https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/05/arizona-fake-election-audit-ruined-state-voting-equipment?utm_source=nl&utm_brand=vf&utm_mailing=VF_HIVE_052421&utm_medium=email&bxid=5c8ab7700564ce104853ea91&cndid=56692693&hasha=9c8dc2c8433f0f210392a1c0c9831ed8&hashb=f064be6284fa1ba75012386552774282e416916a&hashc=c74f948ab9752ff82e2ca44cab7f39a8ec63f899addc078246b23fb1af5474c3&esrc=bounceX&mbid=mbid%3DCRMVYF012019&utm_campaign=VF_HIVE_052421&utm_term=VYF_Hive
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Arizona’s Fake Election Audit Has Ruined a Bunch of the State’s Voting
Equipment
May 21, 2021
The partisan 2020 “audit” in Arizona may not only erode public confidence in
the election process—it could literally compromise the security of voting
systems in the state. Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs warned Maricopa
County officials on Thursday that in turning over voting machines to
Republican legislators and Cyber Ninjas, the private firm hired to oversee
the recount, the integrity of the equipment has been jeopardized and it must
be replaced. “Once election officials lose custody and control over voting
systems and components, those devices should not be reused in future
elections,” Hobbs wrote in a letter
<https://context-cdn.washingtonpost.com/notes/prod/default/documents/0fabfea5-6c02-47ec-a4cc-d1648595476c/note/dc471c84-ee3a-4173-bab3-d6b0cf9a9832.#page=1>.
“Rather, decommissioning and replacing those devices is the safest option as
no methods exist to adequately ensure those machines are safe to use in
future elections.”
“The lack of physical security and transparency means we cannot be certain
who accessed the voting equipment and what might have been done to them,”
Hobbs continued, citing “troubling security lapses” that have been documented
in news reports and the handling of the process by Cyber Ninjas, whose
founder, Doug Logan, has championed
<https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/05/donald-trump-arizona-republican-election-audit>
Donald Trump’s baseless election fraud claims.
The compromised equipment—which taxpayers, already footing the bill for the
frivolous recount, would have to pay to replace—further underscores just what
a shit show this whole thing is. There’s been precious little transparency,
and the glimpses we have gotten into the undertaking have shown it to be
brazenly partisan and amateurish; at one point, a GOP state lawmaker who was
on the 2020 ballot and who was present at the Capitol Hill riot was observed
participating in the recount process. Meanwhile, the ultraviolet light the
so-called auditors are using may be damaging ballots. That the whole thing
has also rendered the voting machines unsafe to use is the cherry on top of
it all. “We will not use any of the returned tabulation equipment unless the
county, state and vendor are confident that there is no malicious hardware or
software installed on the devices,” a Maricopa County elections department
spokesperson told
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/arizona-audit-voting-equipment/2021/05/20/a8370368-b9a4-11eb-a5fe-bb49dc89a248_story.html>
the Washington Post.
Taxpayers there, whose dollars are being wasted on this nonsense, should be
furious. The rest of us should be wary. Right now it’s happening in Arizona,
but if Trump and his allies get their way, these kinds of “audits” will soon
get going in other states he lost to Joe Biden. Indeed, Republicans are
reportedly hoping to use the Arizona audit as a kind of blueprint
<https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/05/arizona-election-audit-donald-trump>
for future efforts to re-litigate the 2020 election, not because there was
any of the fraud Trump says there was, but because such challenges help them
sow doubt in the process going forward. Ostensibly, they are doing this in
the name of “election security.” The fact is that they are making the process
less so.
