The ROUTERs and the non-case of the missing routers
Washington Post
David Von Drehle
August 3, 2021 at 4:22 p.m. EDT
See if you can guess who is speaking here:
“The county has, for whatever reason, also refused to produce the network routers. We want the routers.
“Sonny, Wendy — we got to get those routers, please!
“The routers. Come on, Kelly, we can get those routers. Those routers. You know what? We're so beyond the routers, there's so many fraudulent votes without the routers.
“But if you got those routers, what that will show — and they don’t want to give up the routers. They don’t want to give them. They are fighting like hell. Why are these commissioners fighting not to give the routers?”
Two or three chords from the pianist Vladimir Horowitz was all it took for a fan or a critic to recognize the distinctive signature of the master. Likewise, the first bites of a word salad from the former president are enough to let every survivor of the past five years know who’s at the mic.
The routers. The wall. The birth certificate. The Russia hoax. Wherever ominous nouns wander in search of a verb — much less a predicate — the former president’s braying is heard.
To actually understand him, though, requires study. With these recent remarks, made in Arizona, President Donald Trump was signaling to his lackeys that the time has come to change the subject of the months-long snipe hunt known as the “audit” of 2.1 million votes cast last year in Maricopa County, Ariz.
The “audit” is no longer about the votes. Imported conspiracy theorists from Florida, from a company called Cyber Ninjas, have pored over the ballots, in some cases under microscopes. They also examined the tabulation machines. Although the Ninjas have concluded their review, their earlier promise to report findings by mid-May is unfulfilled some 10 weeks later.
In a telltale turn, “audit” staff members abruptly summoned Maricopa officials at the end of July to reclaim tons of ballots and machines, pronto. Why? Because the lease was up on the storage space where the “audit” team was stashing them.
Time for the routers.
This new talking point is, to borrow from the former president’s vernacular, a beautiful thing. Maricopa County cannot surrender its computer routers without compromising the privacy of its citizens — their health records, their Social Security numbers, their reasons for interacting with local government. Secure communications among county law enforcement officials could also be compromised. This has been explained repeatedly to the “audit” leadership under state Senate President Karen Fann. But after Trump signaled the new marching orders, Fann dutifully issued a new subpoena for the routers, knowing full well she wasn’t going to get them.
These routers have nothing to do with the election, because the vote tabulation equipment was never connected to the Internet. That’s the beautiful part: Team Trump can speak of them ominously for the foreseeable future without fear of being proved wrong, because the county officials (being responsible adults) will continue to keep the routers secure.
Trump doesn’t even need a theory about the routers. “If you got those routers, what that will show —” He leaves it there. That’s the end of it. Let your imaginations roam free. Fill in the blank.
If the Ninjas found anything more sinister than minor foibles of a human bureaucracy, you can be sure we would have heard it by now. Their one interim claim of irregularities evaporated like desert dew when it turned out the Ninjas didn’t understand the data. Trump’s own partisans can’t find any evidence of a stolen election even when they have months and millions of dollars to devote to the quest. That ought to devastate his claims.
But the “audit” failure won’t be devastating because . . . the routers. The ballots have been inspected and counted yet again, and the results remain the same, but forget all that because Trump has shifted topics.
Routers, routers, routers.
In his bracing 1946 essay “Politics and the English Language,” George Orwell showed the way mushy discourse is used to mask not just empty political speech, but outright evil intent. “When the general atmosphere is bad, language must suffer,” he wrote. Clarity, on the other hand, makes good political decisions possible. With that in mind, compare the blather above with this letter from Jack Sellers, chairman of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, in response to the latest subpoena from Fann:
“It is now August of 2021. The election of November 2020 is over. If you haven’t figured out that the election in Maricopa County was free, fair and accurate yet, I’m not sure you ever will.”
Calling the “audit” an “adventure in never-never land,” Sellers continued: “There was no fraud, there wasn’t an injection of ballots from Asia nor was there a satellite that beamed votes into our election equipment.”
Ah, but the routers! If you got those, they would show —
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