Don’t expect to find proof of the ‘Crime of the Century’ in Arizona’s audit

The wait is over, America.

After five truly astonishing months — after spinning ballots and bamboo hunts and a fair amount of  evidence that Trump ninjas make for bad auditors —  the results of Arizona’s UV lighted, 5G photographed study of Maricopa County’s 2.1 million ballots are in.

Of course, nobody outside of far-right circles knows what this intrepid search for evidence of the “Crime of the Century” has found.

But here are three things that I can predict with reasonable confidence:

About all those once-hot conspiracy theories

1.   We won’t hear anything about shredded ballots found in dumpsters or Sharpies stealing votes in Republican precincts.

We won’t find proof that hundreds of thousands undocumented immigrants voted, as Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani suggested during a hearing in November.

And we won’t see evidence that masses of ballots are missing, as suggested in June by a far-right congressional candidate then spread coast-to-coast by far-right propagandists posing as reporters.

We won’t hear anything about 40,000 Biden ballots secretly flown in from Asia or about a Venezuela-inspired plot to rig Dominion Voting Systems equipment or any of the various conspiracies floated over the last 10 months to keep tempers high and donations flowing.

And about those 100,000-plus suspicious ballots that head ninja Doug Logan highlighted in July — including 74,000 early ballots that were counted but never requested by voters?  (I believe Trump called them “magically appearing ballots.”)

Don’t expect to hear about them either. That bombshell promptly blew up in Logan’s face when Maricopa County explained how the inexperienced auditors were misinterpreting data.

Look for little in the way of guns that smoke

2.   The Cyber Ninjas will insinuate that something nefarious happened here.  You don’t hire an auditor who has both promoted conspiracy claims and worked elsewhere with Trump allies challenging the election results and get anything other than a conclusion that fraud was afoot.

Most likely, the ninjas will announce they’ve found questionable election practices that suggest fraud and if only the county had cooperated and if only the ninjas had had more time and — this is key — more money, they could produce irrefutable proof that Trump was robbed of Arizona’s vote.

Look for plenty of talk about “vulnerabilities” and little in the way of guns that smoke.

Friday’s festivities begin at 1 p.m. with a presentation at which no questions can be asked, followed by a press conference. Only then is the actual report expected to be released.

If the Senate and its auditors had irrefutable proof, I’m guessing they wouldn’t be releasing their report at mid-afternoon on a Friday, evening on the East Coast.

This nightmare isn’t over

3.   This audit will change not a single mind.

If you believe the election was stolen, you will come away saying, aHA. Some of our leading lights didn’t even wait for the results to demand that the election be decertified. 

And if you believe — as every test and sample hand count required by state law showed — that the election results were accurate, you will come away saying, SEE?

Nobody’s mind will be changed which means this audit, supposedly launched to “restore voter confidence”, is an epic fail.

And, it isn’t over. There are political points to be scored, after all, and ambitions to be stroked and money to be made.

Translation: Our long national nightmare is far, tragically far, from over.

Reach Roberts at laurie.roberts@arizonarepublic.com. Follow her on Twitter at @LaurieRoberts.

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*** This article has been archived for your research. The original version from The Arizona Republic can be found here ***