The Cyber-Ninja election audit strategy is genius!

Today is an exciting day - the election audit report for Maricopa County, AZ is finally being released.  I’ve waited for this day with great anticipation, and I can’t wait to see how people respond to it.

The Arizona Senate has been criticized and lampooned for this audit, and many would say for very good reasons, not the least among them being the selection of the novice and conspiracy-minded and secretive Cyber Ninja company to conduct the audit.

However, I’d like to suggest that what the AZ Senate did was actually quite genius, if you look at it not from the lens of fairness, transparency and common sense, but from the lens of political power.

It’s all about the money

Maintenance of political power requires a lot of money and a lot of supporters.  If only one thing was clear from the Trump presidency and the 2020 election is that there are extremely motivated and passionate supporters on the right, who will go to astounding lengths to maintain political power.  And the cash flow - the realization that one can assert pretty much anything - even outrageous things, and people will show up and give of their financial resources.  And the massive databases of contact information that have been built for future political fundraising efforts.  It’s pretty clear to see - just visit the websites of any number of new right-sided organizations out there, and one quickly gets the image of a person wringing out a wet towel, attempting to squeeze out every last nickel they can convince their followers to give up.

Hope and anger

So why was the Cyber Ninja audit genius?  Well, most importantly, it operates to maintain two key emotions important to those sucked into the “political power is our savior” ideology:  hope and anger.  How do you keep people engaged, and to the level necessary to get their money (and future votes)?  Give them hope and keep them angry.  These election audits do both - many Trump supporters still have hope that the “true” election results will show President Trump won the 2020 presidential election, and that the election was stolen.  The election audit also reminds these same patriots to be angry that the election was stolen.

And it’s interesting to me that the audit has taken so much longer than anticipated.  There’s probably a number of reasons for this.  I wonder if it is, at least in part, intentional - with the realization that the longer it goes on, the longer the flow of money continues.  Really, the game really is to attempt to maintain as much anger and motivation as possible coming into the midterm elections.  So I don’t expect things to calm down on the right fringe any time soon.

It’s a win-win strategy

The audit is also genius as it can be played for advantage, regardless of outcome.  Clearly, if the audit report shows significant fraud, that’s obviously a win for those claiming fraud, and will sustain the hope and anger of the right fringe (and probably draw more people in).  But what if the audit doesn’t show the claimed election fraud?  Well, I say that is still a win.  First, the AZ Senate chose novices, and they can easily scapegoat the Cyber Ninjas, and still maintain doubt about the election results.  This can easily lead to legislative efforts to engineer elections and voting to disadvantage anyone they don’t think is helpful to maintaining their political power.

The success of the AZ audit is clearly seen by the number of new audit efforts now beginning in other states.  Behind the scenes, I’m sure the accounting has been done, and I’m sure it shows that conducting an audit brings in a lot of money.  Political fundraising by election audit is the new game in town.  Supporters of President Trump are presented with (false) hope and the opportunity to maintain their anger, and all that those in power ask for is a name, email address, cell phone number, and a small donation.

Welcome to the new era of political fundraising!