{"id":200325,"date":"2021-05-10T18:23:00","date_gmt":"2021-05-10T23:23:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2021\/05\/10\/the-doj-weighs-in-about-the-arizona-freak-show\/"},"modified":"2021-05-10T18:23:00","modified_gmt":"2021-05-10T23:23:00","slug":"the-doj-weighs-in-about-the-arizona-freak-show","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2021\/05\/10\/the-doj-weighs-in-about-the-arizona-freak-show\/","title":{"rendered":"The DoJ Weighs in About the Arizona Freak Show"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Department of Justice wants to have a word with Cyber Ninjas’ and their audit of Maricopa County Presidential ballots<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Given the lax security, and the fact that this audit included what appeared to an attempt to intimidate voters, it comes as no surprise that the Feds were profoundly unamused: <\/p>\n

The Arizona Senate will hold off on a plan to contact voters as part of a Republican-commissioned election recount that raised concerns from the Justice Department about voter intimidation, state Senate President Karen Fann said Friday.<\/p>\n

The head of the department\u2019s civil rights division, Pamela S. Karlan, wrote<\/a> to Fann (R) on Wednesday suggesting that the recount of nearly 2.1 million ballots in the state\u2019s largest county by a private contractor may not comply with federal law, leaving ballots at \u201crisk of damage or loss.\u201d She also raised questions about the contractor\u2019s stated plans to \u201cidentify voter registrations that did not make sense\u201d and interview voters via phone and \u201cphysical canvassing.\u201d<\/p>\n

The ongoing audit run by Florida-based Cyber Ninjas has been widely criticized as fueling wild theories that fraud and other electoral problems led President Donald Trump to lose the presidential race. Officials in Maricopa County, which went for Joe Biden in November, say the results have been validated repeatedly.<\/p>\n

But Republicans have pressed ahead with a new, highly unusual inquiry that has ranged from scrutinizing ballots under UV lights to seeking traces of bamboo.<\/a> With Cyber Ninjas, they hired a company whose chief has echoed Trump\u2019s unfounded claims of problems with the 2020 election.
<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Looking for traces of what? <\/p>\n

Are they worried that some snacking Panda was messing with the ballots?<\/p>\n

The senator laid out conditions for anyone contacting voters: Canvassers would convey that participation is voluntary; would not select people for characteristics such as race or party affiliation; would not carry a weapon; and would not wear or say something implying an affiliation with police, immigration, tax enforcement or the military, among other requirements.<\/p>\n

Karlan, in her letter, raised particular worries about targeting by race. \u201cPast experience with similar investigative efforts around the country has raised concerns that they can be directed at minority voters, which potentially can implicate the anti-intimidation prohibitions of the Voting Rights Act,\u201d Karlan said.
<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Voter intimidation is the goal here. <\/p>\n

Responding to the Justice Department\u2019s security concerns, Fann said that \u201cnot a single ballot or other official election document has been destroyed, defaced, lost, or adulterated.\u201d Ballots must be securely maintained for 22 months following a federal election.
<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Shining bright UV lights on ballots in an attempt to find signs of Panda infiltration cause the ballots to fade.<\/p>\n

Their Panda hunt will deface the ballots.  It’s basic physics.<\/p>\n

\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/p>\n

Former Arizona secretary of state Ken Bennett, the audit\u2019s spokesman, previously told The Washington Post <\/a>that Cyber Ninjas had not begun interviewing voters and said the company has pledged to do nothing that would constitute intimidation.
<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The owner of Cyber Ninjas, an enterprise with no prior experience with vote tabulation or canvassing, has already prejudged the outcome.  Expecting them to follow the law is a fiction.<\/p>\n

This is a clearly an attempt to intimidate voters and to manufacture uncertainty on an already twice audited vote tabulation process.<\/p>\n

Why do Republicans hate America? <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Department of Justice wants to have a word with Cyber Ninjas’ and their audit of Maricopa County Presidential ballots. Given the lax security, and the fact that this audit included what appeared to an attempt to intimidate voters, it comes as no surprise that the Feds were profoundly unamused: The Arizona Senate will hold …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[971,970,969,1039,978,1084],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-200325","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-civil-rights","category-corruption","category-evil","category-incompetence","category-politics","category-voting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200325"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=200325"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200325\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=200325"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=200325"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=200325"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}