Geopolitics

Arizona and Georgia are recounting votes … again. What does that mean?

Source: Mark Makela, Reuters

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Even before the first votes were cast in the 2020 election, then-President Donald Trump was already warning of a conspiracy to deny him a reelection victory, claiming that the only way he would lose was “if the election is rigged.”
Now, seven months after the presidential election, Trump has still refused to concede.
Trump’s claims of election rigging have been taken seriously by his loyal followers, even leading some of them to storm the Capitol building on January 6.
Many Republicans, including Trump, have continued to point to election fraud as being behind Joe Biden’s victory, a victory they believe was actually stolen from Trump.

Biden won Arizona, a state that hadn’t voted for a Democrat for president since 1996, by a thin margin – just over 10,000 votes.
But Republicans in the state are once again recounting the 2.1 million votes cast in the 2020 general election.
The recount is focusing on ballots cast in Maricopa County, which Biden won by 45,000 votes. The county includes Phoenix, the state capital and Arizona’s largest city.

State Republicans paid US$150,000 to Cyber Ninjas, a private company from Florida, to lead the recount. In order to complete this recount, Cyber Ninjas has also partnered with several subcontractors including Wake TSI, which recently made headlines for its decision not to renew its contract to continue with the recount.
Cyber Ninjas is led by Doug Logan, a Trump supporter, who has continued to spread the lie that the election was stolen.
So basically, Republicans in Arizona are hoping to find enough evidence of fraud that it encourages others to question the results of the entire election.
Now Georgia, inspired by Arizona Republicans, will also move forward with a recount after a judge allowed for the opening of 147,000 mail in ballots from last year’s presidential election.
To give you an idea, Georgia has already conducted three recounts in 2020, including a recount done entirely by hand – as opposed to a machine recount.

“The Arizona recount is a symptom of a much larger problem in the American Republic.” Paul Engel, a radio host, teacher and preacher, told TMS. “Imagine interviewing a number of people for a position where you work, choosing who you think is the best candidate, only to find out that someone else was hired.”
Engel is just one of many Republicans (53% to be exact) to believe the election was stolen despite the lack of any credible evidence.
On the other hand, Mary Westheimer told TMS that the recount was a “a fear mongering assault on Democracy.”
Westheimer was a poll worker on “both Monday, November 2, which was an emergency voting day (for people who had an emergency and couldn’t vote by mail or on November 3) and Tuesday, November 3, the official Election Day.”
In her words, “The results of this election have been counted, recounted and certified by qualified parties prior to this partisan attack on our political system.”

Even if somehow the results in Arizona were to change to favor Trump, which experts believe is highly unlikely, it wouldn’t change the outcome of the election because Biden won 306 electoral college votes to Trump’s 232. Biden needed a simple majority and Arizona’s 11 electoral votes would not have changed the final result.
But if some evidence of election fraud is found, it could encourage more recounts in other states, like Georgia.
If more states find election fraud, the United States is headed into unprecedented territory and would likely see even greater division.
But even if the Cyber Ninjas don’t find any election fraud, Trump’s original goal of sowing doubt in the integrity of the election has already succeeded.

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