Summary of forensic audit of results in Arizona's Maricopa county

Officially, Biden*Harris won Arizona by about 10,000 votes out of 2.8 million.  The state's election was so full of...um...anomalies--especially in Maricopa county, which tallied 2.1 million votes--that the state's senate ordered a forensic audit of that county's results.  The senate ordered the county to turn over all the ballots, the voting machines and the servers used to tally the votes reported by those machines.

The county's Board of Supervisors flatly refused to cooperate, claiming the senate didn't have the authority to audit the county's election results.

It might take a minute for the implications of that refusal to sink in.  In effect the board was saying there is no power in the state that can force a county to obey state election laws.

Shortly thereafter a judge ordered the county to comply.

Two days later the Democrat National Committee sent an army of lawyers--variously reported as between 83 and 100--to Arizona.  One would guess that deployment would cost several million dollars, depending on how long the attorneys stayed in Arizona.
 

On April 25 the first judge (Christopher Coury) recused himself, and a second (Daniel Martin) was appointed.  The county has turned over the ballots and the forensic audit has been underway for about two weeks.  But as of yesterday the county still hadn't turned over the crucial servers or the voting machines.

The servers were disconnected and prepared for transfer, but now the county tried a new blocking effort, telling the senate it would cost a whopping $6 million to move the servers across town to the audit location, and demanding payment before they would transfer the servers.  At last report the servers were still under the county's control.

While this fight has been playing out, the Democrats' media allies have been running hit pieces on the audit, calling it "a very unusual recount," and "disturbing."  Certainly a *forensic audit* is indeed unusual, since the objective is to use technical means to determine whether a ballot was ever mailed, and whether the few signatures still available match those of the alleged voter.  But the real goal of the media is to sway public opinion to make it easier to discredit the results of the audit if it reveals evidence of significant election fraud.

On Monday the board of supervisors of Maricopa county wrote the president of the senate urging the senate to stop the audit.

“It is time to end this. For the good of the Senate, for the good of the Country and for the good of the Democratic institutions that define us as Americans,” the board's letter said.

"For the good of the country," eh?  Looks more like "for the good of the Democrat party."

If the board knew there was no fraud, why would its members object to the audit?

The letter went on to deny claims that many boxes of ballots were open when delivered to the audit location.  Members of the county board claimed that every box of ballots was "sealed with tamper-evident tape or standard clear sturdy packing tape.”

"Members... said every box of ballots was sealed with tamper-evident tape **or standard clear sturdy packing tape.**”  Um...if you election officials failed to seal every box of ballots with "tamper-evident tape," how can anyone be confident that thousands of Trump ballots weren't removed and destroyed?

By simply admitting that some boxes of ballots were only secured with "standard clear sturdy packing tape" the board is admitting that written security procedures designed to safeguard ballots were not followed.  Reasonable people would want to know why they weren't followed.

Amazing.  But par for the course in the new U.S., where one party can break any and all laws without risk of prosecution--literally no risk of even being charged with a crime.