Arizona Audit results leaked before release tomorrow- Reveals nothing changed in results

[GeorgiaModerate]

Every sane person trusts in the election results and does not doubt their veracity, but why not just hear the cases and let them do their audits? Especially when the further investigation confirms the previous results and diminishes the conspiracy theories.

I think being so dismissive over questions of election integrity only fueled the conspiracy theories. It doesn't hurt to have transparency over an election held in a novel way. The emphatically dismissive/hostile attitude towards those who wanted a clearer review of the results is suggestive of fraud in the minds of conspiracy theorists. The courts often just treated the cases as a way to make a statement about election integrity, but that only satisfied those who don't doubt election results, and did not engender trust in the election system. Perhaps if they heard more of these cases in their entirety the Trumpers would've had to grasp at straws more, thereby weakening the big lie conspiracy theory.

Because there already were multiple audits in states like Arizona and Georgia that confirmed the results!  Those were real audits, by independent, experienced, certified (by the EAC, the nonpartisan federal Election Assistance Commission) auditors who understood election procedures, knew what they were doing, and used standard election auditing techniques.  I have no problem with those kind of audits.  They're a good thing.

What just happened in Arizona bears no resemblance to the type of real audit described above.  It was a sham done by an inexperienced partisan group that had a partisan agenda, was not certified by the EAC, clearly didn't understand Arizona election procedures, and used unreliable techniques.

If you want to increase confidence in our elections, then continue performing independent audits by certified auditors like those described in my first paragraph.  Again, I have absolutely no problem with that, and I don't think anyone else here does.  But let's have no more audits like the Arizona one; they serve only to undermine confidence in elections, not increase it.

[GP270watch]

Every sane person trusts in the election results and does not doubt their veracity, but why not just hear the cases and let them do their audits? Especially when the further investigation confirms the previous results and diminishes the conspiracy theories.

 The audits are not being done with proper procedure and are potentially damaging to future elections. Giving voting equipment and real cast ballots to third party organizations that are not properly trained to handle them is a colossally stupid idea.

[GeorgiaModerate]

Every sane person trusts in the election results and does not doubt their veracity, but why not just hear the cases and let them do their audits? Especially when the further investigation confirms the previous results and diminishes the conspiracy theories.

 The audits are not being done with proper procedure and are potentially damaging to future elections. Giving voting equipment and real cast ballots to third party organizations that are not properly trained to handle them is a colossally stupid idea.

In addition, it doesn't diminish the conspiracy theories among the true believers.  Now that the Arizona audit, flawed as it is, failed to provide any evidence of fraud, the MAGA believers are now claiming that it was undermined or suppressed by the Deep State (I'm not kidding).  There is no benefit from flawed audits.

[DINGO Joe]

There's a noticeable lack of Trumpsters in this thread.

Howdy. Trump supporter here who doesn't believe the election was rigged.

If you support an enemy of Democracy, then you might be are a fascist

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Every sane person trusts in the election results and does not doubt their veracity, but why not just hear the cases and let them do their audits? Especially when the further investigation confirms the previous results and diminishes the conspiracy theories.

I think being so dismissive over questions of election integrity only fueled the conspiracy theories. It doesn't hurt to have transparency over an election held in a novel way. The emphatically dismissive/hostile attitude towards those who wanted a clearer review of the results is suggestive of fraud in the minds of conspiracy theorists. The courts often just treated the cases as a way to make a statement about election integrity, but that only satisfied those who don't doubt election results, and did not engender trust in the election system. Perhaps if they heard more of these cases in their entirety the Trumpers would've had to grasp at straws more, thereby weakening the big lie conspiracy theory.

The thing is, this is not about concerns about the election integrity.

The only reason this is even begin discussed is because Trump refused to concede and goes around the country saying that he won a landslide and it was stolen from him.

This leaves a whole lot of Republicans who feel like they have to go along with him or end up a pariah like Liz Cheney. Even if you take Fuzzy's concerns in PA and GA, that isn't enough to shift the election. Most people don't question WI and MI and the audit confirmed what we already knew, Biden won Arizona.

There is nothing that will ever validate what Trump is saying out there, Trump will never stop saying it for ego, power and money (he cannot admit to losing) and Trump has a death grip on the Republican primary base. Unmovable object versus unstoppable force essentially. Unfortunately realty has proven to be very stoppable and a good number of people will believe whatever crap Joe Smith shares on Facebook because the media cannot be trusted.

You can do all of the audits in the world, Trump will still go out like he did in Georgia, say he won a landslide, say it was stolen from him and then proceed to lie about the results of the audits,  and claim the media is actually the one that is lying not him.

There is no way to satisfy "legitimate concerns" where they may exist because Trump and his sycophants will always come back with some new ridiculous claim, or straight up make up crap like Paul Gosar and the echo chamber will run with it, "stirring the concerns" anew because nothing short of "Trump won" will ever be enough for Trump. Minor issues here or there, some process changes for the sake of confidence etc, the issues about mail in voting in PA etc, none of that put's Trump in the White House.

[ProudModerate2]

Every sane person trusts in the election results and does not doubt their veracity, but why not just hear the cases and let them do their audits? Especially when the further investigation confirms the previous results and diminishes the conspiracy theories.

 The audits are not being done with proper procedure and are potentially damaging to future elections. Giving voting equipment and real cast ballots to third party organizations that are not properly trained to handle them is a colossally stupid idea.

I mean, they were using special lighting trying to find "bamboo fibers, that prove the ballots were from China." Who in their right-mind would consider this an official audit?
They were a bunch of nubjobs given color-coded vests to do silly and idiotic "stuff" for months.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Every sane person trusts in the election results and does not doubt their veracity, but why not just hear the cases and let them do their audits? Especially when the further investigation confirms the previous results and diminishes the conspiracy theories.

 The audits are not being done with proper procedure and are potentially damaging to future elections. Giving voting equipment and real cast ballots to third party organizations that are not properly trained to handle them is a colossally stupid idea.

In addition, it doesn't diminish the conspiracy theories among the true believers.  Now that the Arizona audit, flawed as it is, failed to provide any evidence of fraud, the MAGA believers are now claiming that it was undermined or suppressed by the Deep State (I'm not kidding).  There is no benefit from flawed audits.

Even down to circulating a fake doctored version of the report on social media, claiming it is the "real report" that was suppressed.

They cannot stop because once they do, Trump is done for and a whole lot of Republican Representatives are going to be resigning or primaried as the lying traitors they are.

So the big lie gets bigger like a mafia guy who keeps digging the hole deeper to delay the inevitable prison sentence and making it worse in the process.

[BG-NY]

Check your calendar.  Georgia instituted AVR in 2016.

What even is this? AVR has existed in Georgia since January 2017: literally all of Trump's presidency.

This was an error on my part, I own up to it. Regardless, I support AVR. The two other issues I have with GA were (1) the injunction by courts in the New Georgia Project v. Raffensperger case (accepting ballots after election day) (2) not sending ballots out automatically in the general as they did in the primary. I mentioned the latter in my old post I quoted.

In the two states I mentioned above:

GA - Automatic voter registration is an issue. I actually support this in a vacuum, since I think the benefits of enfranchisement outweigh the potential for voter fraud. However I think we should have an honest discussion about the features and flaws of this measure. While I believe HR1 is a bad act overall, AVR, if the process is a lot cleaner and residency is closely monitored, can be a useful system. During the primary ballots were sent out automatically to all voters, but for the general with the rollout of the new site, only people requesting ballots received them. Nonprofits and Super PACs took advantage of this.

PA - Having vote-by-mail but *not* in-person early voting skewed the early voting results to a ridiculous degree. In other comparable states (WI, IA, OH, MI, etc.) where there was both in-person early voting and vote by mail, Biden didn't achieve a 2:1 voting margin in a single state. In Pennsylvania, Biden got something like 86% of the early vote, statewide.

To expand upon this, Act 77 which expanded vote-by-mail was passed in 2019, however sweeping changes were passed in an amendment in late March 2020. Part of this including removing the in-person early voting workaround that existed. As we all know, republicans performed significantly better in the in-person early vote compared to the vote by mail. So I'm not advocating for less ballot access, but more, and not tipping the scale (whether inadvertently or intentionally with sinister motives).

GA has two republican state houses and a republican governor, and PA has two republican houses with a democratic governor so this isn't a partisan issue. It's a matter of bad laws.

I'm in favor of expanding ballot access and voter registration. But all changes need to be made well before elections. Bad laws passed by either party or a problem.

I want everybody to vote. So I support AVR and VBM. But ONLY if we send out ballots to everyone, and if you also have in-person early voting. It should be fair.

Why would it happening within a year have any significance? Don't you think a pandemic calls for some changes?

So what cutoff is acceptable? If you want to say one year is arbitrary, sure. But what is unacceptable?

I am fine with adding vote-by-mail in PA btw. I am *not* okay with only vote-by-mail without in-person early voting.

[Horus]

Every sane person trusts in the election results and does not doubt their veracity, but why not just hear the cases and let them do their audits? Especially when the further investigation confirms the previous results and diminishes the conspiracy theories.

I think being so dismissive over questions of election integrity only fueled the conspiracy theories. It doesn't hurt to have transparency over an election held in a novel way. The emphatically dismissive/hostile attitude towards those who wanted a clearer review of the results is suggestive of fraud in the minds of conspiracy theorists. The courts often just treated the cases as a way to make a statement about election integrity, but that only satisfied those who don't doubt election results, and did not engender trust in the election system. Perhaps if they heard more of these cases in their entirety the Trumpers would've had to grasp at straws more, thereby weakening the big lie conspiracy theory.

They could've heard every case and gone over every vote one by one.

Trumpers still would've doubted the results. It's a cult.

[Leroy McPherson fan]

Kelli Ward is right about this.

[BG-NY]

Going forward, can we just do these two things please:

(1) Have in-person early voting in every state that has vote-by-mail.
(2) Not count ballots received after election day.

We can make concessions if amenable...

[Ferguson97]

Not count ballots not received after election day.

No.

[BG-NY]

Not count ballots not received after election day.

No.

Whoops, I said not twice.

And why not?

[OSR stands with Israel]

Not count ballots not received after election day.

No.

Oregon literally does that

[Ferguson97]

Not count ballots not received after election day.

No.

Whoops, I said not twice.

And why not?

Why should my vote not be counted if the post office is slow?

[BG-NY]

Why should my vote not be counted if the post office is slow?

Well how should we fix this then? We can have a month of early voting that ends a week before election day.

[Crumpets]

Just want to throw out there some of my personal experience with absentee voting, knowing full well that I'm a pretty exceptional case. I've never changed my voter registration from Washington State, even though I've moved to both DC and Scotland since 2018. Washington is already all-mail, so there's no separate category for "even more absentee than usual." The amount of time I've had before the election to fill out my ballot and the amount of time it's taken to get back to the county office has varied wildly with each election - literal weeks difference between the fastest and slowest instances. If Washington didn't have the "must be postmarked before the election" rule instead of "must arrive before polls close," there are several cases when it would have been literally impossible for me to vote on time. And you can be as strict as you want about who gets to vote absentee, the only alternatives to absentee voting from Scotland are either to fly home in the middle of a pandemic for several thousand dollars round trip and two weeks of quarantine upon return at my expense, or forgo my American citizenship to become a UK citizen and vote in the elections there. Either way, not the best way to participate in American democracy.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

I think post marked by election day is sufficient.

Other than that I am fine with in person early voting (That is how I voted in virtually every election here in NC since 2010, the first election I could legally vote in).

The thing is, that's certainly not the standard used by Trump, nor his acolytes and if this AZ audit has shown anything it is that any attempts at Trump Whispering by people to say "Trump and all of us only wants this" has been demonstrated to fall flat the moment it doesn't deliver the desired result.

This is the Trump standard:

1. Trump won this election in landslide
2. Anything that says otherwise is fake
3. Anyone who doesn't agree is a traitor to him personally, no longer his friend, and on his way to a mafia style hit by way of primary.

Even if you account for the issues that BG-NY raises, it affects a few thousand votes in two states. Trump still loses the popular vote by millions, still loses the electoral college and still is not President. This is not winning, much less winning a landslide.

Something has to give here. Either Trump is right and the whole election is a complete and total fraud on the level of Mike Lindell/Sidney Powell, or Trump is intentionally lying to achieve some kind of gain (political, monetary or both) and to preserve his ego. There is no middle ground between these two points, because Trump has entertained no middle ground here.

Furthermore you have the situation in Idaho where Trump was over counted, again. And you have Rudy admitting in sworn depositions to making stuff up without verifying his evidence (something we already knew from Gabriel Stirling's detailed response especially concerning the clipped video that "proves" suitcases full of votes", the full footage of which completely refutes that notion).

At some point there will be a reckoning for those involved in this.

[Leroy McPherson fan]

Kelli Ward’s full response
https://mobile.twitter.com/AZGOP/status/1441567940650758153

[Badger]

I think it bears repeating that is that a major part of this Republican is this Republican state senate sponsored average was was to investigate conspiracy theories of Asian bout tempering by, please let this sink in as to how crazy that says, searching for bamboo fibers among The ballot spirit let's please remind ourselves that China  Is freaking invented paper, and today produce paper from wide swaths of coniferous forests like we have. And yet, the lowest common denominator Archie bunker level double digit IQ know nothing racist ignorance prompted a search for bamboo fibers Is based on Mickey Rooney in breakfast at Tiffany's level stereotypes. It is the most guttural Is an shameful level of raw unapologetic ignorance and bigotry that was a fundamental core of these so called on it's. One might literally have had as much creedence trying to prove Asian influence by testing ballots to seek samples of general tso's

 Do not delude yourself into some level of what about ism that the latest screed from rashid talib even romulti, in the most far fetched feverish imagination possible, comma makes the Republican party and Democratic Party somehow both equally bad. Just suck it up and acknowledge that you will embrace is embrace a party being led and dominated by absolute known nothing zentifobic cranis an aphobic cranks like this because you need to save fetuses or cut taxes and regulations. But don't hold your head up and try to BS anyone, least of all yourself, with some garbage what about ism to make yourself feel better. At least have the guts to own what you're embracing perif you're embracing. They're, I set it. Drops Mike

[GeorgiaModerate]

Maricopa County has released another document refuting the claims made in the Cyber Ninjas report:

Essentially, the claims that people like Kelli Ward are touting boil down to two things:

1. The "auditors" simply did not understand the details of election procedures.  This is why real election audits use experienced auditors who are certified by the EAC (Election Assistance Commission).

2. They have implied (or more than implied) that any discrepancy resulting from their lack of understanding was an indicator of fraud.  While they did acknowledge that these discrepancies might have reasonable explanations, they made no attempts to look for such explanations.

[Kahane's Grave Is A Gender-Neutral Bathroom]

How many days until the AZGOP does another audit?

[Progressive Pessimist]

Kelli Ward’s full response
https://mobile.twitter.com/AZGOP/status/1441567940650758153

She's right. There were discrepancies like Biden netting 99 votes.

[S019]

This is what happens with almost all recounts/audits barely anything changes, which is you don't see candidates usually ask for them unless the margin is like within 2,000 votes or so. Of course, the AZ GOP has just gone off the rails and gave into their own stupid delusions, but anyone sane knew from the beginning that this was just a massive waste of taxpayer money.

[GeorgiaModerate]

A couple of new developments in this.  First, the pillow guy turns on the "audit" since it didn't get the results he wanted:

https://twitter.com/ZTPetrizzo/status/1448050816024293381

Second, as reported upthread, the released totals of the Ninjas' hand count closely matched the official Maricopa County results.  However, there's apparently more to the story.  According to some Arizona sources, the hand count originally came up about 312K ballots short out of 2.1 million.  These numbers were not published.  But when the third count (a machine count done on specialized machines newly purchased by the AZ Senate) closely matched the county results, the Ninjas went back and fudged their hand count numbers to make them look reasonably close.