How Arizona's 2020 election 'audit' went from comedy to tragedy
By Hayes Brown, MSNBC Opinion Columnist
There’s an old joke that goes: “What’s the difference between tragedy and comedy? Time.” The idea is that the further removed you are from an event, the easier it is to laugh at the absurdity that shines through the pain you felt at the time.
Despite originally being scheduled to end in mid-May, the hand recount portion of Arizona’s “audit” of the 2020 election is reportedly due to wrap up this week. Watching the latest developments in the slapdash affair, I have to say the inanity that was so captivating at the beginning is giving way to genuine trepidation.
The grift unfolding there wasn’t lacking for bits that would seem a bit much in fiction — Cyber Ninjas! Bamboo fibers! UV lights hunting secret watermarks! The latest twist in the saga feels like it should be in that same vein, at least at first.
This month, local outlets like Arizona Mirror learned that copies of some of the voting system data being analyzed — a term we use very loosely — might not still be in Arizona at all. A report from CNN last week confirmed that the data had been shipped more than a thousand miles away, to Montana via truck.
On the surface, the details of the report are ridiculous; they left CNN reporter Gary Tuchman walking down a Montana road that may or may not have a secret “secure powerful laboratory” to go through the forensic data. CNN even went through the length of getting aerial footage and checking real estate listings to figure out what the property that might have the data looks like:
Funny, right? Except former President Donald Trump, who for a con man makes for a deliciously easy mark, believed as recently as late May that the audit “could undo” the results of the 2020 election, therefore putting him back in office. And that belief is what takes this whole affair from being a farce to a threat to elections around the country.
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Posted By: Dea. Ron Gray Sr.
Monday, June 21st 2021 at 10:58PM
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