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      in Elections

      Arizona Republicans hunt for bamboo-laced China ballots in 2020 ‘audit’ effort

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      Arizona Republicans are examining whether there is bamboo fiber in ballots that were used in the 2020 election, an activist assisting with the ongoing audit of the ballots told reporters this week. The latest claim underscores how rightwing conspiracy theories continue to fuel doubt about the results of the results.“There’s accusation that 40,000 ballots were flown in to Arizona and it was stuffed into the box and it came from the south-east part of the world, Asia, and what they’re doing is to find out whether there’s bamboo in the paper,” John Brakey, a longtime election audit advocate, told reporters.John Brakey, an official helping oversee the audit of the 2020 Arizona election, says auditors are looking for bamboo fibers because of a baseless accusation that 40K ballots from Asia were smuggled here. #AzAuditPool pic.twitter.com/57UOBYIehg— Dennis Welch (@dennis_welch) May 5, 2021
      Brakey told reporters he didn’t personally believe auditors would find bamboo fibers.“I do think it’s somewhat of a waste of time, but it will help unhinge people,” Brakey said on Wednesday. “They’re not gonna find bamboo … If they do, I think we need to know, don’t you?”The search for bamboo fibers illustrates how the latest GOP audit of all 2.1m ballots cast in Maricopa county, home to a majority of Arizona voters, is elevating absurd claims about the 2020 election. After election day, rightwing activists falsely claimed that China had imported ballots to tip the election for Biden and that those ballots could be identified because there was bamboo in the paper. Earlier, workers were using UV lights to examine ballots; while the purpose of doing so was never clear, there was a conspiracy theory after the election that Trump had watermarked ballots (the UV examinations have stopped).There are about a dozen tables on the audit floor at Veterans Memorial Coliseum where auditors are taking pictures of ballots and then running them under microscopic cameras that are supposed to provide high-quality images of the ballots. Those images are supposed to help auditors verify the authenticity of the ballots by allowing them to examine fibers, as well as folds in the paper and ink marks on ballots.Experts have expressed concern about whether this method is a reliable way of identifying fraud.Ken Bennett, the liaison between the auditors and the Arizona senate, said in an interview he wasn’t sure if auditors were looking for bamboo fibers specifically.Sign up for the Guardian’s Fight to Vote newsletter“I think that’s more of a euphemism for saying ‘we’re looking for everything related to the paper so that we can verify that the ballots are authentic,’” he told the Guardian. “They’re looking for folds in the paper. They’re looking for where the ovals are marked, is there a little bit of an indentation or was the mark made by a Xerox machine? It’s just kind of a general expression for ‘we’re checking the paper and the folds and everything to make sure that these are authentic ballots.’”The comment came amid increasing scrutiny of the audit, which many experts say is not credible and will only further undermine confidence in the 2020 race. The justice department sent a letter to the Arizona senate president, Karen Fann, on Wednesday expressing concern that the audit may be running afoul of federal laws regarding ballot custody and voter intimidation (during a separate part of the audit, workers will reportedly knock on voters’ door to confirm their 2020 vote).Katie Hobbs, Arizona’s top election official, sent a letter to Bennett on Wednesday expressing concern over how the audit is being run. She claimed that auditors did not have a clear process for tallying ballots, left laptops unattended, and clear procedures were not in place to hire unbiased counters. “Either do it right, or don’t do it at all,” she wrote.One of the people who spread the lie about China dumping ballots, according to Slate, was Javon Pulitzer, a treasure hunter and inventor, who is reportedly assisting with the Maricopa county audit. Though it’s not clear in what capacity Pulitzer is assisting, Brakey told reporters on Tuesday that the machines capturing the microscopic images of the ballots were linked to Pulitzer. “This guy is nuts,” he said. “He’s a fraudster … It’s ridiculous that we’re doing some of this.” More

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      in US Politics

      Tim Scott says ‘America is not a racist country’ – the data says otherwise | Mona Chalabi

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      His choice of words was categorical. When Tim Scott, the only Black Republican in the Senate, responded to Joe Biden’s speech to Congress last week, he said: “America is not a racist country.”But racial disparities exist in the US healthcare system, its criminal justice system, its educational system and its economic system. Those gaps are wide. They are persistent. And, in some cases, racial disparities have grown over time rather than narrowed.Dataset after dataset, from non-partisan thinktanks to government sources, consistently show these racial disparities. And, unless one believes inherent, biological differences exist between racial groups in the US that would explain their differing success in the country (a belief that would, by the way, be racist), the only possible explanation for all this is structural racism.These differences exist from the moment that a child is born in the US. One in every seven Black babies has a low birth weight compared with one in every 15 white babies, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data from 2019.And the gaps remain. Black, Hispanic and Native American children are more likely to live in poverty than their white, Asian, Hawaiian or Pacific Islander counterparts, as census data from 2020 reveals.By the time that graduation rolls around, just 74% of Native American or Alaska Native children will complete their public high school education, compared with 79% of Black children and 89% of white children. These statistics come from the US Department of Education, 2017-2018.In adulthood too, racial discrimination affects just about every aspect of a person’s life. The 2018 American Community Survey (conducted by the Census Bureau) reveals that people of color are most likely to work in low-paid frontline jobs.And tragically, though not surprisingly, these are the jobs that often have the greatest exposure to the risks of Covid-19. Black people in the US are almost 1.9 times more likely to die from the disease than their white counterparts. For Hispanic or Latino people, the risk is 2.3 times higher, and for Native Americans it’s 2.4 times higher than white people.Crucially, these statistics can not be treated in isolation. Health is affected by poverty. Poverty affects educational outcomes. Education affects economic security and so it goes on.Research has shown that Black babies are more likely to be born at a low birth weight because of the physical demands of the low-paid work that many of their mothers are doing. That low-paid work can make it harder to get health insurance too. While just 5% of white people in the US don’t have health insurance, that share doubles for Black people (10%) and doubles again for Hispanic people (20%), according to the census. And of course, a lack of access to healthcare puts an individual at greater risk of dying from Covid-19.To say that the US is not a racist country is to make a statement that exists outside of reality. It is a fantasy to which many people, especially white Americans, would like to cling. More

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      in US Politics

      Liz Cheney warns Republicans ‘at turning point’ as she faces removal from leadership

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      Liz Cheney, the third-most-powerful House Republican, has warned that her party is “at a turning point” as it prepares to try to remove her from leadership for rejecting Donald Trump’s false claims about the election.Writing in a defiant op-ed, published by the Washington Post on Wednesday, the Wyoming Republican told her party that standing with Trump meant undermining the rule of law and risking continued violence.“Trump is seeking to unravel critical elements of our constitutional structure that make democracy work – confidence in the result of elections and the rule of law. No other American president has ever done this,” Cheney said in the article.“The Republican party is at a turning point, and Republicans must decide whether we are going to choose truth and fidelity to the constitution.”“History is watching us,” she warned.Her column comes as top members of her party, including Trump and the No 2 House Republican, Steve Scalise, publicly endorsed Representative Elise Stefanik for Cheney’s job as chair of the party’s conference. A vote could come as early as next Wednesday.Trump flexed his muscles anew this week, releasing seven public statements in three days reiterating his false claims that Joe Biden’s 7m-vote margin of victory was the result of fraud, and attacking Republicans including Cheney and Senator Mitt Romney who rejected him.Cheney referenced the president’s behavior in her column, saying that his message was clear. “Trump has repeated his claims that the 2020 election was a fraud and was stolen. His message: I am still the rightful president, and President Biden is illegitimate. Trump repeats these words now with full knowledge that exactly this type of language provoked violence on 6 January.“The question before us now is whether we will join Trump’s crusade to delegitimize and undo the legal outcome of the 2020 election, with all the consequences that might have. I have worked overseas in nations where changes in leadership come only with violence, where democracy takes hold only until the next violent upheaval,” Cheney wrote.She continued: “We must be brave enough to defend the basic principles that underpin and protect our freedom and our democratic process. I am committed to doing that, no matter what the short-term political consequences might be.”Trump’s false claims of widespread fraud have been widely debunked. But Republican-controlled state legislatures are using those claims to justify legislation imposing new restrictions on voting.The Republican representative Adam Kinzinger earlier on Wednesday praised Cheney for standing by her criticism of Trump. “They are trying to remove Liz for telling you the truth, consistently,” said Kinzinger, who like Cheney voted to impeach Trump on a charge of inciting the Capitol riot.The Wall Street Journal’s conservative editorial page also urged Republicans not to oust her.“Purging Liz Cheney for honesty would diminish the party,” it said in a Wednesday opinion piece.In a recent call, the Republican House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, told Donald Trump that Cheney would soon be forced out of her Republican leadership position, the Daily Beast reports.Cheney herself has told other Republicans that it’s not worth holding on to her leadership role as conference chair “if lying is going to be a requirement”, one source told the Daily Beast.Biden said on Wednesday that a “mini-revolution” over identity appeared to be under way in the Republican party.“Republicans are further away from trying to figure out who they are and what they stand for than I thought they would be at this point,” he told reporters at the White House. More

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      in US Politics

      Joe Biden: Republicans are in the midst of a 'mini-revolution' – video

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      The president said he has never seen internal party conflict like the one Republicans are experiencing at the moment and was in a ‘mini-revolution’.
      Earlier on Wednesday Biden said: ‘I don’t understand the Republicans’ in regards to House Republicans’ efforts to oust Liz Cheney from her leadership role over her criticism of Donald Trump

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      in US Politics

      Political animal: California governor hopeful greets voters with 1,000lb bear

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      The businessman John Cox lost California’s last governor’s race to Gavin Newsom by 24 points. Now he’s back, and this time, he’s got a bear.As Newsom faces a recall election, the Republican has launched a new campaign against him, attempting to portray the well-groomed governor as a “beauty” and himself as a “beast”. To drive home this message, he has employed some nonhuman staff, including an enormous bear – an apparent homage to the California flag.The bear appeared at a press event on Tuesday in Sacramento. The campaign had hyped the moment by promising the 1,000lb creature as a “special guest”. As part of his Meet the Beast Bus Tour, Cox appeared at a podium in front of a vehicle emblazoned with his face next to that of a ferocious-looking bear. In reality, however, the animal appeared fairly uninterested in politics, lumbering around a few feet behind Cox before flopping on to the ground, panting heavily. It did not offer an endorsement, unless not eating the candidate counts as support.A handler occasionally fed the bear while Cox – who uses Twitter as @BeastJohnCox – took questions from reporters, decrying Newsom as a “pretty boy politician”. He said the bear was there to help him get his message out, and also addressed the animal’s welfare: “We made sure that everything about this bear is taken care of in the utmost.”Cox is gunning for a recall election expected to take place in the autumn after Newsom opponents gathered enough signatures to force a vote. The beast is one of an unusual collectionof contenders, who also include Caitlyn Jenner, a former Facebook executive, and a billboard model.The bear is not the only animal Cox has pressed into service. In a campaign ad titled “Meet the BEAST”, a macaw repeatedly mocks Newsom as a “pretty boy” as it wolf-whistles. “We chose pretty over accomplished,” a voiceover warns Californians of Newsom, who grew up with dyslexia, launched a wine business, became the mayor of San Francisco, rose to lieutenant governor and won the 2018 governor’s race with nearly 62% of the vote – though he does have slicked-back hair. Images of the bird are interspersed with shots of a bear thundering through the forest, suggesting Cox would do the same in the halls of the capitol.At the press conference, however, the docile bear appeared far less likely to bring about significant legislative change. Cox noted that it had been raised in captivity, meaning its “mother didn’t have an opportunity to teach it how to fish”.“If it were out in the wild, it would die very quickly,” he said. More