Hilarious. Pathetic.
Let's get something straight: This company wasn't hired to conduct an actual recount of Maricopa County ballots. Cyber Ninjas was hired to declare that Donald Trump won Arizona, apparently after putting on some remarkably unconvincing recount theatre, and the state GOP doesn't really care if these cyber-clowns have legal exposure to election fraud charges as a result. It's not even clear to me that there will be legal exposure, but it's clear that a secret, undefined recount process conducted by a private company in the name of transparency is horseshit. To spoil the surprise; after the GOP "finds the fraud" in Maricopa County (another spoiler: it will probably be mostly black and brown voters), then they'll go after Fulton County (Atlanta), Philadelphia County, and Wayne County (Detroit). Once one state's results are "overturned" in the right wing media bubble, it'll only be easier to push to overturn the others. And GOP party leaders know this. That's the plan.
Back in 2018, David Frum absolutely nailed what would happen:
I just voted in a local election, and one of the items on the ballot was a proposition to ban the practice of collective bargaining for the county's police department. So what was the most prevalent messaging surrounding the prop.? "Vote against de-funding the police!". It doesn't matter that the prop. has absolutely nothing to do with funding the police department, only the efficacy of the messaging matters.
Btw, I made the same ol' mistake I've made so many times with Trumpism - after January 6th, I thought "THIS is rock bottom. Surely, images of Nazi shit, Confederate flags, and violent assaults on police officers inside the capitol by the MAGA crowd will generate enough introspection to push the GOP back from the brink of increasingly anti-democratic Trumpism." Nope.
The ongoing radicalization of the GOP is probably the single-most threat to social stability in America, and I still haven't figured out an effective way to defuse it nonviolently. Help?