Who Watches the Watchmen?

 And more importantly, who hires them and pays for them?

I've tried to keep tabs on the latest regarding a private company, Cyber Ninjas, doing an alleged forensic analysis of 2020 votes from Maricopa County, Arizona. In today's Washington Post, reporters Rosalind Helderman and Josh Dawsey laid out a comprehensive up-to-date summary of the situation. This afternoon, Elvia Diaz of the Arizona Republic posted a story from the site of the mishmash. Rather than repeating the Post and Republic reporting, I'll recommend you read those articles, then return to my thumbnail summary, which is less about details and more about a warning.

Essentially what's happening is that a private company, Cyber Ninjas, has been contracted by Senate Republicans in Arizona to forensically analyze two million ballots. Cyber Ninjas is apparently both financed and staffed by those championing the theory of widespread voter fraud. Cyber Ninjas is a Florida-based company that is not, I repeat not, accredited by the federal government to test voting systems. 

The Arizona Senate Republicans' PR statement did not state how Cyber Ninjas was given the assignment. Douglas Logan, chief executive of Cyber Ninjas, had tweeted theories pushing 2020 voter fraud. Those tweets have been deleted. Meanwhile, as the "auditors" continue to work, no federal monitors are in Arizona to audit the auditors, so to speak. The Post and the Republic covered all of this today, and they covered it well.

My personal take is that the 2020 election outcomes were not really a first step towards the U.S. regaining its rationalism. Demographic shifting is fueling a greater red/blue divide than anyone thought possible. The cultural wars are likely to worsen dramatically in the years ahead, and the red states will become even more entrenched in their anti-democratic machinations.

Any moneyed, motivated individual or entity has the capability to further undermine what passes for U.S. democracy. The narrative being pushed in Arizona isn't likely to be ameliorated by reasoned arguments or disconfirming evidence. A company hired to find something isn't likely to baldly report that they were hired for nothing. 

More and more red states will begin to install Watchmen organizations and hired-gun private companies. The arguments for reviewing every lost election will have little to do with logic or rationality or drawing conclusions from evidence. The reviews will be a mechanism to find justification for why disappointed voters feel the way they do. The reviews exist to explain the en masse emotions of an electorate that feels itself losing power. In the months ahead, all manner of political intrigue will be employed to pander to these en masse emotions. Logic and the quality of evidence found will not matter. Any evidential port in a storm will be the theme.

Many people want to believe elections were massively rigged, and that their voting cohort wasn't badly outnumbered. All that will matter to them is that they find something on which to anchor their needs during the ongoing demographic storm. And that demographic storm has just begun.

Bob Dietz

April 29, 2021

Reopening Redux

As the United States approaches 100 million fully vaccinated adults, restrictions are being lifted once again. Some states are pushing for full capacity restaurants and sporting events, and for the lifting of mask-wearing rules. As was the case in 2020, the red states are leading the way in the "back to normalcy" push. 

Conditions, however, aren't necessarily rosy red in these red states. Here in Tennessee, for example, fewer than 25% have been fully vaccinated, and Tennessee is one of those states where this week's infection count significantly rose from last week. In fact, Tennessee recorded a 25% increase in cases from the previous week, which places it worst in the country. Oregon, Arizona, Nevada (where casinos are ready to increase capacity levels to 80% on May 1), and Louisiana are also struggling. The United States is registering roughly 60,000 new cases per day overall, which is similar to the counts last summer. The per day U.S. infection count had been at 50,000 six weeks ago.

The surge in new cases may be attributable to the increased transmissibility of variants and the fact that younger people are now both primary spreaders of the virus and increasingly vulnerable to the variants. Also, in a somewhat overlooked study published March 23 in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, investigators laid out the correlation between high pollen counts and susceptibility to the virus. High pollen counts depress immune systems, and increased airborne pollen has been shown to increase infection rates.

Meanwhile, in India, the health care systems have been overwhelmed as numbers have reached more than 300,000 infections and 2,000 deaths per day. India is approaching 200,000 total Covid-19 deaths. For context, the United States peaked at 300,000 infections per day in January, and total U.S. Covid-19 deaths stand at roughly 580,000.

Despite infection numbers similar to 2020's summer infection numbers, the U.S. is staggering into a reopening redux. With polls revealing that 30% of the country would prefer to not be vaccinated, predicting future infection rates promises to be extremely difficult. Tennessee may turn out to be the testing ground for the interaction of reopening and resistance to vaccination.

Bob Dietz

April 27, 2021