Democrats Panic Over Arizona Election Audit

Even questioning the results of the 2020 presidential election invites derision and risks of being branded a tin-hatted kook.  The Arizona State Senate understands this better than anyone. When they voted to conduct an election audit, Democrats and the media banded together to blaspheme Republicans. 

The high-stakes ballot audit is the most extensive in the aftermath of a tightly-contested presidential national election determined by the narrowest of margins.  Four states, including Arizona, were decided by 34,000 votes or less.  Biden won them all.  He needed every one to reach 270 electoral votes.

Democrats have concocted a 2020 election soufflé' with ingredients of outrage, contempt and censorship for any claims of election fraud.  If the Arizona audit uncovers any election breach, it would let all the air out of Democrats lightly baked thesis that allegations of fraud are baseless and irresponsible. 

However, Democrats have never had any qualms about accusing Republicans of election chicanery.         

Democrats labeled Trump an illegitimate president after 2016, citing Russian collusion, a thoroughly discredited charge. The last thing Democrats want is to have that sobriquet hung around the neck of Joe Biden.  They will spare no costs and employ every legal tactic to quash the process.

The Republican-controlled Senate took 2 1/2 months to slog through the courts, battling the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors,  before it was granted the right to issue subpoenas for election materials n Arizona's largest county, which includes Phoenix.   

Each step of the way, Maricopa has fought to sabotage the recount, abetted by Democrat heavyweights in Arizona.  Republicans forced the issue by taking the matter to court after the supervisors ignored requests for ballots and tabulators.  Officials refused to budge even after they were held in contempt.  

A judge's decision paves the way for a "detailed" review of the country's ballots to include "testing the machines, scanning ballots, performing a full hand count, and checking any IT breaches."  All of Maricopa County's 2.1 million ballots cast in the election will be recounted.

In a last ditch effort to curtail the recount, Maricopa County Supervisor Steve Gallardo, the lone Democrat on the board, and the Arizona Democrat Party filed a motion for a temporary restraining order, arguing it was a violation of state law.  A ruling is expected this week.  

For perspective, the total ballots cast in the presidential election in Arizona was 3.3 million. Thus Maricopa County accounted for 63% of the votes.  Joe Biden won Maricopa County by 45,109 votes, enabling him to take Arizona by the thinnest of margins, 10,457 votes.

Arizona was one of several states in 2020 that experienced long, puzzling delays in counting ballots.  On the Friday after the Tuesday election, the state still had 300,000 ballots outstanding.  At that time, Biden enjoyed a 29,861-vote lead in Arizona after Trump held an early advantage for in-person ballots.

In 2016, Trump carried Maricopa by 44,454 votes and racked up larger margins in rural Arizona.  Democrats marshaled their forces in Maricopa for an all out push for mail-in balloting in 2020, an effort that produced a Biden victory, only the second Democrat to win the state since 1948.

More than 2.6 million votes were cast in early balloting, the majority of those were mail-in ballots.  Maricopa saw records for both mail-in ballots and early voting.  The counting of those ballots did not begin until October 31, just days before the November 3 in-person voting.

Now that the Arizona Senate recount is underway, Democrats have trained their biggest legal guns on the auditors, a Florida-based firm Cyber Ninjas, hired by Senate President Karen Fann and Arizona Secretary of State Ken Bennett.

The Democrat lawyers claim the CEO of the cyber security firm appeared to have promoted election conspiracy theories from a now-deleted Twitter account. The CEO, Doug Logan, has reportedly been an active supporter of the "Stop The Steal" movement, according to the recently filed suit. 

The credibility of Cyber Ninjas may just be a canard for Democrats, who have engaged Hillary Clinton's consigliere, Perkins Coie, a high-powered Washington, D.C. firm. This is the outfit responsible for the discredited Steele Dossier used in an ill-fated attempt to remove Trump from office.

The Democratic Party funding vehicle for the legal attack on the auditors is a "charitable" organization, Protect Democracy Project (PDP), which has employed three law firms to derail the recount, including Perkins Coie.  With a $12.4 million war chest and 72 staff members, PDP can afford the legal muscle.

Although charitable organizations are supposed to be "non-partisan," PDP was founded to oppose the policies of President Trump.  The outfit's president and executive director is Ian Bassin, who served as associate White House counsel for President Obama from 2009-2011. 

The New York Times and its ideological twin The Washington Post began debunking any suggestion of election fraud with frothy indignation the moment Biden was declared the winner.  The papers huffed that any fraud would have been on such a small scale, it wouldn't have effected the outcome.

Former Attorney General William Barr echoed the same theme, declaring last year that the Justice Department had uncovered no evidence of "widespread" voter fraud. Democrats have consistently pointed to the Republican AG's statement to buttress their arguments and silence critics.

There is just one obvious problem with these assurances.  They concede a little election fraud is nothing to sweat.  No one should care. Shouldn't American elections be free of any tomfoolery?  Or does it only matter if a Republican wins the presidency?  This is the stuff of banana republics.  

That's why the Arizona effort should be supported by Democrats as well as Republicans.  If the election was pure as the driven snow, then the recount will give Democrats the perfect weapon to bludgeon GOP claims about fraud.  It makes one wonder why Democrats are so opposed to the recount.