In the Spirit of Jefferson Davis (part sixteen)

 

 

 

Part sixteen.

 

May 2^nd, in Atlanta Georgia, DA Willis’ investigation of Trump’s incriminating phone calls to Governor Kemp and Secretary of State Raffensperger, the Fake Electors, and Attorney Giuliani’s false statements before the State General Assembly, heats up as she empanels a Grand Jury and begins to Subpoena Witnesses.

 

Within the Republican Party since the rise of Trump, at least for those involved in the nitty-gritty of the processes of Democracy, there seems like three types of members emerging:

 

First. those who actually cared about Election Integrity, like Georgia Secretary of State Raffensperger, who was stripped of much of his authority as punishment for refusing to subvert the 2022 Election in Trump’s favor.

 

Second, those who screamed Election Integrity, but only as camouflage to actually subvert the same, so the Trumpsters, like Georgia Republican Party Chairman David Shafer, now in legal hot-water for his participation in the Fake Electors scheme.

 

Third, those caught between the two, like Georgia Governor Kemp, who stood up to Trump’s corruption just like Raffensperger, but also signed SB 202, into law, which made some forms of Election subversion completely legal, and punished Raffensperger.

 

The same is true in every other State that the Trumpsters stuck their dirty fingers into everyone else’s pie, for example, Arizona. By May, the Arizona Audit was turning out to be a farce, and starting to piss off more and more Republicans

 

May 5^th , during an interview, Arizona Senate President Fann addressed these concerns. When asked about, former Representative Kern’s presence on the Audit floor, she said, “I don’t know why he’s there or how he got there, but that’s one of the people that was selected, and that is what it is. I don’t know that it’s a great thing, to be honest.”

 

She attacked the press coverage, “They talk about [the Audit being prompted by groundless] conspiracy theories but I tell you what, there’s almost a reverse conspiracy theory to demean this audit.”

 

Regarding the press complaints that they weren’t being given access to the counting floor, she defended Cyber Ninjas who didn’t want the media to turn the process into a “three-ring circus.” That phrase was unfortunate, because concurrent to the interview, outside the building the Audit was being conducted, the Crazy Times Carnival was entertaining thousands with clowns and scary rides and side-show games. Other commentators couldn’t resist using “circus” as a metaphor for the process as it already was.

 

She insisted the people deserve answers, “Who is going to answer their questions? I think we’ll find irregularities that is going to say, you know what, there’s this many dead people voted, or this many who may have voted that don’t live here anymore — we’re going to find those. We know they exist, but everybody keeps saying, ‘You have no proof.’ Well, maybe we’ll get the proof out of this so we can fix those holes that are there.”

 

May 8^th, one week before the Audit was supposed to be completed, it had only fully processed about 250,000 of Maricopa County’s 2.1 million ballots.

 

May 9^th, State Senator Paul Boyer, who voted for the Audit, told the Press, “It makes us look like idiots.  Looking back, I didn’t think it would be this ridiculous. It’s embarrassing to be a state senator at this point.”

 

The same day, Arizona Director of All Voting Is Local, Alex Gulotta, issued a statement “This subpoena and this audit is not dissimilar to what’s happening with a number of bills being pushed nationally that basically take fair, objective processes and move them into partisan political bodies. This is not an aberration. This is a window into the future of where some people would like our elections to go.”

 

And that same week Audit workers would be ordered to suspend their labor and move the entire operation into storage to make way for High School Graduations that were scheduled to take place in the arena. The increasingly embarrassed Liasson Bennett said “When we come back, we’ll have the last week of May and all of June, but I don’t think it’s going to take that long. The hand count should be done by the middle of June.”

 

Nope.

 

May 14^th, the date of the unfulfilled promise that the count being completed, Crazy Times Carnival was packing up and moving on, the Audit was packing up to be put on hold, and Secretary of State Katie Hobbs gave any interview. She was one of those who used Crazy Times as a metaphor for the Audit, which she referred to as incompetent, lacking in objective procedures, failing to secure the ballots properly, and basically a spectacle in the worst sense of the word. It was “a significant departure from standard best practices … Though conspiracy theorists are undoubtedly cheering on these types of inspections — and perhaps providing financial support because of their use — they do little other than further marginalize the professionalism and intent of this ‘audit.’”

 

This earned her death threats from the Trumpsters, compelling Governor Ducey to assign a Security Detail to her.

 

Complaints similar to Hobbs were made by the Federal DoJ, and when they raised these issues, they raised additional concerns, like a plan to go to voters’ homes to verify that they had actually cast ballots, a possible violation of Voter Intimidation.

 

May 15^th, Senate President Fann found herself, again, defending the Audit. She insisted that allegations that the ballots were not secure were “completely unfounded, and I believe they come from people who have always decided that they don’t want the audit at all.” She claimed the Audit was conducted under “comprehensive and rigorous security protocols that will fully preserve all physical and electronic ballots, tabulation systems and other election materials.” Regarding the issue of potential Voter Intimidation, she stated that it was “determined several weeks ago that it would indefinitely defer that component of the audit.”

 

Founder of the Center for Election Administration and Research, David J. Becker, who had previously worked as an Attorney in the DoJ’s Voting Rights Section, reacted to Fann’s assurances, “There’s no question that contamination of ballots and records is an ongoing issue that raises serious concerns about federal law. We’ve never seen anything like this before, where some haphazard effort allows some unknown out-of-state contractor to start riffling through ballots. I think it’s pretty clear that the response does not resolve concerns about ballot integrity.”

 

May 16^th, County Recorder for Maricopa Country Richer responded on Twitter to accusations by Trump that his county had deleted the election database. “Wow. This is unhinged. I’m literally looking at our voter registration database on my other screen. Right now. We can’t indulge these insane lies any longer. As a party. As a state. As a country. This is as readily falsifiable as 2+2=5. If we don’t call this out.”

 

May 17^th, in an escalation of the above, the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors sent a letter to Senate President Karen Fann. Both the Supervisors and Senate were majority Republican, and the Supervisors felt insulted that their professionalism was challenged without evidence, and suspicious of the Audit that the Senate had demanded, then farmed out to dubiously qualified, out-of-State, firm Cyber Ninjas. “The Arizona Senate is not acting in good faith, has no intention of learning anything about the November 2020 General Election, but is only interested in feeding the various festering conspiracy theories that fuel the fundraising schemes of those pulling your strings. ... The result is that the Arizona Senate is held up to ridicule in every corner of the globe and our democracy is imperiled.”

 

Members of the Board got threats from the Trump-cult in retaliation:

 

May 18^th, Chairman Jack Sellers received an email, “We all know what your hiding you stupid motherfucker! I hope Patriots in Arizona catch you in a dark alley sometime because you deserve what you are going to get…and I hope there’s video of it when it happens so I can watch your worthless piece of shit as cry and beg for your miserable parasitic life!

 

“You are a disgrace to this Country and I hope you have a fucking heart attack soon you traitor bitch! Fuck You and Fuck your entire traitor family.

 

“In a perfect world, traitors are hung by their scrawny little necks until dead!”

 

May 19^th, Richer received a profanity-laden threatening message on his cell phone.

 

May 24^th, Liaison Bennett, was challenged on the UV testing of the ballots. He wasn’t prepared for the question and admitted he didn't know what the workers were doing with the flashlights, even though he has been observing the audit since it began.

 

That same day, in Ohio, Big Lie Influencer Frank met with senior staff of the Secretary of State Frank LaRose. The staffers were unimpressed with his Conspiracy Masturbation, and Frank, offended, responded by threatening to send unauthorized people, "plants" as he put it, into local voting offices. "We have plants everywhere that go into buildings when your machines are on and capture your IP addresses. We have those, not necessarily in Ohio but we can arrange for that, So, all I'm trying to point out to you is that this is coming. Be ready. And I'm not trying to fight you — do you see that I'm trying to help you?"

 

 

May 26^th, CEO Runbeck Election Services, Jeff Ellington, was interviewed concerning the Arizona Audit. His firm provided the paper and printed the ballots for Maricopa County. He said that the HP printers they were using during the Audit don’t have Printer Stenography capacity, a technology that finds watermarks and other clues as to the origin of the paper, so the printers were incapable of the type of examination that Cyber Ninjas claimed they were doing. Even if they had that capacity, since the ballots had neither tracking or watermarks, the paper that was unique to the County (this was confirmed by the Maricopa County's Election Department), there was nothing to look for, raising the question why Cyber Ninjas were looking for them. As for the “flashlights” Ellington said, “I wish I could figure out what they are looking for in the UV lights." Out of curiosity she put examples of the ballot paper under a UV flashlight, it revealed nothing.

 

Though no one attached to the Audit would admit it, the UV flashlight examination was probably inspired by a QAnon claim that Trump had the mail-in ballots secretly watermarked to be able to later prove fraud. Since every County in the Country buys its own paper, usually locally (Runbeck Election Services is local), and not under Federal control, the claim was not only groundless, but physically impossible.

 

There were also, unconfirmed, reports that workers were checking the ballots for fingerprints. If true, that would certainly run afoul of Federal Voter Intimidation Law.