I Voted. So What?--Who is Counting the Votes?

           I Voted. So what? Who is Counting the Votes?

                                                    Eric Paul Nolte




Something is rotten is Arizona (and Florida and elsewhere.)

Now, let's be clear about some of what's at stake here.  

We have, on the one hand, the Democratic candidate, Krysten Sinema, whom I heard in an extended interview, stammering, but adamantly refusing to condemn Americans who go fight for the Taliban. On the other hand, we have Martha McSally, a decorated female fighter pilot who flew in combat for her country, risking her life to defend us against the likes of that very same Taliban who want to kill her and the rest of us as well. There is much more to be said about their political differences, but let us focus here on what is happening in the counting of the ballots for and against them. The Associated Press reported on the day after the mid-term election that 99 percent of the vote had been counted in Arizona.  McSally was ahead of Sinema by one percentage point.

The numbers are confusing to me.  

About 1.7 million votes had been cast, with 49.4% for McSally, 48.4% for Sinema, and 2.2% for the Green Party candidate.

So think about this: 1% of 1.7 million = 17,000.  McSally was ahead by about one percentage point.

Am I confused here?  There were 99% of the votes counted. One percent remaining to be counted?  

Doesn't this make it sound like all the votes were in the hands of the counters and that only some of these remained to be processed?   

Do I have this right?--that the authorities reported that there were only 1% of the votes remaining to be counted?  So doesn't it make sense to conclude that there were only ~17,000 votes yet to count?

Now, days later, we are told that suddenly, in Maricopa County alone, there are at least another 345,000 additional votes that have suddenly appeared out of Zeus only knows from which Arizonan hamlets and now need to be counted. 

If there were only 17,000 votes to be counted on Wednesday, and now we have another 345,000 votes to count, this amounts to about 1,700% more votes than were previously said to be waiting for counting. 

Far more of these new votes have gone in favor of the Dems.  Hmm.

According to the chairman of the Arizona Republican Party, we learn that Adrian Fontes, the Maricopa County Recorder (and a Bernie Sanders supporter) who is in charge of supervising the counting of those votes, was instructed by the statewide voting authorities to be sure to preserve and keep separate the votes of those whose votes were problematic (for whatever reason) and those whose votes were properly made.

It would seem that Fontes defiantly piled these two columns of ballots together and destroyed them.  Fontes destroyed the evidence of "voting irregularities" in the county where more than 60% of the state's population resides.

Huh?

Is this a banana republic?

Joseph Stalin famously declared that it matters not at all who votes for whom.  

What matters is who counts the votes.

Surely there is something I do not understand about this appearance of hundreds of thousands of Immaculate Votes miraculously popping out of the ether. 

E  P  N

2018.1110