The Story:
The months-long audit of the 2020 election in Maricopa County, Arizona, led by a professedly partisan group calling itself Cyber Ninjas (authorized by the Republicans in the state Senate) has come to an end at last. The bottom line of the report turns out to be that, yes, Joe Biden, then the Democratic Party nominee and now the President of the United States, did win Maricopa County, and that he won it by slightly more than the margin previously thought.
Background:
Maricopa County is easily the most populous county in Arizona, and Biden’s victory in the state (and so his entitlement to the votes of its 11 electors) depended entirely on the vote there.
The audit of the Maricopa results, which began on May 5, was supposed to be complete by May 14. But it continued month after month.
At one point, former President Trump was reportedly telling associates that it would wrap up in August and that the results would lead to his reinstatement in the Presidency. Neither happened, and the latter isn’t even constitutionally possible.
The Thing to Know:
The anti-climactic result, that Biden won as the state voting officials had initially said — and indeed by 360 votes more — will not shush the claims that the election was fraudulent. But, along with other recent developments, it may indicate that the “Stop the Steal” controversy is moving out of the main frame, toward the margins, of U.S. political life.
