Here we go again, with another money sucking Arizona election audit

The Great Arizona Hunt for Election Fraud continues as a special master and three – count ‘em, three – IT experts from across the nation gear up to examine Maricopa County’s election equipment.

Yeah, I know. You thought the audit of the 2020 election was over, that it ended in September when the Senate’s own Trump supporting auditors could find no evidence of widespread fraud.

O ye, of far too much faith that, at some point, sanity will sink in.

That the state Senate’s Trump contingent will accept the fact that their guy lost, freeing us poor taxpayers from having to continue shelling out money to chase a conspiracy that doesn’t – and didn’t – exist.

They won’t and so we will. Open our wallets wide once again, that is.

Another audit for an already answered question

This time for a special master and three IT experts to answer the already answered question:

Was the county’s election management system hooked up to the internet and thus vulnerable to Chinese (or maybe Venezuelan?) hackers who, as the conspiracy theory goes, switched thousands of Donald Trump votes to Joe Biden?

The county has long said the equipment wasn’t connected to the internet.

The Republican-run Maricopa County Board of Supervisors hired two sets of elections experts who concluded that the election equipment wasn’t connected to the internet.

The Senate’s own audit provided the most convincing evidence of all that the election equipment wasn’t connected to the internet. (More on that in a moment.)

None of it was good enough for the Senate’s conspiracy crew. Republican senators demanded that the county turn over its computer routers but the county refused, saying their release could result in the release of confidential information about county residents.

So, we’re paying John Shadegg $500 an hour

Facing the potential loss of hundreds of millions of dollars in state-shared funding, the county and Senate finally agreed to a compromise.

Former Rep. John Shadegg is that compromise. He’s a former Republican congressman who is serving as a $500-an-hour special master, contracted by the county to answer the senators’ detailed questions about the routers.

To do that, Shadegg on Friday hired three IT experts, each of whom will travel to Arizona to examine the county’s routers and the Splunk logs that are used to analyze computerized data.

We don’t yet know how much those three experts will cost county taxpayers. Shadegg already has billed us $16,800, and the examination of equipment has not yet even begun.

Of course, that’s chicken feed compared to the millions of dollars that county and state taxpayers already have paid to accommodate a bunch of sore losers who have screamed so loudly and so often that the election was stolen – without proof – that now a shockingly  number of people believe them.

And so we continue paying whatever it takes to produce facts in order to change apparently unchangeable minds.

If there was an internet connection … oh, never mind

It’s a colossal waste of our money.

Consider that the Senate’s own audit already produced the most convincing evidence of all that there was no funny business afoot by hackers or nefarious state actors.

Think about it.

The reason the election equipment was supposedly hacked, as the conspiracy theory goes, was to change thousands of votes from Trump to Biden.

But the Senate’s own Cyber Ninja auditors hand counted the paper ballots, all 2.1 million of them. 

That hand count matched the machine tally by Dominion Voting Systems. And both counts showed Biden got more votes than Trump.

But if the machines had been hacked, wouldn’t that hand count be diff … oh, never mind.

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

Support local journalism: Subscribe to azcentral.com today.

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