What are they afraid of - part XCVIII

There are three points that are obvious to me when it comes to 2020 election audits.

1. That they should have been done immediately following the election without having to go through weeks or months of court battles
2. That the sort of audits being conducted are unlikely to find the sort of fraud or tampering that these counties have been accused of
3. That it is well past time to move on from 2020 and focus on creating new laws that completely overhaul the methods that we use to count and report on the elections

The fact that audits were fought at all gives the appearance of guilt. Arguing that audits have been done is fairly dishonest. Election results have certain checks and balances (audits as it were) already in place. But these are cursory checks and really designed to weed out possible mistakes, not possible malfeasance. Even your basic hand recount is simply rooting out mistakes, not identifying fraud. 

But even a more drawn out audit is unlikely to find smoking gun evidence of malfeasance. 

I have never been one to believe that ballot box machines were switching votes or some of the more outlandish theories that have been provided. It's possible that ballots could have been double counted, but there has been months since the election and there has been plenty of time to have covered those tracks. Keep in mind that one of the more serious allegations from the Maricopa audit has been that they have been finding ballot boxes that had the seal broken. That in and of itself has no real good explanation, but it would be nearly impossible to prove anything above and beyond the fact that they were tampered with. 

Not a single person on the left will allow for the least bit of outrage for a tampered ballot box. 

If there was fraud or tampering at the county levels, then it happened within the first few hours or few days of the election. It would have been done in a manner that would not leave a trail to follow. There are likely 101 different ways to cheat if one was so inclined. At least 99 of them would leave no trail. Why used a method that does? Only the daft and arrogant would do so.

This is why I have said over and over and over that we should be looking "forward" and producing new laws and procedures to make our elections more secure and to finally address the issues with the post election counting. I would rather see no additional audits of the 2020 elections and instead have the GOP lawmakers put their energy into securing more laws like the one coming out of Georgia. 

Even if one could provide absolute evidence that the explanation for these statistically improbable results was malfeasance, it wouldn't change the election results.  The whole audit thing seems to be both a political play and an exercise in futility. They will score points with certain groups by performing them. They will make Democratic counties look guilty when they oppose them, then they will turn around and be dissatisfied with the results and demand more.

This is exactly the same playbook that was used to undermine the 2016 election of Donald Trump. When the first congressional investigation fails to come back with evidence of collusion. They do another. When the FBI does not come back with evidence of collusion, they order a Special Counsel. Every time they came back empty. Every time they demanded more investigations. Even when the final report was brought back in May of 2019 (imagine us still investigating 2020 in 2023) there were those still unsatisfied. 

But just as there are those who reject the notion that over two years of investigations coming up empty proved there was no collusion, there are going to be those who will reject the notion that more audits coming back without a smoking gun proves there was no fraud. Not sure what point there is to demand anything differently.