«

»

AZ Audit Sonic Boom Impacts NC

September 25, 2021

Sep 25, 2021 (Sanford, NC) The results of the Arizona Senate’s election audit came in and there’s something in it for everybody.

For example, while the never-Trumpers are ecstatic over the top line reassurance from Senate President Karen Fann, that the ballot counts remained unchanged, they ignore the rest of the report and are nervous over why people are still pushing for statewide audits.

The auditor’s final hand count–which quadruple checked every single one of the 2.1 million ballots–matches Maricopa County’s official machine count.” – Arizona Senate President, Karen Fann)

If that’s all that mattered in this audit, we see why the media is gloating. . .  but there’s a whole lot more to this story and today’s podcast goes into what the Arizona Senate’s audit did uncover. President Fann’s criminal referrals to their state’s Attorney General should show North Carolina lawmakers their way ahead for an audit of our 2020 elections.
Yes, the tallies matched, but . . . A 2016 conviction of a poll worker named Richard Robert Rawling gives us a clue about the short cuts some election workers have taken in the past in order to balance the books. Of course, North Carolina State Board of Elections (NC SBE) Public Misinformation Officer, Patrick Gannon, issued a go-back-to-sleep press release on the matter, but WRAL committed a random act of journalism by reporting more of the facts of the case.
All told, “Investigators determined that Rawling ran or ordered subordinates to run provisional ballots through tabulators more than once and made manual changes to the ballot count so the results of the provisional canvass would match the number of approved provisional ballots. How many ballots were affected? Oh, just 1,900 of them. But don’t worry. The books balanced in the end, and that raises other questions.
Kim Strach’s SBE gets credit for finding the anomaly, but what evidence was examined along the way? More importantly, what evidence was destroyed?
Evidence destruction is at the heart of the Arizona audit and criminal referrals have been made over that issue. There’s a 22-month do-not-destroy order for all things related to federal elections and that includes electronic files. This podcast covers the following points:
  • How the five major findings from the AZ audit give great insight into where NC election auditors should first look;
  • The Cyber Ninja report from the audit documented the internal mismatches affecting thousands of ballots.
  • Note the chain of events began with a) an audit, b) then criminal referrals, c) and now come the prosecutions. As a bonus to their great work, we see how utterly ridiculous it would be to appoint a Special Prosecutor before knowing what happened. Besides running out the clock to the September 3, 2022 document-retention end date, a Special Prosecutor would accomplish nothing else.
  • Constructive advice to lawmakers on the mission and function of their own audit team or Inspector General or whatever they want to call it. Among their functions, this unit would need a way to “red-team” our elections along the lines of how the Strategic Air Command (SAC) used to “attack” our nuclear bases and then report out the vulnerabilities they managed to exploit along the way.
  • With all of the policy minions they have already employed, it would be easy to stand up a five-person team that would have a serious impact. They could also reassign some NCSBE employees. Many of their own cyber ninja types are in billets that are funded by CISA or some other federal agency. Do we really want them being overseen by the same agency they are partly responsible for watching?

Click image to launch today’s podcast.

The one other point covered in today’s special podcast was a plea for concerned citizens to do more than click the “like” button on their keyboards.

While continued pressure on lawmakers (to audit 2020) is never a bad idea, it’s not enough.

Now the game swings to the one thing a politician hates more than anything else: Primary challengers. We recommend that concerned citizens begin screening and recruiting people who might be willing to run against local incumbent lawmakers over the issue of election integrity.

Not only does the Legislature need to find out what happened in 2020, but they need to take actions that will put the SBE on notice that pulling any Arizona-type tampering will impact their careers and possibly their freedom.

Other Links From Today’s Report:

WRAL news account of the 2016 Durham (NC) conviction of a man for tampering with 1,900 ballots.

The NCSBE account of the same story. (Note how the WRAL piece provided more information.)

Landing page for all results from the Arizona audit.

Link to President Fann’s audit cover letter.

Link to all Cyber Ninja reports and presentations.