This sounds like pure harassment. No wonder the Department of Justice shut this down and quick. Cyber Ninjas had a plan to go knock on the doors of people whose votes were “identified statistically” as “votes that did not make sense” and then they planned “to knock on doors to confirm if valid voters actually lived at the stated address.” Now that sounds iffy on its face and so of course the DOJ inquired about the methods used to identify these anomalies. According to AZ Central, Cyber Ninjas CEO Doug Logan refused to explain these methods, but he went into a Mike Lindell-esque dingaling explanation, about how this information was “based on a statistical analysis performed by someone else he would not identify and maintained that canvassers would not ask anyone how they voted.”
The head of the Arizona State Senate, Karen Fann, is apparently having second thoughts about having contracted with Cyber Ninjas, because she wrote a letter to the DOJ’s Pamela Karlan and “expressed concern about the nationwide overhauls being made to voting and election practices and how many of the measures appear to be aimed at predominately minority communities.” Umm…yeah. Could this be an awakening down in Arizona?Â
“Such investigative efforts can have a significant intimidating effect on qualified voters that can deter them from seeking to vote in the future,” wrote Karlan.
Although the Arizona Senate has indicated that it will suspend canvassing for the foreseeable future, Fann did not say if the effort would not be revisited in the future.
Fann wrote, “If canvassing is necessary to complete the audit, we believe these protocols, which will be reinforced by thorough training programs, would permit the Senate to discharge its legislative oversight and investigation functions without compromising the rights or privacy of any voter.”
It sounds to me like they’re walking back the canvassing because they know how stupid it is, but they want to make it sound like it was a good idea, but the training for it is just a little off. Right.
But who cares? The good news is that this gestapo-esque and totally unnecessary invasion of privacy is not going to take place now. It could not have been a good thing to have somebody knocking on your door and verifying that you are who you are. That’s a little too police state for most people’s taste, particularly when you factor in that Cyber Ninjas was simply shooting from the hip and deciding willy nilly whose door to knock on. That makes it unconscionable.
And the comical aspect of this is, Donald Trump is glued to this story. He obsesses on it. So this will drive him nuts, because it’s just one more pin in the clutch of delusional balloons that buoys up his life.
Are these people–any of them: state legislators, would-be “cyber ninjas,” vote counters, whoever–this stupid? I don’t need an answer. I believe I know! Won’t it be something when all these state legislatures have to undo these stupid laws they rammed through with no forethought other than Dear Leader’s madcap influence? My, my. Stupidity is contagious. ?
That’s just the bottom of what they’re probably going to try to do. Phone calls? Mailings?
“But who cares? The good news is that this gestapo-esque and totally unnecessary invasion of privacy is not going to take place now.” Although it doesn’t happen often on this I must strongly disagree.
Call me crazy, or paranoid or say that I’m wearing a tinfoil hat, but what’s happened already is far worse than bad enough. You know the old saying about how things can always get worse? This is a prime example of it and we don’t even know how bad the situation truly is. Worse, we may not know for a long time, if ever.
I care about the fact that these people got their hands on that voter information in the first place, before having someone run it to pick out lists of people to “interview.” That information was submitted by people who simply wished to exercise their basic right to vote to a government agency under rules and more importantly LAWS to protect it. It is now out there and being spread, or will be to who knows what people and entities? Just because doors aren’t being knocked on now or will be in the near future doesn’t mean all manner of dirty tricks and harassment, not to mention outright threats and intimidation won’t take place down the road when the glare of the media spotlight shifts?
How many copies of that voter information have been made already? And given to the RNC, Q and so on?
That’s why this whole damned thing should have never, ever been allowed in the first place. And for the life of me I can’t understand why there aren’t some of the best lawyers in the country right now, this very minute seeking injunctive relief (and with the funding to press it all the way to SCOTUS and SCREAMING for Emergency status to advance it through the appeals to get it there) to stop this.
Of course, it doesn’t change the sad, appalling fact that that all this private voter information is now out there. But maybe if we fight like hell we can limit this damage to the residents of a single state.
These Q’s know no limits! Every time these clueless, arrogant spoiled brats take on the disguise of the super rich who live like laws and rules don’t apply to them, I am naively shocked. I thought chain of custody of ballots was sacrosanct, that they were NEVER to leave the election offices, never mind giving voter information to one party behind closed doors. Their attitude of entitlement, learned at the feet of their orange master, feels like a lance to my sense of justice every time.
Whatever became of truth, honor and protocols? Aren’t there laws against this? Do we have to legislate against every possible knavery that might pop up in their feverish adolescent minds?
One thing I think we can all agree on is that it, “SOUNDS”, like a pile of bull crap is going on in AZ … since it is being done in secret, there is absolutely no visibility, AND who the hell unlocked the vault where the millions of paper votes were stored in the first place, knowing the people going to, “USE THEM”, were NOT qualified as a state election unit … never mind that physical abuse over time can destroy a state’s record of a very important function, electing our President, who stands much taller than DJT …
Was this just designed by a couple kids with crayons and a pad of paper? There is NO WAY any of this sounds legal … where did any authority enter the picture?
So many unknowns, makes the whole action suspect from day one … the DOJ and FBI need some time reviewing exactly what, who and when … it appears they may have accessed the mail-in jacket envelopes, with names, if so, this is immediately criminal …
The state troopers should be activated to enter the activity zone and arrest all the management people on site, delivered to a holding area, all counters sent home, the building locked down, under guard to protect any evidence and open ballots until a qualified election unit can scan the operation for damage and fraud and restoring secure storage of the ballots … the GOP has gone ballistic bonkers in this kindergarten level stupidity … they need to be identified and charged like the common criminals they are …
It is MUCH too late to think we can “protect” the ballots. Chain of custody is not just broken, It’s obliterated and any memory erased.
Unfortunately, an Arizona judge allowed this charade. I have no faith that the Supreme Court, as currently constituted, would have a problem with this.
Oh, yes, this needs to be locked down and investigated fully!! It sounds like a way to add to voter suppression as well as gathering names for fund raising. What the hell country are we living in anyway?
I think the writing is on the wall and soon there will be a massive push to eliminate the secrecy of our ballots. Call me paranoid but I just can’t see this ending any other way except for states with majority G.Q.P. running things to try to pass laws taking that last little bit of democracy folks have left to them. Laws like that will likely eliminate the need for a lot of these voter restriction laws because the chilling effect it would have on people who rely on this secrecy (i.e. communities of color, etc). How many people will be turned off of voting completely if they know some yahoo from the G.Q.P. party or corporate shill will be checking to see just how they voted?
Don’t give me the old wheeze about how constitutionally guaranteed this may or may not be. We have relied on the “right to privacy” under our U.S. Constitution to access reproductive health services. We now have what amounts to a theocracy on the S.C. that is going to shred that idea-Thomas has made mention on a number of occasions there is no guaranteed right to privacy particularly when it comes to a woman’s health. Do you think he is the only one with this little bee in the bonnet? Constitutional “guarantees” only are such when you have people on the S.C. who interpret rather than recreate the Constitution.
How are they going to identify which ballot belongs to which voter? Because once it’s in a ballot box, there’s no way to tell who marked it.
I used to live in the St. Gregory’s Church neighborhood in Central Phoenix. Great neighborhood, solid D, Phoenix solid D, but Maricopa County elections have been and continue to be largely controlled by GOP. Several recent election days/nights hold bad memories for me. Election night 2014: a guy on drugs kicks down my front door and enters my home. Fought him out of the house, called Phoenix PD, they found him hiding in the bushes in the neighbor’s yard. I ID him and he’s arrested. Spring 2016 AZ Presidential Preference (Primary): I wait in line 6 hours and 25 minutes to cast a ballot by filling in 1 dot for HRC. With little advance notice the GOP institute voter suppression tactics by decreasing the number of polling stations in Central Phoenix by 2/3rds and also reducing the number of poll workers by 3/4ths. My back has still not recovered from standing in line for that long to vote, although I was provided free food and water during my long wait in line. Fast forward to today’s fake “audit”/illegal recount of Maricopa County Nov. 2020 ballots by the Cyber Ninjas. The guy in your header photo with his hands out in charge of overseeing this fraud is none other than Ken Bennett, the AZ Senate “audit” liaison in charge of this fiasco. His racing fuel/used oil storage business in Prescott was mysteriously torched in the late ’90s destroying tax and other records while he was under investigation by state and federal govt. agencies for tax fraud and environmental violations. After the torching, all investigations were dropped due to lack of evidence (burned up in the fire) and because he was a hands-off GOP politician. Also his son served time in prison for sodomy using baseball bats on 13 boys he was a summer Camp Counselor for them. These are the types of criminals involved with overseeing this illegal fake “audit”. They consider themselves above the law. To them the ends justify the means and they will break any law & do anything to gain power, stay in power and get their way unless/until they are stopped by a judge or arrested. No surprise whatsoever that they would want to knock on doors to attempt to interview (intimidate) D voters to invent stories to attempt to back up their ad hominem fallacies to back up their lies about D voter fraud. Glad this was stopped. Hope this whole thing is terminated ASAP. Huge stain on Arizona election integrity to allow this illegal scam audit to proceed.