Give conspiracy theorists an inch and they’ll ask for a mile.
In Arizona, the inexperienced auditors of Maricopa County’s 2020 presidential vote have blown past their initial May 14th deadline. Now they say they can’t complete their scandal-plagued inquiry unless lawmakers subpoena more records and survey tens of thousands of voters at home.
Doug Logan, the CEO of Cyber Ninjas, which is conducting the audit, wants to go door to door to try and “validate” approximately 74,000 mail-in ballots he says were never requested by voters.
But Maricopa County says there’s nothing unusual about that. Voters could have picked up a mail-in ballot at a Vote Center. The county also claims that Cyber Ninjas did not properly tally early votes.
More from CBS News:
Senate Republicans had already planned to canvass homes and ask people about their voting patterns, but in May dropped the idea under pressure from the U.S. Department of Justice, which warned the effort could violate laws against voter intimidation. Senate President Karen Fann said Thursday she would consult with lawyers before deciding whether to proceed.
It’s no surprise that the audit has dragged on. Republicans have used the spectacle to raise money. The Arizona Republic reports that fundraising invoking the audit has helped “revitalize the Arizona GOP financially.”
On Thursday, an Arizona judge blasted the audit’s lack of transparency, ruling that “any and all” records related to it be made public. That includes communications about the audit’s planning and execution. In addition, the judge wants to know how much the audit costs and who’s paying for it.
“It is difficult to conceive of a case with a more compelling public interest demanding public disclosure and public scrutiny,” Judge Michael Kemp wrote. The nonprofit group American Oversight initiated the lawsuit that provoked Kemp’s order.
“Starting now, the Arizona Senate is going to have to face real, public accountability,” said the group in a statement.
An op-ed in The Arizona Republic contextualizes the audit:
The election audits done by Maricopa County and by the two independent, accredited (unlike Cyber Ninjas) firms it hired to review procedures and results proved there was no fraud.
That didn’t stop Fann from hiring Trump zealots to carry out an unqualified, partisan hatchet job meant to affirm cockamamie conspiracy claims about the election.
Logan, the head of Cyber Ninjas, has shared easily debunked election misinformation and his team has pursued outlandish theories, even checking ballots for traces of bamboo. Bamboo, they assert, would indicate that votes were shipped in from Asia.
“For months, the public has been asked to trust the word of senators about the sham audit of the 2020 election. Arizona law does not allow the Senate to outsource democracy and shroud it in secrecy,” said American Oversight.
