On today’s BradCast, (riddled with a few tech probs at the station, so apologies for any incoherence on my part!) we bring you up to date on some of the latest developments in the insane, dangerously non-transparent “audit” theater in Maricopa County (Phoenix), Arizona being carried out by the Trump-supporting Cyber Ninjas company. [Audio link to full show is posted below summary.
[ALSO: See important “SHOW NOTE” at end of this summary!]
Notably, a story we broke some weeks ago, after the Ninjas were forced by a state judge to publicly release what suffices as their procedural documents [PDF] for the “audit” (they had claimed their procedures for counting public ballots from the 2020 election were “trade secrets”) was confirmed, at least in part, by an excellent article at Slate this weekend by Jeremy Stahl. In short, we had explained weeks ago how the Ninjas poorly documented procedures (see p. 178 in the PDF linked above) allows them to change a MINIMUM of 42,000 votes in their so-called “audit”, without setting off any internal or external alarm bells. Stahl’s lengthy, well-reported story on the Maricopa mess, headlined “What if the renegade Arizona audit declares Trump won?” details, among many other things, the same point, that the Cyber Ninjas’ own procedures allow them to change far more votes than would be needed to falsely declare Trump actually won the state. Any such mistally is considered an acceptable rate of error in their own documented procedures — even though Joe Biden was certified to have won the state by just over 10,000 votes.
Moreover, if and when they do declare that AZ was somehow stolen from Trump, there is little that can be done to dispute such a claim, since the secure chain of custody for the 2.1 million actual ballots cast in Maricopa last year has now been irrevocably broken. Only yet another hand-count could prove or disprove such a claim by the Ninjas, since — unlike real audits — they have not allowed the public to track or oversee their daily tallies. But, after the private, Florida-based company took custody of the County’s ballots weeks ago, they could have added, removed or changed ballots at any time since.
All of that, meanwhile, as a real audit continues in Windham, NH, being run transparently by actual voting system, cybersecurity and post-election audit professionals who are allowing full public oversight. And as a judge in Georgia just granted permission for yet another post-election audit of copies of the 2020 ballots cast in Fulton County (Atlanta), Georgia’s Presidential race last year.
Of course, all of these questions about the results of last year’s elections — whether offered in good or bad faith — might have been avoided years ago had Democrats insisted on fully overseeable public elections, instead of allowing private voting machine companies to, by and large, take over America’s election with computers that tally votes, essentially, in secret. We have been warning about this nightmare for years, and now it is coming home to roost.
As our guest today, San Francisco-based attorney, election integrity advocate and Twitter rockstar JENNIFER COHN pointed out in a recent smart Twitter thread, Republicans spent years blocking Democratic legislation, the SAFE Act, which would have at least mandated post-election audits for federal races in every state. Now, Republicans are claiming they are needed all over the country. But, oddly enough — for reasons that Cohn has been unable to determine so far — Dems have failed to reintroduce the SAFE Act in this session of Congress.
She speculates today that the legislation may now be seen by Democrats as feeding into the GOP’s evidence-free claims of fraud in the 2020 election, not unlike how Dem fears of being labeled as “conspiracy theorists” over the years prevented them from challenging and demanding hand-counts after what her thread describes as “fifteen years of poll-defying victories” for Republicans.
“I don’t want to imply that I think they are equally to blame,” Cohn tells me. “But I do think that it’s a failure of leadership. Because leadership isn’t about just reacting always to what the other party does. It’s about standing for something.” She goes on to correctly note that Democrats “had an opportunity after 2016 to really be the champions of election security, and to even incorporate that into their campaign platforms, and they didn’t do it.” Doing so, “behind the scenes does not win the court of public opinion” and now that has “allowed Trump to hijack that narrative.”
“It should have been the Democrats to take that to the people, to take that to the court of public opinion. Had they done that, Trump would not be in a position to play the victim. Had the public known about the SAFE Act, and that Republicans blocked it, they would not be in the position they were to pretend to be victims” today.
Cohn is a longtime, dyed-in-the-wool Dem. So she does not level such accusations lightly. We discuss those concerns and many other points regarding the various audits — and several splits in the Election Integrity community about them — before opening up the phone to listeners with thoughts and questions for her and/or me on all of the above today.
SHOW NOTE!: We’ve just learned from my landlord that major construction — tearing up a walkway to install a new security gate — will begin on Tuesday and last anywhere from 7 to 14 days! That means jack-hammers outside of our studio will make it impossible for Desi and I to do shows for the rest of the week and maybe even next week. Our beloved guest host Nicole Sandler has agreed to fill in for us for the rest of the week…and then we’ll see where we are after next Monday’s holiday. It could be a week of re-runs, but I hope not! Just letting you know why we are forced to suddenly and unexpectedly disappear for at least the rest of the week! My apologies. Though, as usual, Nicole will do a swell job of covering for us in our unexpected absence! Thanks for your understanding! — BF
Brad-Has any research been done on the Cyber Ninja team? Who makes up the team of auditors? What is the ppl who make up the teams history in forensics and audits? They may be professionals from other careers that give them a certain set of expertise.
Honestly, BOTH sides of the aisle are guilty on lack of leadership and IMO, the reason WHY the Dems havent taken the SAFE act up again is the same reason the GOP didn’t let it pass back in 2016. –because there are crooked ppl on BOTH sides of the aisle. Shame on the Dems for not ‘fixing’ the problems when they had the chance. IMO, it needs to be fixed and whether the GOP does it or the Dems, doesn’t matter at this point. We need our democracy back, we need to know our elections are secure. Neither side is gonna be 100% happy.
Christy asked @1:
Of course. Quite a bit of research has been done, and none appear to have any experience in either voting systems or post-election audits. That said, enough research has been done to suggest that they are con-men. The Ninjas CEO served as an “expert” witness in lawsuits filed by Sidney “Kraken” Powell and appears to have lied about his company’s credentials:
But, they are “expert” enough to have built into their own process documents for the Maricopa Audit a way to change a MINIMUM of 42,000 votes without setting off any internal or external alarm bells. See p. 178 of their own documents [PDF] (released by a judge’s order after the Ninjas tried to argue their procedures for the tax-payer funded “audit” in AZ were “trade secrets”), in which they spell out an outrageous acceptable error rate for their hand-tabulation that would FAR exceed the just-over 10,000 vote statewide margin in the President race in AZ.
I reported on that almost a month ago. Jeremy Stahl’s excellent new reporting at Slate over the weekend, confirms my own from the beginning of May, as he writes:
.
I appreciate that you have a bias against the Democratic Party, but your “both sidesism” is a knee-jerk and lazy response to level an unlevel playing field for the bad guys in this case. The GOP didn’t only not “let it pass back in 2016”, they have been fighting public oversight of elections for decades, all the way up to the 2020 when they blocked every bill that might have allowed for any citizen oversight of elections, including the SAFE Act, which would have mandated paper ballots and post-election audits in federal races (ya know, the type of thing they are pretending they want now.)
Dems have been pushing for those safeguards for years — even if not as loudly as they should have, and even while rolling over in post-election periods without a fight, as Clinton did after 2016, when they should have demanded post-election public oversight.
That is a FAR cry from purposely BLOCKING election oversight, as Republicans have done for years. But if you’d like to make bad faith obstructionism the same thing as laziness and/or fear of being called bad names, sure, you can “both sides” this issue, and make yourself feel like “there are crooked ppl on BOTH sides of the aisle”. I suspect that makes it easier to tolerate the insidious, bad faith obstructionism on only one “side of the aisle” here.
When did they “ha[ve] the chance”? They were stopped by Republicans at every juncture.
Republicans who pretend to suddenly care about post-election audits could, tomorrow, introduce their own SAFE Act to require post-election audits in all federal races. They haven’t. I suspect you won’t bother to call them out for it either.