The sham within the Arizona election “audit” sham
I mean, what exactly did you expect from a company that calls itself “Cyber Ninjas,” competence? It turns out that the incompetent idea that Joe Biden lost the election was investigated by an incompetent company incompetently, and none but the incompetent are surprised.
A nonpartisan review by an actual expert — Larry Moore, founder of the non-partisan Boston-based Clear Ballot Group — discovered that the months of work by Cyber Ninjas was “wildly inaccurate.” For example, in checking their work, Moore’s group discovered that the Ninjas entirely missed 16,000 votes in a single rechecked sample. “The discrepancies are so large that they cannot just be brushed aside,” Moore told The Arizona Republic. “The reality is they just made up the numbers.”
Offering not a shred of evidence to support her counterclaim, Republican State Senate President Karen Fann, who was given the job of overseeing the Cyber Ninjas’ multi-million-dollar “audit,” dismissed the review as “a lie that borders on inflammatory.” Has Fann read the Moore report that she insouciantly dismisses? Of course not. She told the Arizona Republic that she wasn’t interested in reading the report.
Incompetence is a problem that is endemic to all conspiracy theory groups, from the amateurs who claim that the terrorist attack of 9/11 was an “inside job” to moon hoaxers to flat earthers to crop circle enthusiasts to anti-vaxxers. With such people, sloppiness and a stunning lack of intellectual rigour always lurks just below the surface.
Hypocrisy is also a problem with such groups. Almost a year after the 2020 election, the “you lost get over it” crowd from 2016 is still whining about Donald Trump’s resounding defeat. I hate to be the one to remind them, but Trump didn’t just lose in the Electoral College, but in 2020 he lost the popular vote — again. Only this time Trump lost not by almost 3 million votes, but by more than 7 million votes. As I say, I get no joy from reminding the “get over it” crowd that Trump lost. By more than 7 million votes. Not just in the Electoral College. Trump lost the popular vote, too. He’s a one-term twice-impeached reject. He lost. Get over it. Go home. Trump is a loser.
As I say, Larry Moore is an actual expert and he enunciated the final epitaph on the multi-million dollar recount effort by the hapless Cyber Ninjas. Moore said that his real audit of their fake audit “blows apart everything that’s happened in the past nine months. Anybody with a hand calculator and five minutes could figure it out.”
Five pro-Trump groups paid a combined almost $5.7 million to fund the Cyber Ninjas’ sham audit, and not only did they not get the result they desperately hoped for but the audit they paid for was itself an incompetent sham. So they flushed their money straight down the toilet and made themselves look like the desperate, incompetent parted-from-their-money fools that they were from the very beginning.
Let history record the truth. The Arizona vote was certified last year by Republican Governor Doug Ducey after several official recounts failed to find any irregularities. President Joe Biden beat Trump in Arizona and he went on to win the presidency. Period. And so, all you little whining Trump idolaters out there, the Moving Finger has written the final word, “Nor all thy piety nor wit/Shall lure it back to cancel half a line/Nor all thy tears wash out a word of it.” And, as ever, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, stay safe.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.