Mike Lindell Bankrolls Kari Lake And Mark Finchem Lawsuit To Ban Ballot-Counting Machines In Arizona

Howard Fischer reports, Lawsuit seeks to ban ballot-counting machines in Arizona:

Two Trump-endosed election denier Republicans seeking statewide office are asking a federal judge [United States District Court for the District of Arizona] to block the use of machines to tabulate the votes in Arizona in the 2022 election.

The machines are unreliable because they are subject to hacking, contend “Krazy Kari” Lake, a gubernatorial hopeful, and insurrectionist Mark Finchem, who is running for secretary of state. And the use of components in computers from other countries makes them vulnerable, they say.

Note: Just last month, an independent audit by former Republican congressman John Shadegg, hand-picked by election denier Senate President Karen Fann, found Maricopa County’s ballot tabulation system was never connected to the internet during the 2020 election and there were no routers to inspect (debunking Trump’s “but the routers!” conspiracy theory). Shadegg report from “audit” finds no internet connection for ballot tabulation equipment:

The county on Wednesday released the results of Shadegg’s investigation, which found no evidence of internet connectivity by the county’s Ballot Tabulation Center. Fann asked that Shadegg’s team examine routers and Splunk logs, which are records of events and tasks that occur in a network. Shadegg’s report said there were, in fact, no routers or splunk logs to examine.

The is an even more basic problem, says Andrew Parker, the attorney who filed the lawsuit on their behalf.

The tabulation of votes is an inherently governmental function, he said. Yet by using machines built and programmed by private companies the state has effectively farmed that out that obligation.

And what’s worse, Parker said in his filings, is that the technology is kept secret from the public.

“This lack of transparency by electronic voting machine companies has created a ‘black box’ system of voting which lacks credibility and integrity,” he wrote in a copy of the lawsuit furnished to Capitol Media Services.

It seeks a court order to have the 2022 election conducted with paper ballots [they already are] which would be counted by hand, calling it “the most effective and presently the only secure election method.”

Any election expert would tell you that this is absolutely false. This introduces human error into the counting of ballots, and more importantly, the potential for nefarious mishandling and miscounting of ballots by Trump’s army of MAGA/QAnon election worker volunteers which he is recruiting for this purpose. They should not be allowed anywhere near a ballot.

The Arizona Senate’s GQP sham “fraudit” of Maricopa County ballots for just two races last year was supposed to take just a few weeks, remember that? Hand counting every race on every ballot in Arizona could take  months (it must be completed before the statutory deadline to certify election results.)

THIS DATE IN HISTORY Arizona Senate Republicans’ partisan election review was supposed to take four weeks. It lasted close to a year, has cost taxpayers millions of dollars and found nothing of consequence. pic.twitter.com/c8TYEn72oi

— Brahm Resnik (@brahmresnik) April 24, 2022

Note: Voting machines have been used in Arizona since 1881, but a GOP bill would bar them:

Voting would return to 19th Century methods — with their glacial pace and flawed accuracy -– and reduce voter access under legislation Republicans approved in a legislative committee that would ban machines from counting votes, critics said.

The proposal is rooted in the Big Lie, a belief that the 2020 election was “stolen” from Donald Trump. Although there are various evidence-free theories purporting to explain how that happened, a prominent one is that ballot-counting machines were rigged to switch votes from Trump to Joe Biden.

The idea has been tossed out of court for a lack of evidence, and a biased election review conducted last year by the Arizona Senate examined ballot tabulators in Maricopa County and found nothing to back up the claim.

Nonetheless, a state legislator who has built a nationwide political following by espousing widely debunked lies about the 2020 election says machines designed to quickly count ballots more accurately than humans are likelier to result in false results because of cheating.

“This is paper only ballots, this does away with the machines,” [QAnon election denier] Sen. Wendy Rogers, R-Flagstaff, said about her Senate Bill 1338.

She cited QAnon conspiracy theorist Cyber Ninjas CEO Doug Logan as the inspiration behind attempting to prohibit any technology use in future elections. The company directed the so-called “audit” of the 2020 election, despite having no experience analyzing elections or knowledge of Arizona election law. Logan, like Rogers, was a vocal proponent of election lies that the outcome was affected by rampant fraud, and he worked to persuade U.S. senators to overturn elections in Arizona and other battleground states.

“He said, ‘Senator Rogers, we need to go back to paper ballots, and they need to be counted by hand,’” she said.

Howard Fischer continues:

Neither Lake nor Finchem agreed to be interviewed on the lawsuit.

But Lake, in a Facebook interview with Trump supporter Mike Lindell, said the litigation is the result of what she believes was a stolen 2020 election.

Anyone who works with this fucking idiot and Coup Plotter (Trump ally Mike Lindell of My Pillow pushes martial law at White House) lacks any credibility and is automatically disqualifed from ever serving in any public office. Period.

“We know how tragic it was that this election (was) corrupted the way it was here in Arizona,” she said. “And we don’t want it to happen again.”

The lawsuit also cites what Parker said were “irregularities and evidence of illegal vote manipulations” in voting systems used in the 2020 election. While most of the incidents were from elsewhere, the list includes claims from the Cyber Ninjas “audit” of Maricopa County’s election process about things like software and patch protocols not being followed and missing files.

County officials responded to each of the allegations months ago, saying those findings were in error and proved that Cyber Ninjas, which had never done such a review, clearly did not understand election equipment, procedures or laws.

But Parker also said the lawsuit is not an attempt to undo the 2020 presidential results in Arizona which gave Joe Biden the state’s 11 electoral votes.

“It is only about the future — about upcoming elections that will employ voting machines designed and run by private companies, performing a crucial governmental function, that refuse to disclose their software and system components and subject them to neutral expert evaluation,” he wrote. “It raises the profound constitutional issue: Can government avoid its obligation of democratic transparency and accountability by delegating a critical government function to private companies?”

At the heart of the complaint are the contentions by some, particularly among those like Lake and Finchem who still deny the results of the 2020 election, that it was stolen. While some of the issues involve unproven allegations that forged ballots were inserted into the system, there has been a consistent litany of complaints that the hardware and software used to tally ballots was hacked or, worse, actually was programmed to produce a win for Biden.

“The parallels between the statistical analysis of Venezuela and this year’s election are astonishing,” wrote Cyber Ninjas owner Doug Logan even before being hired by Senate President Karen Fann to review the results. That refers to claims that there was a link between Dominion Voting System and the family of now-deceased dictator Hugo Chavez.

“I’m ashamed how few Republicans are talking about it,” Logan said.

Dominion Voting Systems has sued everyone for business defamation. You can check the status of each of the cases filed here. Dominion Voting Systems – Legal Updates.

Parker makes no such claims. Instead he wants a judge to prohibit the use of electronic voting machines in Arizona “unless and until the electronic voting system is made open to the public and subjected to scientific analysis by objective experts to determine whether it is secure from manipulation or intrusion.”

Arizona does have various systems designed to check equipment.

For example, counties are required to conduct “logic and accuracy” tests, both before and after the official tally. That process, done in public, involves taking a known set of ballots and running them through the tallying equipment to ensure that the results reported by the machines matches what actually has been marked.

Parker contends those tests don’t prove anything to deal with what he said are “security problems inherent in the use of electronic voting machines.”

“All post-election audit procedures can be defeated by sophisticated manipulation of electronic voting machines,” he claims. [The maximalist conspiracy theorist position.]

He specifically cited the refusal of Dominion to surrender its passwords to Cyber Ninjas for examination, with Dominion attorneys saying granting such access to the workings of its equipment violated the company’s protections against illegal search and seizure.

But what Parker does not mention – lack of candor to the court – is that there was an agreement between the Senate and the county that allowed three independent experts, including one recommended by the Senate, to examine the equipment. They reported that the system was not connected to the internet and that there was no evidence of data deletion, data purging, data overwriting or other destruction of evidence.

In seeking a court order, Parker wants more than just the use of paper ballots in 2022.

He also wants each ballot to have a unique identification number known only to the voter so each can tell if his or her ballot was counted properly. And Parker said each ballot would be printed on specialized paper that cannot be counterfeited.

The Republican-controlled legislature actually mandated the use of “anti-fraud ballot paper” in 2021. But it was voided by the Arizona Supreme Court which ruled that the provision was placed illegally into unrelated budget legislation.

A similar measure was introduced this year but has not been approved.

So in effect, Lake and Finchem are trying to do through a lawsuit what Sen. Wendy Rogers has not been able to advance through the GQP-controlled Arizona legislature. This is a legislative matter, not a legal matter.

While the issue of voting machines has largely been a Republican talking point, the lawsuit does have at least one indication of bipartisanship: attorney Alan Dershowitz is part of the legal team.

“You have to understand I’m a liberal Democrat,” he said during the Lindell Facebook interview.

“I’m happy with the results of the election,” Dershowitz said. “This is about whether or not votes are being properly counted.”

Oh, Bullshit! This disreputable hack is a Fox News regular and defended Donald Trump in his impeachment trial.

Goddamn, Howie, I can’t believe you actually parroted Dershowitz’s B.S. in your reporting. You brag on your Twitter account “exposing B.S. 50+ years.” You failed to call B.S. on Dershowitz.

BTW, Dershowitz is a criminal defense attorney, and no one considers him an expert on election law.

You also glossed over Lake’s Facebook inteview with Mike Lindell and failed to point out that it is actually Mike Lindell who is behind this lawsuit (and is likely paying the attorneys fees and costs).  See, Frank The Voice of Speech, Mike Lindell & Gubernatorial Candidate Kari Lake, Attorney Alan Dershowitz on Injunction Filed in Arizona Regarding Electronic Voting Machines (video at the link).

Lindell says “we are starting with Arizona to get rid of the machines.”

Once again, Arizona is ground zero for the next scam of the MAGA/QAnon cult election deniers after their failed GQP sham “fraudit” last year. Lindell says South Dakota is next.

“Krazy Kari” Lake continues to repeat already debunked conspiracy theories. She clearly drank the full pitcher of Kool-Aid.

This attorney Andrew Parker is a Minneapolis attorney. He says he represents My Pillow and Mike Lindell.

Mark Finchem and Mike Lindell yuck it up asserting that Attorney General Mark Brnovich is “conflicted out” of representing Secretary of State Katie Hobbs because he is also a named defendant in this lawsuit.

So what this vexatious litigation is really all about is performance politics.  “Krazy Kari” Lake is running against Katie Hobbs for governor, and Mark Finchem is running for Secretary of State so they can both rig the 2024 election for Donald Trump (or for whomever is the GQP nominee).

And nobody likes our attorney general Mark Brnovich aka “Nunchucks” (or is it numbnuts?), who is running for the GQP nomination for U.S. Senate.

AG Nunchucks has his own performance politics lawsuit against Secretary of State Karie Hobbs.

Interesting side note: Brnovich is suing Hobbs in Yavapai County, which I'm sure she'll challenge. ARS 12-401(16) states, "Actions against public officers shall be brought in the county in which the officer, or one of several officers, holds office." https://t.co/VsftDvDXM8

— Jeremy Duda (@jeremyduda) April 21, 2022

AG Nunchucks did this to try to gain the endorsement of Donald Trump. It didn’t work, he will endorse someone else. E.J. Montini at The Republic explains the Anatomy of an unsuccessful lie: Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich edition.

Quite literally every Republican running for office in Arizona is corrupt to their core. They have all bent the knee and kissed the ring (or ass) of Donald Trump and promote his Big Lie. If you want to save American democracy, not one of these Republicans can be elected to office.