Joe Biden received the 2020 presidential election, Republicans have discovered, after a quack group’s audit dragged ass for months. In a stunning twist, the Cyber Ninjas—the totally unqualified “Stop the Steal” firm Arizona state senate Republicans and unknown backers hired to audit Arizona election outcomes—counted even much less votes for Trump and extra for Biden than formally tabulated in Maricopa County. Their strategies included, amongst different issues, checking the paper ballots’ “feel” and folds, which might have proven nothing about ballots’ validity. The information comes from a leaked draft report of their findings.

The Cyber Ninjas had been anticipated to slice and cube numbers that match their denialist narrative. The firm’s CEO Doug Logan starred in a “documentary” referred to as “The Deep Rig,” about baseless fraud claims. (“If we don’t fix our election integrity now, we may no longer have a democracy,” he reportedly mentioned. The election was declared by high-level Trump appointees and election safety officers because the most secure in historical past.)

According to the New York Times, which seen the draft, the Cyber Ninjas discovered 261 much less votes from Donald Trump and 99 extra for President Joe Biden. (Biden has been our nation’s president for eight months.)

Maricopa County was key to Biden’s victory and should have appeared Republicans’ greatest wager to tip the election again to Donald Trump. Biden secured a slim victory of lower than 10,500 extra votes in Arizona, and if they may simply transfer 45,000 votes round in Maricopa County, Republicans may attempt to decertify the election. Some state senators mentioned they’d already decided it was time for a state “recall.”

The Arizona state senate enlisted the ninjas to carry out the “forensic audit” in March. A choose needed to pressure the Cyber Ninjas to reveal their methodology, which included quack UV mild inspection to “compare to representative specimens” with their eyes, no matter conclusions may be drawn.

The Cyber Ninjas have been stalling the discharge, apparently indefinitely; they handed their May, late May, then August deadlines, claiming to have fallen ailing with covid-19. They didn’t appear terribly keen to put their playing cards on the desk as at the moment’s deadline approached, both. Responding to a Maricopa County Superior Court choose’s ruling that they must cough up the findings, their legal professional submitted a letter final week stating that they didn’t acknowledge “any involuntary legal obligation to do so.” While they sat on the numbers, election integrity advocates warned that the mere existence of their months-long audit poisoned religion in democracy.

The Cyber Ninjas weren’t instantly obtainable for remark.