Arizona GQP Senate Sham Audit of Maricopa County Ballots To Begin (Updated)

by

The Sedition Caucus aka the Arizona GQP Senate Caucus of MAGA/QAnon conspiracy theory cult members will conduct its sham audit of Maricopa County ballots in the coming days.

I would encourage voting rights and election integrity advocates to be there with your protest signs to greet these lunatics. This is but a pathetic attempt to continue Donald Trump’s Big Lie that the election was stolen from him over the next two election cycles. This is the actual GQP election strategy.

This is white grievance by white Christian nationalist Republicans who have convinced themselves that they are the only “quality” Americans who should be allowed to vote, and that all others (especially those “coloreds”) should not be allowed to vote.

Arizona’s own version of base commander Jack D. Ripper from Doctor Strangelove, Rep. John Kavanagh, has made this sentiment clear: “I can no longer sit back and allow Communist infiltration, Communist indoctrination, Communist subversion, and the international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids.”

As I posted the other day, The Arizona Republic: End the Arizona Senate’s Sham Election Audit Now (excerpt):

The Republic editorialized on Thursday, Arizona’s GOP Senate is abusing its authority. It must end this election ‘audit’ now:

Republicans in the Arizona Legislature have set aside dollars, hired consultants, procured the hardware and software to conduct what they call “an audit” of the 2020 presidential election in Maricopa County.

What they don’t have is the moral authority to make it credible.

Their conduct post-election has been so nakedly partisan that whatever their audit finds, its results will not be believed. They’ll be mocked and derided.

* * *

Rather than building trust, this audit undermines it:

      • It gives the major contract to Cyber Ninjas, a Florida firm that has virtually no experience auditing elections.
      • Cyber Ninjas’ CEO is an unapologetic supporter of Donald Trump’s election conspiracy theories.
      • The Senate is not providing the necessary funding or time to do a legitimate review of the votes.
      • Their plan includes sending people door-to-door to test the validity of irregular voter registration forms. Interrogating voters at their doorstep is not what you call a confidence builder.

* * *

This audit is partisan and ideological in the extreme. It is toxic. And its destination is certain failure.

Why would the leaders and people of this state waste another dollar on a project that has already lost all credibility?

This needs to end.

But wait! It gets worse. This sham audit conducted by the Cyber Ninja MAGA/QAnon conspiracy theorist gets even more fraudulent. The Arizona Mirror reports, Jovan Pulitzer, an icon among election fraud believers, will play a role in the Arizona election audit:

Jovan Pulitzer, a favorite of election fraud conspiracy theorists who claims to have invented technology that can detect fraudulent ballots and whom Georgia’s Republican secretary of state recently derided as a “failed inventor and a failed treasure hunter,” will have a role in the Senate’s audit of the 2020 election in Maricopa County.

Jovan Pulitzer and Rudy Giuliani – twins separated at birth?

The audit will seek to “identify any ballots that are suspicious and potentially counterfeit,” according to the statement of work for the lead contractor, Cyber Ninjas. Pulitzer’s name does not appear in the document. But Ken Bennett, Arizona’s former secretary of state who’s serving as a spokesman for the audit, confirmed his involvement, though he said he’s unsure whether Pulitzer himself will be involved or whether the audit team will only be using his technology that Pulitzer claims can detect fraudulent ballots.

Pulitzer’s involvement comes despite any evidence whatsoever that fraudulent ballots were cast in the general election, despite a lack of confirmation that his technology works as he claims, and despite questions about his credibility.

Bennett said Doug Logan, the owner and CEO of Cyber Ninjas, told him that he consulted with Pulitzer while designing the process used to test the ballots, a process that Bennett said will include other people’s technology as well. He said his understanding is that all 2.1 million ballots cast in Maricopa County will be examined.

Pulitzer, an inventor and author of dozens of books on treasure hunting, claims he invented technology that will determine whether the ink on the Maricopa County ballots he’ll examine was marked by human beings or by machines. He claims that examinations of the folds in the ballots will determine whether they were actually mailed to voters because fraudulently manufactured ballots that weren’t mailed will be devoid of certain physical markers.

Pulitzer does not appear to have any background in elections-related work. It’s unclear whether Pulitzer’s alleged technology has ever been used on ballots, or whether anyone has confirmed that it works. It’s also unclear why Senate President Karen Fann wants to test for fake or counterfeit ballots, given the lack of any evidence or credible allegations that there were any such problems in the election.

Because her “Dear Leader” Donald Trump said early mailed ballots were fraudulent. The cult member will comply.

Bennett said the Senate has not independently verified that Pulitzer’s technology actually does what he claims, but that other election officials he’s spoken with over the years have described similar technologies.

“So, it doesn’t strike me as odd at all that he may have some technology to do the same thing,” Bennett said.

Still a freakin’ assclown after all these years. We rid ourselves of this assclown years ago. He has no credibility.

Fann’s own research that she used to select her audit team, which the Arizona Mirror obtained through a public records request, suggests that Pulitzer’s credibility was a concern. One undated document from her research includes three recommendations for potential auditors, one of whom was Pulitzer. It states that he “claims to know how to tell if ballots are valid by the way they are folded and marked,” and says he was recommended by “several people.” But it also includes the warning, “Credibility questionable.”

Election officials in other states have been far more critical of Pulitzer. After Pulitzer claimed to have hacked into Georgia’s voting system during a legislative hearing, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, said his allegation was false and dismissed him as a “failed inventor and failed treasure hunter.”

Nonetheless, Stop the Steal advocates who falsely believe that the election was rigged against former President Donald Trump have long called for Pulitzer to have a role in the audit, and he has become a revered figure within the movement. [They can manufacture the desired result through fraud.]

In a March 8 email to Fann, a person representing a group called We the People Alliance [you have got to check out their  website. A veritable who’s who of right-wing conspiracy nuts.] told Fann that its members “politely demand and insist” that she include Pulitzer on her audit team, noting that he testified with Trump attorney Rudy Giuiani.

“Since he will do that for free, not choosing him in addition to anyone else you want to include, would be a cover up, pure and simple. The whole world is watching, and if opposed to this, you will never be re-elected as a Republican in the State of Arizona,” the email read.

Emails provided to the Arizona Mirror as part of a public records request show that Fann and Pulitzer were in contact at least as early as Jan. 25, when he emailed her to thank her for that time earlier that day and to provide information on his background and his technology. Undated handwritten notes cite the need to combat “media misinformation” about Pulitzer.

The audit description doesn’t elaborate on exactly how “potentially counterfeit” ballots will be identified. But an affidavit that Pulitzer wrote in December as part of the litigation between Fann and the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors over the proposed audit describes technology that would do exactly that.

Pulitzer explains in the affidavit that his technology identifies “kinematic markers” that would indicate whether a piece of paper has been handled, folded or processed in the mail, and determine whether “pristine ballots” without those markers “were fraudulently, or incorrectly, counted in the total vote tally for an election.” Examinations of the ink on ballots will show if they’ve been marked by a human with a pen or by a machine, he claimed. He said he could conduct his examination on electronic copies of the ballots, and that he could examine the paper ballots as well, though that would take longer.

Speaking with the Mirror via text message, largely using voice-to-text, Pulitzer said he’s “received and onboarded” more than 2 million ballot images from elsewhere in the country and indicated that he’s tested paper ballots, as well, but non-disclosure agreements prohibit him from identifying the states, counties or other jurisdictions where he’s done this work.

Yeah sure, that’s the reason. If you can’t disclose who you have done work for, how do you market your business? And how does a potential client vet you by contacting your former clients?

Which raises a critical question, has Ken Bennett and the Arizona GQP Senate leadership even bothered to vet this guy? Did they ever bother to vet Cyber Ninjas? Or is the fix in to produce a predetermined result?

“Everything is highly documented, highly transparent, and duplicatable upon official report publication,” Pulitzer said, adding that he’s not able to discuss details until the reports are published.

How convenient. Transparency begins before you do the work, fraudster.

Pulitzer wrote in his affidavit that his technology will flag “pristine” ballots that haven’t been folded, which indicates that they haven’t been mailed and therefore aren’t legitimate early ballots. But ballots cast in person on Election Day aren’t folded. Ballots cast in-person by voters on Election Day are stored in separate batches from early ballots, but the digital images aren’t separated by type of ballot.

There’s his gimmick: validly cast ballots will be flagged as fraudulent by this fraudster. And then MAGA/QAnon cult members will claim “see, we proved that there was fraud!” The only fraud here will be this sham audit.

According to the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office, 186,000 voters cast ballots in person on Election Day, while 158,000 people voted in-person at early voting centers in the county, 993,000 returned their early ballots by mail and 714,000 received ballots in the mail but dropped them off in person. Another 51,000 ballots cast at emergency voting centers, where ballots are also folded and placed into the same affidavit envelopes as other early ballots.

Election integrity and administration experts were wary of the audit’s call for an investigation into potentially counterfeit ballots.

Tammy Patrick, a senior advisor to the elections program at the Democracy Fund, a voting advocacy organization, found Pulitzer’s involvement and the allegations he’s supposed to investigate problematic. First, she said the search for counterfeit ballots supports the baseless narrative that fake ballots are a problem.

“I think it’s disconcerting that there is an ongoing narrative being supported that the counterfeiting of ballots, one, is a thing, which it has never been documented to my knowledge in a decade of election experience that the counterfeiting of ballots has ever been an issue in the United States,” Patrick said.

Second, Patrick described the methodology behind Pulitzer’s technology as “somewhat questionable,” and said the audit needs to provide specific data about how it reaches conclusions regarding allegedly fraudulent ballots.

Don’t be so polite, just say Pulitzer is a fraud.

https://twitter.com/marceelias/status/1384644781423333378

UPDATE: This appear to be a made for Trump TV production by One America News Network (OANN), the American equivalent of Russia’s Sputnik propaganda network. Real journalists are not being allowed to cover this audit as media observers.This “audit” is already a clusterfuck before it has begun.





Advertisement

Discover more from Blog for Arizona

Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.

9 thoughts on “Arizona GQP Senate Sham Audit of Maricopa County Ballots To Begin (Updated)”

  1. “Will Sommer of the Daily Beast reports.” You mean the Russian collusion nutjobs? Bwahaahahahaahahahahahahaha!!!!! You just can’t make this stuff up.

  2. ROTFLMFAO. So, your basis for calling Cyber Ninjas fraudulent is that their technology has not been peer reviewed. If that is the case, then there is no evidence that their technology is fraudulent either. Good job contradicting yourself. Your story of 20 years in election audits is fraudulent until it is peer reviewed to my satisfaction. Only the mentally deranged think that Joe Biden got more than 80 million votes after receiving only half the counties Obama supposedly won and the least in history. Absolutely hilarious. RENT FREE.

    P.S. It’s not just Cyber Ninjas that are doing the audit. They are part of a team that includes Wake Technology Services, Inc.; CyFIR, LLC; and Digital Discovery.

  3. You are very clearly very afraid. Instead of attacking people, you could have analyzed the technology. Trust science? Oh, not in elections. You’re not very bright or honest.

    • Dude, I have been involved in election audits for over 20 years, across the country. What is your experience? Safe bet says zero. This Cyber Ninja fraud does not have any demonstrated technology that has been peer reviewed by others in the business. There is no transparency. So how can anyone analyze what this clown claims? This audit is not based on science, keep lying to yourself in your deluded alternate reality.

    • Yeah, AZ is right, Andrew, I work in IT, Cyber Ninjas is a clown show, and just saying “science and technology” doesn’t mean you actually know what you’re talking about.

      No one’s scared of these folks, but you MAGA’s do seem to want to keep checking and checking and rechecking hoping something will change, and changing it your self if it doesn’t work out your way.

      FFS, just hearing a MAGA claim “science” makes me wanna’ hurl.

  4. More about those “quality” GQP voters. Will Sommer of The Daily Beast reports, “Inside the Pro-Trump Conference Where COVID Denial and Calls to Kill Political Enemies Reign”, https://www.thedailybeast.com/inside-the-pro-trump-conference-where-covid-19-denial-and-calls-to-kill-political-enemies-reign

    In Tulsa, Oklahoma, this past weekend, thousands gathered at the Health and Freedom Conference—maskless, of course—to bask in the glow of Trumpworld luminaries and scheduled speakers such as pillow magnate Mike Lindell, MAGA attorney Lin Wood, and the actor who played Jesus Christ in the Mel Gibson movie. The crowd was there to reaffirm their fealty to twice-impeached former President Donald Trump, the QAnon conspiracy theory, coronavirus denialism, their religious faith, and the belief that their high-profile political enemies deserve to be executed.

    There were, naturally, “a lot of people who are big deals in Trumpism. I mean, it was Lin Wood, and Michael Flynn, and Sidney Powell. Jim Caviezel, who you may remember from The Passion of the Christ,” Sommer said. “These were people who were fringe in a way, but who still have a lot of sway in the Republican Party… Look, the chairman of the Oklahoma Republican Party was at this thing.”

    According to Sommer, one of Wood’s addresses to the audience included a moment when he blathered on about “people [who] are torturing children,” and how “the punishment for treason is a firing squad”—at which point the crowd of roughly “5,000 people just explode, like standing ovation, all this stuff. So, I mean, it was really something to see.”

  5. Talking Points Memo follows the money behind the Arizona GQP Senate sham audit. “2020 Election Conspiracy Theorists Rush To Bankroll Arizona Senate GOP’s Sketchy Audit”, https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/arizona-audit-lin-wood-fundraising

    The audit that Arizona’s GOP Senate has ordered of the 2020 election in the state’s largest county will be partially bankrolled by private donations — including from a fundraising effort spearheaded by some of the loudest promoters of President Trump’s lies about the 2020 election.

    Lin Wood, who brought several lawsuits challenging the 2020 election, claims his organization has donated a five-figure sum to a fundraiser led by One America News correspondents to help pay for the audit, which is also running into a whole host of logistical issues.

    Wood, TPM can exclusively report, has a preexisting relationship with Doug Logan, a cyber security consultant and CEO of “Cyber Ninjas,” which the state Senate tapped to lead the audit of Maricopa County.

    Wood told TPM on Thursday night that Logan was at his South Carolina property late last year because Logan, as Wood understood, was working with others on an investigation into the 2020 elections.

    “He was there working on the investigation into election fraud,” Wood told TPM, adding that Logan was working with “others” on the 2020 election investigation, not with Wood himself.

    “I opened up my home to allow people to work on the election fraud investigation,” Wood said.

    While Logan was there, according to Wood, he gave Wood some assistance on a separate cybersecurity issue Wood was dealing with as a “favor.” Wood’s account of Logan’s assistance was backed by interviews TPM has conducted with others aware of the November episode as well as by text messages that TPM reviewed.

    Wood now says that his group, Fight Back, has donated $50,000 to the fundraiser for the audit, which in theory is being done on behalf of Arizona lawmakers.

    The question of who is financially supporting the supposedly official review, and what those donors will expect it to find, is the latest controversy to consume the audit.

    The fundraisers claim that they have collected more than $150,000 but are pledging to raise even more for the effort, which is expected to cost more than the $150,000 in taxpayer funds that the state Senate had agreed to put up.

    Beginning on April 7, Lin Wood promoted the fundraising efforts of a group called Voices and Votes. The group’s leader, One America News host Christina Bobb, said on Twitter that it was their goal “to cover the expenses of the audit, which will ensure its complete scope of work.”

    Wood told TPM that “Christina Bobb had asked if I would assist.” He now says his group, Fight Back, has donated $50,000 for the audit, though he was not certain if that money had made it to those hired to do the election review yet.

    There have been some discrepancies around whether the donations would travel through the Senate first or go straight to the auditors: Wood initially wrote on his Telegram channel, in an April 9 message purportedly quoting Bobb, that the money would go directly to the Senate. Later in the day, he followed up with a message from Bobb clarifying that the funds would be sent “directly” to the auditors.

    Ken Bennett, a former Republican Arizona secretary of state who is serving as a spokesperson for the audit, told TPM that he didn’t think it was the plan for the private funding to go through the Senate first. Citing conversations he’s had with Logan, Bennett said that Logan wasn’t actively soliciting the grants but was willing to accept donations that would cover the gap between the public funding the Senate has provided for the audit and what it will ultimately cost.

    He said that the audit team hadn’t settled on a disclosure mechanism for making public who donated to the effort and what the funding paid for.

    Ironically, this fundraising gambit comes just after Gov. Doug Ducey (R) signed into law a bill that bans private donations for administering elections, after charity grants helped both Democratic and Republican election officials in the state retool voting infrastructure for the pandemic.

    “Those kinds of grants and funding apparently helped the election occur. And it looks like it’s going to be part of helping to make the audit occur too,” Bennett said. “I personally would prefer that everything that related to elections or the audit of elections happen with publicly raised and sourced funds that go through a state budgeting process or county budgeting process.”

Comments are closed.