Court sides with newspaper over Arizona audit public records

[Ptah]

Source: Associated Press

PHOENIX (AP) — The Arizona Court of Appeals on Tuesday rejected another request by Cyber Ninjas to avoid turning over records related to the consulting firm’s review of the 2020 election on behalf of the state Senate.

In a 3-0 ruling, the judges reiterated the court’s earlier ruling that Cyber Ninjas records are subject to the public records law because the company was performing a core government function on behalf of the Senate. The judges rejected an argument by Cyber Ninjas that their ruling would open the records of any construction company or office-supply provider that does business with the state.

Read more: https://apnews.com/article/arizona-phoenix-elections-newspapers-6415cd18e2a38d1bd1e6367e0b535386

[bucolic_frolic]

1. One of the weakest and absurd defenses ever

[Lochloosa]

2. My company has contracts with Florida Department of Transportation.

Want to see the contract? Walk in and ask for it. I have to show it to you.

[orangecrush]

3. Democracy - 3

Cyber losers - 0

[captain queeg]

4. Getting tired of the RWers tying up the courts time. They never win

Any cases but they keep trying over and over. I hope they are at least liable for court costs.

[monkeyman1]

5. well shit, AZ. got hosed on that deal ! RNC should foot that bill ! they lost !

[Ford_Prefect]

6. The contract says their work was for the public by way of the AZ Senate which makes the records

public property. When you work for the state and are paid with tax money then you must be able to account for what was spent and how. SOP for contracting to state or federal agencies.

These guys clearly have something to hide or they wouldn't insist they are the exception. My bet is they don't have good records of the kind they should, and they did a few things they know they shouldn't have done, or they violated the sanctity of the public record in some way (like sending copies of the Hard Drives to a secret Montana location).

...OR just possibly, someone with an over-riding interest is leaning on them to hide their involvement in the process and the excesses, and the payments provided outside official channels.

[Slammer]

7. All a matter of timing

They know they're going to lose big. The real question is WHEN they're going to lose big.

If they can stretch this out to Thanksgiving or Christmas and do a big data dump then, people will be too busy with the holiday to pay attention and the regular news anchors who people make sure to tune in to watch will all be gone on vacation.

Without the big data dump making immediate national headlines that people pay attention to, the pro-audit folks will be able to continue to pretend that the audit "worked" (that is, worked as something other than a fundraising gimmick and an attempt to destroy faith in elections).

And Faux news and their guest will be able to pretend that the data dump didn't happen and didn't contain what it actually contained...and more importantly, their audience won't know any better because no one else in the general public knows any better either.

As a practical matter of what I expect to be found wrong with the audit:

I doubt the company can fully account for their spending.
I doubt they can provide an accurate list of who was allowed access to the counting facility.
I doubt they can return all the materials they were allowed access to.
I doubt they can show any of their inventive methods of looking for fraud could actually detect fraud, even under ideal conditions.
I doubt they could prove the Chinese were stupid enough to print bamboo ballots then ship them into the US when it'd be much easier to buy paper and printers here. (Good Lord....)

[Bayard]

9. All of this

Plus--they're ninjas! They do everything in the dark, and secret.

[riversedge]

8. Good news.