things have gone off the rails with the Republican-led audit and Boyer is suddenly regretful about the role he played to get it underway in the first place. What? Boyer didn't think it'd be this ridiculous?"

The columnist said the state's Republican Party is ultimately to blame for what is becoming a widely-derided publicity stunt designed to please Trump and his rabid followers, but that Boyer had a hand in it too.

"Either Boyer is that naïve or somebody twisted his arm to support auditing Maricopa County's 2.1 million ballots. Boyer, who never actually voted for the audit as I initially wrote, told me he believed there was nothing wrong in principle with auditing the county's vote," she accused. "Either way, Boyer doesn't get to wash his hands of this farce and expect roaring applause for simply disowning his initial support while still doing nothing to stop it."

[LFC]

Arizona continues its attack on voters with aggressive mail-in ballot list purging. I'm sure, once again, we'll find out after the fact that "somehow" more Dems and in particular minorities ended up being purged.

Arizona’s Republican Gov. Doug Ducey on Tuesday signed legislation into law that opponents have described as a “purge” of the state’s popular early voting list.

SB 1485, which Republicans had unsuccessfully tried multiple times to get to Ducey’s desk before Tuesday, removes voters from the state’s list to automatically receive an early mail-in ballot if they do not vote by mail in two election cycles, and subsequently do not respond to a notice from election officials.

The state’s popular “Permanent Early Voting List,” in other words, has been changed to an “Active Early Voting List.”

[goldenvalley]

May 11, 2021 23:15:31 GMT LFC said:

Arizona continues its attack on voters with aggressive mail-in ballot list purging. I'm sure, once again, we'll find out after the fact that "somehow" more Dems and in particular minorities ended up being purged.

Arizona’s Republican Gov. Doug Ducey on Tuesday signed legislation into law that opponents have described as a “purge” of the state’s popular early voting list.

SB 1485, which Republicans had unsuccessfully tried multiple times to get to Ducey’s desk before Tuesday, removes voters from the state’s list to automatically receive an early mail-in ballot if they do not vote by mail in two election cycles, and subsequently do not respond to a notice from election officials.

The state’s popular “Permanent Early Voting List,” in other words, has been changed to an “Active Early Voting List.”

It's a shame.  Arizona has had what we call in CA "permanent vote by mail status" for a number of years.  It's worked just fine, no one ever had an issue with it.  There are lots of people that only vote in presidential election years; nothing nefarious in that.  But in service of the man in Mar A Lago, a perfectly acceptable and secure way of voting is being demolished.

[pnwguy]

Next up in AZ? Automatic purge of voters who are not registered Republican. They aren't Real 'Muricans anyway...

[LFC]

May 12, 2021 15:32:45 GMT pnwguy said:

Next up in AZ? Automatic purge of voters who are not registered Republican. They aren't Real 'Muricans anyway...

Isn't that more or less what all Republican lead voter purges end up being?

[LFC]

At this point I wish that when Manchin is going to obstruct something he'd just shut up rather than floating another animated unicorn farting rainbow sparkles.

It didn’t take long for a supposedly bipartisan compromise on voting rights legislation that Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) is floating to get dumped on by a key Republican.

At a Thursday Senate Judiciary Committee meeting to vote on one of President Biden’s key Justice Department nominees, Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) didn’t call out Manchin by name. But he referenced a proposal Manchin has recently floated — first to a local news outlet, and then more explicitly in an interview Wednesday with ABC News — for addressing voting rights.

Manchin is currently the lone Senate Democrat not publicly supporting the For The People Act, Democrats’ sprawling democracy overhaul legislation that would beat back many of the restrictive state-level voting policies advancing across the county. The For the People Act — also known as S1 — stands no chance of becoming law for as long as Manchin and other centrist Democrats oppose blowing up the filibuster to ram it through.

Manchin says he would not support major elections legislation done on a purely partisan basis. Instead, Manchin has suggested that lawmakers focus on a restoring the Voting Rights Act, which was gutted by the Supreme Court in 2013. The Supreme Court invalidated the formula that determined which states — based on their history of discriminating against minority votes — must get federal approval for changes to their election practices.

Manchin is now pitching a fix to the Voting Rights Act that would subject all 50 states to the so-called preclearance process. That goes farther than the VRA restoration legislation that has been previously introduced, which is moving separately from s1 so Democrats can create the kind of legislative record that will make the law more resistant to legal attack. Manchin nonetheless has described the approach as something to be done with bipartisan support.

On Thursday, Cornyn signaled that such an idea would not get much buy-in from the Republican Party.

[LFC]

Heritage has been writing the Republican state voter suppression laws.

In a private meeting last month with big-money donors, the head of a top conservative group boasted that her outfit had crafted the new voter suppression law in Georgia and was doing the same with similar bills for Republican state legislators across the country. “In some cases, we actually draft them for them,” she said, “or we have a sentinel on our behalf give them the model legislation so it has that grassroots, from-the-bottom-up type of vibe.”

The Georgia law had “eight key provisions that Heritage recommended,” Jessica Anderson, the executive director of Heritage Action for America, a sister organization of the Heritage Foundation, told the foundation’s donors at an April 22 gathering in Tucson, in a recording obtained by the watchdog group Documented and shared with Mother Jones. Those included policies severely restricting mail ballot drop boxes, preventing election officials from sending absentee ballot request forms to voters, making it easier for partisan workers to monitor the polls, preventing the collection of mail ballots, and restricting the ability of counties to accept donations from nonprofit groups seeking to aid in election administration.

All of these recommendations came straight from Heritage’s list of “best practices” drafted in February. With Heritage’s help, Anderson said, Georgia became “the example for the rest of the country.”

The leaked video reveals the extent to which Heritage is leading a massive campaign to draft and pass model legislation restricting voting access, which has been swiftly adopted this year in the battleground states of Georgia, Florida, Arizona, and Iowa. It’s no coincidence that so many GOP-controlled states are rushing to pass similar pieces of legislation in such a short period of time.

Republican legislators claim they’re tightening up election procedures to address (unfounded) concerns about fraud in the 2020 election. But what’s really behind this effort is a group of conservative Washington insiders who have been pushing these same kinds of voting restrictions for decades, with the explicit aim of helping Republicans win elections. The difference now is that Trump’s baseless claims about 2020 have given them the ammunition to get the bills passed, and the conservative movement, led by Heritage, is making an unprecedented investment to get them over the finish line.

“We’re working with these state legislators to make sure they have all of the information they need to draft the bills,” Anderson told the Heritage Foundation donors. In addition to drafting the bills in some cases, “we’ve also hired state lobbyists to make sure that in these targeted states we’re meeting with the right people.”

To “create this echo chamber,” as Anderson put it, Heritage is spending $24 million over two years in eight battleground states—Arizona, Michigan, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Nevada, Texas, and Wisconsin—to pass and defend restrictive voting legislation. Every Tuesday, the group leads a call with right-wing advocacy groups like the Susan B. Anthony List, Tea Party Patriots, and FreedomWorks to coordinate these efforts at the highest levels of the conservative movement. “We literally give marching orders for the week ahead,” Anderson said. “All so we’re singing from the same song sheet of the goals for that week and where the state bills are across the country.”

[LFC]

We have another case of voter fraud and this one is a doozy!

A supporter of former President Donald Trump has admitted to committing voter fraud by submitting the ballot of his dead wife -- whom he is also accused of murdering.

Local news station KDVR reports that Colorado MAGA fan Barry Morphew was hit with new election fraud charges this week after prosecutors discovered that he illegally sent in his late wife's ballot to give the former president an additional vote in last year's presidential election.

When asked by investigators about submitting his wife's ballot, Morphew admitted to doing so but insisted that she should have voted for Trump were she still alive.

"I wanted Trump to win," the man admitted. "I know she was going to vote for Trump anyways."

Morphew also rationalized that Democrats were supposedly committing mass voter fraud, so he figured giving Trump an extra vote would help even out the score.

Morphew was arrested for the murder of wife Suzanne Morphew last week, roughly one year after she was last seen alive.

[goldenvalley]

May 14, 2021 18:38:47 GMT LFC said:

We have another case of voter fraud and this one is a doozy!

A supporter of former President Donald Trump has admitted to committing voter fraud by submitting the ballot of his dead wife -- whom he is also accused of murdering.

Local news station KDVR reports that Colorado MAGA fan Barry Morphew was hit with new election fraud charges this week after prosecutors discovered that he illegally sent in his late wife's ballot to give the former president an additional vote in last year's presidential election.

When asked by investigators about submitting his wife's ballot, Morphew admitted to doing so but insisted that she should have voted for Trump were she still alive.

"I wanted Trump to win," the man admitted. "I know she was going to vote for Trump anyways."

Morphew also rationalized that Democrats were supposedly committing mass voter fraud, so he figured giving Trump an extra vote would help even out the score.

Morphew was arrested for the murder of wife Suzanne Morphew last week, roughly one year after she was last seen alive.

Is he going to throw himself on the mercy of the court pleading that he is a widower?

[LFC]

I'm going to dub these Republicans the Fasctastic Four.

Four right wing GOP lawmakers on Monday teamed up to send a letter advancing a far right conspiracy theory promoted by Donald Trump over the weekend.

U.S. Reps. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), Andy Biggs (R-AZ), and Paul Gosar (R-AZ) has signed the joint letter drafted by the embattled Florida Congressman to the top DOJ official in charge of civil rights, telling her to stay out of the Maricopa Country, Arizona recount. That recount, being conducted by a company that has no experience in election recounts and that has been soliciting funds for the effort despite that the taxpayers fund it, has now been going on for well over three weeks, with no end in sight.

The four extremist lawmakers include a man accused and under DOJ investigation for possible sex-trafficking and possible sex with a minor; a QAnon supporter accused of illegal tax fraud; and a white nationalist. All have voted to overturn the 2020 election.

Their letter is addressed to Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Pamela Karlan of the Civil Rights Division of the United States Department of Justice.

In the letter they claim: "It has also been widely reported that before the equipment was delivered to independent auditors, an entire 'Database' directory of election information was deleted from the Election Management System Primary machine. According to Senator Fann, 'this suggests that the main database for all election related data for the November 2020 General Election has been removed.'"

On Saturday in a blog post Donald Trump wrote, "The entire database of Maricopa County in Arizona, has been DELETED!"

The claim is absolutely false, according to the Republican county recorder in Maricopa County, Stephen Richer, who calls Trump's conspiracy theory "unhinged" and "insane":

[LFC]

Intimidation of poll workers is the latest Republican voter suppression technique. Imagine being a volunteer working a blue district in a red state. We have more than enough proof that you can be expected to be attacked by the Republican fascists for doing your job.

The Republican Party program of vote suppression has several elements. The most widely covered are the proposals to roll back voting access by restricting the use of drop boxes and mail voting, or imposing more paperwork requirements on prospective voters. Perhaps the most dangerous are changes in legal authority that would make it easier for Republican-controlled legislatures to hand their state electoral votes to their candidate regardless of the election outcome.

There is also a third category, which has attracted little scrutiny: a massive ramp up in fines and criminal penalties for election workers who violate any of the greatly expanded restrictions on voting access. The insidious aspect of this method is that it is facially neutral: Who would object to penalizing officials for breaking election laws? And yet the effect is to create asymmetric pressure on officials to suppress the vote themselves.

To get a clear understanding of the issue, it helps to have specifics in mind. University of Kentucky law professor Joshua Douglas collected some examples of the new election-law penalties:

• Iowa, in addition to limiting voter access by cutting early voting days and forbidding local election officials from mailing out absentee-ballot request forms without a specific request from a voter, will now make it a crime if election workers violate the new rules.

• Florida has enacted a rule that limits ballot drop-box availability to only during early voting hours and provides that, “If any drop box at an early voting site is left accessible for the return of ballots outside of early voting hours, the supervisor is subject to a civil penalty of $25,000.”

• A Texas proposed bill would subject a local registrar to fines if the registrar fails to mail out notices demanding proof of citizenship to individuals otherwise deemed ineligible to vote. It would also criminalize election workers who “distance or obstruct the view of a [poll] watcher in a way that makes observation reasonably ineffective.”

• Arizona legislators want to make it a felony for an election worker to mail an early ballot to a voter who has not requested one.

One obvious effect of all these penalties, as Douglas explains, will be to discourage election workers from volunteering in the first place. The entire American election system depends on a cadre of community volunteers to run elections at poll stations, acting out of civic obligation. To the extent that they face jail time or ruinous fines for making any errors on the job, their easiest and most rational response is to simply quit.

But the more dangerous possibility is that these penalties will cause election workers to err heavily on the side of vote suppression. In the real world, government bureaucracy, like many workplaces, involves messy and sometimes confusing situations. Employees make spot decisions based on incomplete information, balancing competing priorities against each other. Election Day often presents opportunities for confusion, such as voters who have moved from one state or precinct to another, can’t remember where they registered, and have limited time in their work day to sort it all out or present the necessary paperwork. The Republican strategy is to stack the incentive deck heavily, so that election officials would rather turn away 100 legal voters than to allow one ineligible ballot to be cast.

[LFC]

Voting rights shouldn't be a partisan issue and it's not for real Americans. Manchin and Murkowski want the Senate to support voting rights in a bipartisan fashion. The vast majority of Republicans will have none of it. It's not in their personal or political interest.

Sens. Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) on Monday urged Congress to reauthorize the Voting Rights Act in an effort to demonstrate bipartisan support for the protection of voting rights.

In a letter to congressional leaders on Monday, Manchin and Murkowski said that voting rights should not become a partisan issue.

“Inaction is not an option. Congress must come together – just as we have done time and again – to reaffirm our longstanding bipartisan commitment to free, accessible, and secure elections for all,” Manchin and Murkowski wrote. “We urge you to join us in calling for the bipartisan reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act through regular order. We can do this. We must do this.”

Manchin and Murkowski do not reference the new voting rights bill, S. 1 — the “For The People Act” that passed in the House and recently underwent a contentious markup in the Senate — in their letter, but instead hyped the reauthorization of the VRA, a less ambitious legislative move.

[Deleted]

May 18, 2021 13:00:33 GMT LFC said:

Voting rights shouldn't be a partisan issue and it's not for real Americans. 

LFC strikes a hopeful tone. The morning coffee did wonders for him as he sat contemplating, lost in a Norman Rockwell painting.

We will see how many subscribe to his idea of real Americans, and how many he deems to be ersatz. 

[LFC]

The Republicans in Maricopa County have had enough of the faudit.

The GOP-dominated Maricopa County Board of Supervisors blasted the controversial recount of the county’s 2020 presidential election results, calling for the Republican-led state Senate to end the “grift disguised as an audit” on Monday night. The five-member board, which is composed of four Republicans, said the audit that has been cheered on by former President Donald Trump is a “spectacle that is harming all of us.”

“It is time to make a choice to defend the Constitution and the Republic,” the board wrote in a lengthy letter to Senate President Karen Fann. “We stand united together to defend the Constitution and the Republic in our opposition to the Big Lie. We ask everyone to join us in standing for the truth.”

Also signing the letter was Republican County Recorder Stephen Richer, who called Trump “unhinged” for falsely claiming that the county’s election database had been deleted. The board further laid into private contracting firm Cyber Ninjas, whose CEO has parroted Trump’s lies that the election was stolen. “They don’t know what they’re doing,” Board of Supervisors Chairman Jack Sellers said of Cyber Ninjas’ claim that files were missing. “And we wouldn’t be asked to do this on-the-job training if qualified auditors had been hired to do this work.”

“You have rented out the once good name of the Arizona State Senate to grifters and con-artists,” the letter further states, adding: “The result is that the Arizona Senate is held up to ridicule in every corner of the globe and our democracy is imperiled.”

[goldenvalley]

May 18, 2021 14:44:01 GMT LFC said:

The Republicans in Maricopa County have had enough of the faudit.

The GOP-dominated Maricopa County Board of Supervisors blasted the controversial recount of the county’s 2020 presidential election results, calling for the Republican-led state Senate to end the “grift disguised as an audit” on Monday night. The five-member board, which is composed of four Republicans, said the audit that has been cheered on by former President Donald Trump is a “spectacle that is harming all of us.”

“It is time to make a choice to defend the Constitution and the Republic,” the board wrote in a lengthy letter to Senate President Karen Fann. “We stand united together to defend the Constitution and the Republic in our opposition to the Big Lie. We ask everyone to join us in standing for the truth.”

Also signing the letter was Republican County Recorder Stephen Richer, who called Trump “unhinged” for falsely claiming that the county’s election database had been deleted. The board further laid into private contracting firm Cyber Ninjas, whose CEO has parroted Trump’s lies that the election was stolen. “They don’t know what they’re doing,” Board of Supervisors Chairman Jack Sellers said of Cyber Ninjas’ claim that files were missing. “And we wouldn’t be asked to do this on-the-job training if qualified auditors had been hired to do this work.”

“You have rented out the once good name of the Arizona State Senate to grifters and con-artists,” the letter further states, adding: “The result is that the Arizona Senate is held up to ridicule in every corner of the globe and our democracy is imperiled.”

I saw the Recorder on tv last night.  He won his office by about 5000 votes in Maricopa County.  No one is saying that part of the election is fraudulent. He defended his department and employees. Then he just had to snark about never dreaming that he would end up being interviewed on MSNBC.  I'm hoping he just learned that he will never get on Fox News saying what he did about the "audit."