The CNN camera crews worked earnestly to get election audit volunteers on camera; the objective appears to be the familiar threats and intimidation tactics carried out by the news and narrative company in the past. A previous ground report from a local volunteer sent to the Treehouse includes:

[…] “Today law enforcement/security told us there was a vehicle or 2 about two blocks away with a long angle lens taking pictures (he thought) of the people and (I bet) license plates. We saw the one vehicle as we pulled out but couldn’t see in it. Anyway, I expected this. We are dealing with people who have no lowest. It’s getting ugly in the media now; just as usual they start their smear campaign.”

Banana Republic status beckons.

Mr. Scott, if it’s so unprofessional, what’s the point of bringing in a lawyer from New York to fight it?

Lawfare is now trying to stop the audit after that Democrat judge refused. The “NYU Professor ” is, you guessed it, Weissmann.

A couple amusing points by unimaginative journalists. While many printers put hidden marks on paper, the printers used by the official print shop does not. So looking for hidden marks is pointless. Also, looking for fingerprints is pointless because an normal ballot should have fingerprints.

Hello! What do you think it means if a ballots are found with hidden printer marks or are completely free of any fingerprints?

I think it was in 2006 when I first read an article by an academic computer scientist warning about the use of information technology in elections administration contained enormous pitfalls and would damage public confidence in the integrity of the ballot. State legislatures and state agencies charged with elections administration simply ignored such warnings, so we’re in this godawful mess now. It’s another indication, in case you needed one, that our government is staffed with people who cannot make a good decision to save their lives.

And I cannot figure out except for sheer indolence why the broad public accepts this.

There is also the examination of the ballot counting machines. I don’t know what brand were used. If they are Dominion, then the real evidence will be on those memory cards–if they haven’t been wiped.

Remember the Sharpie pen issue? How some precincts in Arizona were insisting on voters using Sharpie pens, and only Sharpie pens? This is an issue because Sharpie ink will bleed outside the circles voters mark. This can cause a ballot, when read by certain machines, to go into an “adjucation” file. The original ballot is machine scanned and that scan goes into a folder for the adjucation. The orginal ballot drops into the bos with other ballots. The voter is not told of this and is not offered a chance to remake the ballot.

Once in the adjucation folder, the image of the ballot is examined by precinct workers. They look at the marks for the race in question, then judge the voter’s intent. That ballot image is then moved electronically to whichever candidate’s folder.

The word is that Dominion’s machines allowed the election judges to move up to 20 ballots at a time. Thus, out of however many ballots were in the adjucation folder, they can be dumped into whichever candidate’s folder, 20 at a time, no examination needed.

Then there is the Cyber Ninja angle. This is one of the companies that’s supposed to be working on technical issues. This company doesn’t want their trade secrets exposed. There are court battles over this.

Now one must remember that this is being reported in a newspaper, so the odds of these details being accurate is perhaps 50/50. Modern reporters are stupid and like to be hand-fed stories by their favorite pols.

There may be a serious plan, with serious people working to accomplish it. But if this is amateur hour, the result will likely be worse than if no audit was done.