The seemingly endless Arizona election audit — conducted by the so-called “Cyber Ninjas” — is finally at an end, and a devastating new report on the efforts to overturn the result in favor of former President Donald Trump reveals what a complete waste of time and money the entire enterprise was.
According to The New York Times, the numbers used by auditors were so unreliable that they seem to have been literally “made up” by the pro-Trumpers who alleged there had been massive fraud that handed the Grand Canyon State to President Joe Biden:
“The circus-like review of the 2020 vote commissioned by Arizona Republicans took another wild turn on Friday when veteran election experts charged that the very foundation of its findings — the results of a hand count of 2.1 million ballots — was based on numbers so unreliable that they appear to be guesswork rather than tabulations The organizers of the review ‘made up the numbers,’ the headline of the experts’ report reads.”
We’re literally talking about thousands of ballots, The Arizona Republic notes:
“The conclusions are based on a review of 40 ballot boxes, which the Senate for the first time broke down by number, batches and various types of tallies. The analysts found the hand count was short by nearly 16,000 ballots, or roughly one-third of the total ballots contained in the boxes.”
All of this led Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs — a Democrat who is running for governor — to excoriate the Cyber Ninjas and the entire audit process, which was little more than a dog and pony show:
“It was clear from the start that the Cyber Ninjas were just making it up as they went I’ve been saying all along that no one should trust any ‘results’ they produce, so it’s no surprise their findings are being called into question. What can be trusted are actual election officials and experts, along with the official canvass of results.”
Jen Fitfield of The Arizona Republic noted on Twitter it’s now clear that Senate President Karen Fann (R) lied in her presentation about the audit:
The bottom line is that Donald Trump lost in Arizona. He lost in Georgia. And Pennsylvania. He lost in Michigan and Virginia. He lost the popular vote and the electoral vote. He’s a loser and the worst president in U.S. history.
