Arizona Republicans’ desperate crusade to find nonexistent voter fraud

By Editorial Board,

ARIZONA SENATE President Karen Fann (R) says she is determined to “ensure the integrity of the vote” in her state. Which is supposedly why, five months after Election Day, following multiple credible audits that found no hint of substantial fraud, she insists that the state Senate must conduct yet another audit, re-scanning and hand-counting every ballot cast in Phoenix’s Maricopa County, as well as digging into electronic election systems.

This would be a big job for even the most experienced election official or voting company, never mind state legislators. So Ms. Fann and her Senate colleagues tapped Cyber Ninjas, a little-known Florida cybersecurity firm that boasts that it provides “general consulting” and “ethical hacking” services, to lead the audit. Arizona journalists quickly discovered one possible reason for this puzzling choice: Cyber Ninjas founder Doug Logan appears to have pushed pro-Trump election conspiracy theories on a Twitter account he apparently deleted in January.

“The parallels between the statistical analysis of Venezuela and this year’s election are astonishing,” one tweet read, which included the hashtag #StopTheSteal. “I’m tired of hearing people say there was no fraud. It happened, it’s real, and people better get wise fast,” read a tweet Mr. Logan apparently retweeted in December. He was also involved in a lawsuit claiming election fraud in Michigan.

“This firm’s CEO not only harbors conspiratorial beliefs about the 2020 election, but has shared conspiracies about Dominion election equipment, the exact equipment he has been hired to audit,” Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs (D) objected.

“Dominion supports all forensic audits conducted by independent, federally accredited Voting System Test Labs — but this is not that,” said a spokesperson for Dominion Voting Systems, the target of much pro-Trump election conspiracy theorizing. “Over a thousand independent audits and recounts have taken place across the country since Election Day, and they all demonstrated the accuracy and reliability of our voting systems.”

Maricopa County’s Republican-dominated Board of Supervisors, which has long insisted that it ran a sound election, announced Thursday that the state Senate could not use county facilities to conduct their farcical fishing expedition. So Ms. Fann has no place to put the 2.1 million Maricopa County ballots she wants to audit, and she will rely on Cyber Ninjas to handle, process and evaluate sensitive election materials and equipment.

This is not the behavior of a party confident that it has a real case. The Arizona Senate’s bootleg election audit is a pathetic attempt to muddy the waters when the truth is clear and obvious to any reasonable observer: President Biden won Arizona, and the presidency, in perhaps the cleanest presidential election the nation has ever run.

Indeed, Republican efforts in state after state, including Arizona, to restrict voting reflect a similar lack of confidence. A party assured that it had a popular message and appealing candidates would seek to increase voter turnout. Instead, from Arizona to Georgia to Texas, GOP state lawmakers continue to push unnecessary new laws designed to suppress voter turnout.

Then-President Donald Trump won 74 million votes last year. Instead of making up stories about how Mr. Biden didn’t actually win 81 million, or trying to make it harder for Democrats to cast ballots, Republicans should have asked what they need to do to get to 81 million, or more. If they had done so, they would not have taken the desperate, destructive, anti-democratic steps they have since November.

Read more: Jennifer Rubin: We should be concerned about voting security, just not in the way Republicans suggest Ruth Marcus: Georgia’s shameful new voting laws are a product of GOP desperation The Post’s View: Trump’s continuing obsession makes Georgia ground zero in the voting wars Dana Milbank: Republicans aren’t fighting Democrats. They’re fighting democracy. Erik Wemple: Dominion lawsuit outs Fox News’ disinformation campaign

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