Far right Cochise County, Arizona’s stupid new plan to “secure” ballots with holograms or invisible ink or some stupid bullshit like that appears to be tailored for one specific vendor tied to MAGA former state Senator and 2022 Secretary of State loser Mark Finchem, VoteBeat Arizona reports.
The company, Texas-based Authentix, which has zero experience in elections supply, has been angling for a contract with the county to print their ballots, the terms and scope of which is unknown except for the roughly $1 million price tag and that one of the Authentix’s founders, Olaf Halvorssen, was listed as a team member of a failed clean energy startup helmed by Finchem. To be fair, the company does have foreign contracts to produce watermarks and holograms on official documents like tax notes and what not, so it’s not like this is definitely another Cyber Ninjas situation where they’re just so far out of their league and going to completely fuck everything up.
But that any eventual watermarks on ballots by this company would be solid security features doesn’t mean they’ll be necessary because there’s zero evidence any ballots have been faked in the 2020 and 2022 elections. The whole venture also makes us think a little bit less of Mark Finchem: We’d understood him to be like his ticket-mate Kari Lake, as in genuinely and sincerely pilled up to his eyeballs on this “Stop the Steal” bullshit, that he really believed all the fantasies. Instead it now seems like he’s just another grifter looking to make a few bucks off the fucking rubes. Shame on you Mark for making us think you were the deceived when all along you were one of the deceivers.