And while the pessimist in me agrees that there's a lot of bad outcomes possible... let's just take a minute and contemplate just how remarkably stupid and incoherent the Maricopa Recount actually is, and how bad it is actually going.
For months, Arizona Republicans insisted that there were so many errors and frauds in the counting of Maricopa County - which took longer than just about everyone to certify its votes, but where Joe Biden pulled ahead several days and thousands of votes sooner than expected - that there should be a recount. So Maricopa County recounted them... and got the same result. Then they audited the count... and got the same result.
Still unsatisfied, Arizona Republicans used a hugely doubtful approach of having the state Senate subpoena all of Maricopa County's ballots, records, and equipment to... well, it's still kind of unclear what all they think they're going to do, but a recount is definitely part of it.
Lots of people are making fun of the name of "Cyber Ninjas" the company hired to do the recount process; but I think the real joke is underappreciated: there's nothing to suggest that a small cybersecurity operation ever understood, had the expertise, or the organizational skill to pull off a recount of one of the five largest counties in the country. And so far, that's the joke that making this recount into a punchline.
First of all, let's be clear - one of the hardest things about the Arizona recount story is actually getting coherent journalism out of it. Reporters have been systematically blocked from much relevant fact gathering, and only the most enterprising have been able to tease out valuable insight. Such insight, as it is, has all pointed in one direction: this thing is a mess, verging on a disaster.
Second of all, the sheer size and scope of the task has been misunderstood or underestimated almost all along. There are 2.1 million ballots cast in Maricopa County (62% of the state's population), and parts or all of 8 congressional districts. As I said, almost no county or election district elsewhere in the country has that volume of counting to accomplish. Almost any county of that size takes days, if not weeks, to fully report (New York City. Miami. Houston. Atlanta. Detroit. See a pattern?). Maricopa is, yes, the Parent County of Phoenix, so there's a city in there... but there's also the 13 smaller cities that have bloomed over the years around it. All of the Phoenix suburbs. The sprawl is absurd.
Of the 2.1 million ballots, officials overseeing the count say that 250,000 have been counted over 3 weeks. At that rate, according to the New York Times, it will take until August to complete the recount. The recount was scheduled to end this Friday. It's not at all clear Cyber Ninjas has enough staff - they have already asked for, and got, approval to add headcount to their counting staff... which is still a problem, since the Republicans, and the Ninjas, seem to be vetting potential counters for party affiliations (though apparently, not for things like, were you someone actually on the ballot, which caused them to fire a former legislator who was in the room for the first few days).
Then there's cost. The Senate budgeted a laughable $150,000 towards the effort; the budget of the Maricopa County Election Board is in the millions. That's okay, though, no one believed you could bring in the count at that budget, and there are a number of wealthy donors throwing in money to complete it. But money and patience are not infinite. And at some point, soon, there will be growing pressure to ask just why costs keep spiraling and completion seems further and further away.
Of course, that's ignoring the absurd, crazy things the recount is supposed to assess: like are there ballots from Asia snuck into the count (hence the insane tales of searches for "bamboo" in the ballot paper), or did dead people vote (hint: if you voted, then died, you are not a dead person who voted... except you are).There were suggestions that staff would be calling or visiting voters at their homes (which, yes is a violation of voter intimidation laws... but again... what staff?). Because neither the Senate, nor the Ninjas, seem able to focus on specific examples of specific issues... every ballot is apparently being subjected to multiple inspections to check for every crazy accusation. Except no one is exactly sure if any of them are actually true.
More to the point... if there was any evidence of any truth to any potential accusation, we'd be hearing about it. The Cyber Ninjas specifically gave 24/7 video access to OANN, which has camera feeds monitoring every aspect of the recount (or so it is claimed). Even if OANN weren't primed to announce broadly and widely any discovery at a moment's notice (or conversely, if it's true OANN is broke, then maybe not), the right wing blogosphere and media are primed for proof Trump's crazy Big Lie fraud claims. They are desperate for anything that would bolster a joke argument the world refuses to take seriously. Yet, 3 weeks of work, 250,000 ballots examined... and nothing. Not a leak, not a suggestion of a counting anomaly. Nothing. No bamboo. No mysteriously dead voter. Nothing.
The only stories coming out of the recount are detail after detail describing just how half-assed, incompetent and potentially illegal the whole exercise is. Blue ink pens were handed out to counters... until someone pointed out it's illegal to use implements that could create new voter fraud. Observers were barred from the recount... until a judge had to step in and order permission for the media and outside observers. Boxes were mishandled and possibly double counted until errors were pointed out. The Justice Department says they're concerned about tampering. Maricopa County now says they're going to court to fight the Cyber Ninjas for the county's routers. And we have no idea what the Ninjas will or won't do to the servers that hold the electronic records of the original count.
As of May 14th, the whole recount has to be stopped because the Coliseum being used to hold it has another event coming in; it will be interesting to see just how every piece of the recount - never mind the pallets of those 2.1 million ballots, still in boxes - is stored and secured. But that's just details. What's truly insane, as of right now, is that this pointless, ridiculous exercise could be resumed, with no end in sight, for months.
And I'll just say it: for all the fears of some massively tampered, fictional account that Trump won with new numbers and trumped evidence of fraud... the real story here is likely to be one the right can neither spin nor talk their way out of: a badly inaccurate count that gives Biden more votes than the official count, no evidence of significant fraud (except, possibly, by the recount staff), and months of wasted time and costs that make further efforts in other cities and states prohibitively foolish. As crazy as it sounds, the best bet for many liberals is to let this farce play on and on until it plays itself into an embarrassing and very public truth: the whole recount fantasy is the biggest, and most wasteful piece yet of The Big Lie. And when they have to live that down, the right may very well have counted its way into the reckoning over the 2020 election that will truly wreck the whole show. And I am so totally here for it. Count on that.
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