Trump Supporter Deny Results, Hawk Coins

24 September 2021

in DOT

Reading Time: 6 mins read

The results of the Arizona election audit are in, and it’s (still) official: President Joe Biden won, and supporters of former President Donald Trump are struggling to process the news. Some are in denial, others are disappointed, and a few have seized the moment as an opportunity to make a buck.

After Biden narrowly carried the swing state in last year’s election, Trump and his ardent supporters baselessly claimed that there was widespread election fraud. They were particularly fixated on Maricopa County, where Biden won by 45,000 votes.

Although the county conducted two post-election audits that confirmed its results, Arizona Senate Republicans subsequently ordered a third. They selected Cyber Ninjas, a little-known Florida company, to conduct it.

The audit was immediately behest with controversy.

Cyber Ninjas is led by a man who had previously spread unfounded election conspiracy theories. His company had no known experience auditing elections.

Reports emerged of auditors’ bizarre and laughable methods, such as using black lights for an unknown purpose, searching for kinematic artifacts for a similar reason, and questioning whether “Cheeto finger” on a ballot was evidence of fraud. They also hunted for bamboo fibers based on a debunked conspiracy that fake ballots were shipped from South Korea.

In spite of all this, according to a draft report reviewed by multiple outlets, the audit ultimately concluded that Biden indeed won.

Maricopa County trumpeted the news on its verified Twitter account—but not without criticizing the report’s “errors & faulty conclusions about how Maricopa County conducted the 2020 General Election.”

“Regardless of what ends up in the final report, what Cyber Ninjas & co. conducted was not a good audit. It did not build trust,” Maricopa County tweeted on Friday.

Now Trump supporters are freaking out. Many, including Trump himself, simply refuse to believe the audit’s result.

*First Published: Sep 24, 2021, 2:23 pm CDT

Claire Goforth

Claire Goforth is an award winning journalist covering politics and justice from her home base in Jacksonville, Florida. Her work has appeared in publications ranging from regional alt-weeklies to the Guardian.