A company has been hired by the Arizona legislature to recount the votes from Phoenix. They have already announced that the outcome was fraudulent, in fact even before they were hired. They have done everything wrong, but will eventually announce that they are finished and have found that Trump won Arizona by 20,000 votes (or some such). What is the likely reaction in the rest of the country?
Same as now. The only people who await these “results” are insane Trump supporting conspiracy pushers. The damage will be to the general respect for, and faith in, our election system.
I’m sure the GOP-controlled states will use that as an excuse to further their Jim Crow efforts to restrict voting to only the “right” people.
I actually don’t think that’s what is going to happen.
This company isn’t stupid (unlike the AZ GOP). They will ride this gravy train for as long as they can. They already said they will need until July to complete their “audit.”
What I think will happen is this: in July, they will announce that they have “strong evidence” that there was fraud, and they need more time to do more Bamboo searches. The AZ GOP will extend their contract for another 3 months, and they will spend more money tracking down wild geese. Lather, rinse, repeat.
At the end, they will not announce any findings, saying that they need “two more weeks.”
I can guarantee the reactions from the right will be wholly disingenuous. That you can take to the bank.
As far as the general public is concerned, I agree. But I have a more-than-sneaking suspicion that the object of the exercise is to come up with sufficient “proof” to give the GOP-controlled legislatures in Georgia, Michigan, Minnesota, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin cover for launching their own fraudits (kudos to AZ SoS Katie Hobbs for the term).
The odds against these actions overturning the election and reinstating Chester Cheat-o are beyond astronomical. What I’m concerned about is another Patriot Uprising™, this time with more overt Republican support.
I hope you trademark that, quick!
The Republican majority Maricopa County Board of Supervisors just told the Arizona Senate where they can shove their audit:
One of the county supervisors, a Republican, pointed out that the “audit” reported they had counted 218 ballots in a batch that only had 200 ballots.
I think it will stop right there. The GOP can claim there’s evidence, they just didn’t have the money to see it through. They just need a tiny sliver of plausibility to use as a wedge.
“But above all, if all loyal American trumpistas just donate, we can get the proof that will blow this fake election wide open!”
Too bad it wasn’t Georgia, that’s where Trump wanted to “find” votes. Little did he know he was sniffing up the wrong drainpipe.
Bring in the pandas.
Send in the clowns.
This whole exercise has been a pretty stupid move on the GOP’s part. Where they want to be is making amorphous, tough-to-refute claims about “irregularities” in order to cast a pall of doubt over the election without every having to actually prove anything. The audit puts them in the position of trying to substantiate baseless claims, and they’re getting exactly the sort of goat rope they should have known was coming.
Don’t bother, they’re here.
I believe I heard a clip from one of the fraudit’s spokesbeings to the effect that they found several instances where the number of ballots in a box didn’t match the batch sheet. Which was, of course, the SMOKING GUN of MASSIVE ELECTION FRAUD. But from the way they appear to be schlepping the ballots around, I’d be almost willing to bet that any such discrepancies are their own damn doing.
Yeah, Trump was quite excited when they made the announcement about files being deleted, only for them to retract that after it was made clear that their accusation was based on their own incompetence.
“I watched the GOP’s Arizona election audit. It was worse than you think.”
When Arizona’s secretary of state asked me whether I would serve as an observer of the Arizona Senate’s audit of Maricopa County’s ballots, I anticipated that I would see some unusual things.
…But it was so much worse than that. In more than a decade working on elections, audits and recounts across the country, I’ve never seen one this mismanaged.
…I was stunned to see spinning conveyor wheels, whizzing hundreds of ballots past “counters,” who struggled to mark, on a tally sheet, each voter’s selection for the presidential and Senate races. They had only a few seconds to record what they saw. Occasionally, I saw a counter look up, realize they missed a ballot and then grab the wheel to stop it.
…
This piece is not long (but too long to quote the whole thing – drat!). Worth reading. It will make you want to laugh, cry, and throw up. Simultaneously.
I get a “This connection is not private” notice on that website, ThelmaLou.
I searched for the first sentence you quoted and found that it appeared in the Washington Post:
The odds aren’t “beyond astronomical,” they’re non-existent. There is no mechanism whatsoever for overturning a presidential election. It doesn’t exist. Even if the election was outright stolen by the Democratic Party (do I really have to say we know it wasn’t? OK, I’m saying it, just to cover my ass), and irrefutable proof were to be discovered of this massive fraud, there is no way to overturn it and either re-do the election or declare Donald Trump to be the winner.
Yes, pretty much this.
And this.
And, of course, in some states, Trumpists will offer the “findings” of these scam artists as evidence that more restrictive voting laws are needed.