On Wednesday, CNN reported that allies of former President Donald Trump are hoping to set up an "audit" of the vote count in Georgia similar to the controversial and much-maligned GOP "audit" going on in Arizona.
"A day after Trump said in a statement that Georgia should follow Arizona's lead, former Georgia state Rep. Vernon Jones, a Trump supporter who is challenging incumbent Republican Gov. Brian Kemp in next year's GOP primary, proposed an audit Wednesday," reported Eric Bradner. In the statement, Jones said, "If Mr. Kemp refuses to demand an audit, then I will when I am elected to replace him" — even though Georgia did, in fact, conduct an audit and did not find evidence of fraud.
"Kemp and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger have been under fire for months from Trump and his supporters for refusing to lend credence to the former President's lies about widespread fraud in the election," continued the report. "Jones' push for an audit didn't make waves in Georgia on Wednesday but did draw attention from pro-Trump conservative media outlets."
The Arizona audit, which is looking specifically at the 2.1 million ballots from Maricopa County, is being conducted by Cyber Ninjas, a Florida-based company whose chief has promoted election conspiracy theories.
The auditors, who have largely conducted their operations in secret and limited press access, have pursued a number of rabbit holes, including searching ballots for bamboo fibers in case they were forgeries shipped in from Asia, and Trump's supporters have even suggested Maricopa County officials fed ballots to chickens, then burned the chickens. Auditors also baselessly claimed election officials deleted their databases, then sheepishly admitted they just didn't know how to search for the data.
