The Washington Post Slams Senator Karen Fann’s Sham Election Audit

The Washington Post editorializes Arizona Republicans’ desperate crusade to find nonexistent voter fraud:

Arizona Senate President Karen Fann (R) says she is determined to “ensure the integrity of the vote” in her state. Which is supposedly why, five months after Election Day, following multiple credible audits that found no hint of substantial fraud, she insists that the state Senate must conduct yet another audit, re-scanning and hand-counting every ballot cast in Phoenix’s Maricopa County, as well as digging into electronic election systems.

This would be a big job for even the most experienced election official or voting company, never mind state legislators. So Ms. Fann and her Senate colleagues tapped Cyber Ninjas, a little-known Florida cybersecurity firm that boasts that it provides “general consulting” and “ethical hacking” services, to lead the audit. Arizona journalists quickly discovered one possible reason for this puzzling choice: Cyber Ninjas founder Doug Logan appears to have pushed pro-Trump election conspiracy theories on a Twitter account he apparently deleted in January.

“The parallels between the statistical analysis of Venezuela and this year’s election are astonishing,” one tweet read, which included the hashtag #StopTheSteal. “I’m tired of hearing people say there was no fraud. It happened, it’s real, and people better get wise fast,” read a tweet Mr. Logan apparently retweeted in December. He was also involved in a lawsuit claiming election fraud in Michigan.

Michigan’s Traverse City Record-Eagle has a detailed follow-up report on the Antrim County, Michigan lawsuit. Charter jets, dinners with Trump: New details surface in Antrim County election lawsuit (excerpt):

The state’s Bureau of Elections conducted and livestreamed a hand recount of votes cast in the presidential election in Antrim County on Dec. 17. The count found 12 additional votes for the former president and one fewer for Biden, an error rate of .07 percent said Jonathan Brater, director of the state’s Bureau of Elections who attended the re-count in person.

[Dallas-based Allied Security Operations Group] (ASOG)’s analysis of the election results was roundly criticized by national and state election officials, as well as by Dominion, whose representatives pointed to repeated misstatements which they said showed report authors had a lack of understanding about how election equipment works.

“Disinformation persists, due in large part to the severely flawed and widely debunked ‘forensic audit report’ focused on Antrim County, and those who continue to push its baseless claims,” Poulos said.

The lawsuit against Antrim County is ongoing, with discovery expected to be completed in April. A motion to dismiss the case was filed Wednesday [March 3], after Bailey’s legal team missed a subpoena-filing deadline, court records show.

Elsenheimer’s signed order allowing Bailey’s attorney to depose officials with the Secretary of State and Antrim County, makes it unlikely the error will quash the case, officials said.

UPDATE: Lawsuit thrown out, then reinstated: The Circuit Court judge appointed to hear a voting fraud lawsuit in Antrim County dismissed the case last week, then reinstated it the next day. Citing an “errata” order, 13th Circuit Court Judge Kevin Elsenheimer reinstated the case on Thursday, March 4, one day after telling Antrim County’s Deputy Court Clerk that she could dismiss the case brought by Central Lake Township resident Bill Bailey last November.

The Post continues:

“This firm’s CEO not only harbors conspiratorial beliefs about the 2020 election, but has shared conspiracies about Dominion election equipment, the exact equipment he has been hired to audit,” Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs (D) objected.

“Dominion supports all forensic audits conducted by independent, federally accredited Voting System Test Labs — but this is not that,” said a spokesperson for Dominion Voting Systems, the target of much pro-Trump election conspiracy theorizing. “Over a thousand independent audits and recounts have taken place across the country since Election Day, and they all demonstrated the accuracy and reliability of our voting systems.”

Maricopa County’s Republican-dominated Board of Supervisors, which has long insisted that it ran a sound election, announced Thursday that the state Senate could not use county facilities to conduct their farcical fishing expedition. So Ms. Fann has no place to put the 2.1 million Maricopa County ballots she wants to audit, and she will rely on Cyber Ninjas to handle, process and evaluate sensitive election materials and equipment.

This is not the behavior of a party confident that it has a real case. The Arizona Senate’s bootleg election audit is a pathetic attempt to muddy the waters when the truth is clear and obvious to any reasonable observer: President Biden won Arizona, and the presidency, in perhaps the cleanest presidential election the nation has ever run.

Conspiracy mongerer Senator Karen Fann tries to turn this argument on its head in the Arizona Capitol Times, Fann says Supervisors fear outcome of election audit:

Senate President Karen Fann said Friday that Maricopa County officials may be balking at cooperating with an audit of the 2020 election results because they fear what it might turn up.

“I’m beginning to wonder if they’re not as confident in their (election) system as they say they are,” Fann told Capitol Media Services on Friday of the latest refusal by county supervisors to let Senate-hired auditors review the tallying equipment and hand count the 2.1 million ballots where they are currently located at county election offices.

Her comments come less than 24 hours after the board foreclosed the option of opening up the Maricopa County Tabulation and Election Center to the outside auditors.

* * *

“For the life of me, I cannot figure out what they’re so afraid of,” Fann said. She said senators simply want to put the issues surrounding the vote to bed.

“If constituents have questions and they want those questions answered, why wouldn’t we do this?” Fann said. “It makes no sense.”

Well, Senator, I am a constituent and I have questions about the mental competency of virtually every Republican in the Arizona legislature. I have questions about your mental competency in particular that I want answered. Will you and your GQP caucus submit to a mental competency examination? What are you so afraid of? Do you fear what the mental competency examinations might turn up? “If constituents have questions and they want those questions answered, why wouldn’t [you] do this?” I’m only applying your own logic to you, Senator.

The Post continues:

Indeed, Republican efforts in state after state, including Arizona, to restrict voting reflect a similar lack of confidence. A party assured that it had a popular message and appealing candidates would seek to increase voter turnout. Instead, from Arizona to Georgia to Texas, GOP state lawmakers continue to push unnecessary new laws designed to suppress voter turnout.

Then-President Donald Trump won 74 million votes last year. Instead of making up stories about how Mr. Biden didn’t actually win 81 million, or trying to make it harder for Democrats to cast ballots, Republicans should have asked what they need to do to get to 81 million, or more. If they had done so, they would not have taken the desperate, destructive, anti-democratic steps they have since November.

Including a seditious insurrection on January 6 to overthrow American democracy and to replace it with GQP authoritarian fascism under a corrupt and criminal tinpot dictator, Donald Trump.