Arizona's Bizarre "Audit" Stokes Fears Of More To Come

     Honestly, I don't know when the Arizona "audit" is going to end, and I don't think the people there do, either. The audit was scheduled to end in May, and then in June, but has been extended until the middle of this month. They were considerate enough to clear out for a high school graduation in between "defending democracy," though. This place is a circus, and I mean that literally: the auditorium is located in an AZ fairground. A lone Trump supporter with a flag bigger than a truck and a handgun in a leather holster stands guard at the rear entrance in case ANTIFA tries to storm the audit like Trump supporters did the U.S. Capitol. They are checking for every manner of bizarre conspiracy theory, even trying to figure out if bamboo ballots were flown in from China. I didn't know that all paper in China was made from bamboo, probably because it's just a racist stereotype and not true at all. 

     It may look funny, but this audit worries me. The Arizona Senate, under the GOP, is spending millions in taxpayer money on an audit that has no power to change the election results. The brother of convicted felon Mike Flynn is there promoting Trump's election lie and claiming that "80 percent of Americans" and "30 percent of Democrats" think the election was stolen. Let's do the math. At a 50-50ish split, with every Republican and 30 percent of Democrats believing that to be true, that would only be 65 percent of the American public. But that's not even the case. With about two-thirds of Republicans believing the Big Lie and a negligible amount of Democrats, that equates to about 35 percent of Americans who believe Joe Biden is an illegitimate president. Okay, so the beer bellied guy in the t-shirt isn't trustworthy, then who is? 

     Not the audit organizers, either. The "Cyber Ninjas" were formed in 2019 with $150,000 in total capital and zero contracts in any field, let alone in auditing elections. However, the organizers admit that the sole purpose of this audit, unbeknownst to hillbillies who support Trump, is to support the dark money-written legislation being discussed or implemented in states like Texas, Arizona, Georgia, and Michigan. They claim they want people to trust democracy, but their unwillingness to accept defeat is the only reason people are questioning it in the first place. They want this audit to go nationwide. Only legislatures can hire these companies, and states like Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia, and Pennsylvania, three of which have Democratic governors, all have Republican-led legislatures thanks to 2010's map gerrymandering. 

     The swing states are not all targets. Texas, Ohio, and North Carolina went for Trump, so, of course, the GOP claims no fraud in these states, and they will not be audited. Nevada has a Democratic governor and legislature and the smallest number of electoral votes of any 2020 swing state, so I doubt they will have an audit there, either. Michigan has a GOP-controlled legislature, but even most Republicans in that state have not been able to justify voter fraud claims. In fact, Rudy Giuliani and his troupe of doofuses are facing criminal investigation in Michigan for lying to the courts there. Michigan, therefore, is up in the air.

     Lawmakers in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin are already making moves for an audit in each of these states, and Georgia, the hottest political battleground of the decade (controlled at the state level by the GOP but able to mobilize enough urban voters to secure Democratic wins in the Senate and the 2020 presidential vote) will likely do so as well. This audit in Arizona, and the ones that will likely follow in the three or four states I have outlined, are designed by Republicans to make their constituents angry, to make them feel like victims of a corrupt system that needs to be fixed. This "fix," I fear, is Jim Crow 2.0, and the same Republicans gaslighting January 6th are setting the stage for political violence not seen in 160 years. If the GOP does not suffer crushing defeats in 2022 and 2024, they will continue down the path of conspiracy theories and lies forever. It will be the party's legacy, and, if they do not stop, it will be America's epitaph.