As the forensic audit in Maricopa County, Arizona, winds down, expectations are rising that the defects of the 2020 election will finally be addressed.  A recent poll reports that "more than half" of Republicans expect the audit to bounce President Biden out of office.  That's not going to happen.  And that's not a bad thing.  Fixing the 2020 election requires more than Biden has to offer.  Real reform requires going after the people who put Biden in office. 

If the goal is bouncing Biden, then, as a practical matter, at a certain point, we need to stop litigating the outcome of the 2020 election and focus on winning the 2024 election.  That point is the end of next year, and while that seems like a lot of time, it isn't.  

To understand why, let's start with the Maricopa audit.  It can't prove fraud.  All it can do is show if the county conducted the election according to legal minimum standards.  Given the long list of Election Day "anomalies" and "irregularities," it's an easy bet that the audit will show that Maricopa Country failed to meet those standards.   

A failed audit is where the fun begins.  The Arizona state Legislature will have to conduct multiple investigations.  One to decide if negligence or fraud caused the failure.  A second investigation to decide how to prevent future failures.  Finally, if fraud is proven, multiple criminal investigations, arrests, and trials will have to take place. 

That's a lot to get done in 18 months, and we still haven't discussed the how the Democrats will try to derail both the audit and investigations.  First will come the politics of personal destruction, the Brett Kavanagh, Nick Sandman–style attacks intended to discredit the audit by destroying the auditors.  As ugly as these attacks are, they're just the opening move, a feint intended to draw attention from the main line of attack.  Spearheaded by Republican quislings to give it the façade of bipartisanship, Democrats will focus on obstructing the creation and running of the investigations.

The goal is to delay the process until the results no longer matter.  It took eight months to get the Maricopa audit up and running. 

Even if Arizona's 2020 election count is overturned, changing a single state's election results does not remove President Biden from office.  Neither does revoking multiple state elections.  The time to dispute election results is before the president is sworn into office.  There is no precedent or framework for revoking Biden's Electoral College "win." 

If you're going to bounce Biden, it has to be by court order or impeachment.  Neither of these is going to happen.  Let's start with the courts.  The High Court has an absolute right to refuse any case for any reason.  Remember how the Supreme Court, like brave Sir Robin, bravely ran away from Texas v. Pennsylvania?  Clearing this hurdle would require Chief Justice John Roberts, a man best known for bravely failing to meet his own low standards of excellence, to man up.  Honestly, what are the odds?

As for impeachment, multiple states revoking their election results due to systemic fraud would be grounds for impeachment.  Just remember, no matter how strong the evidence, you're much more likely to see hell freeze over than see a corrupt Democrat Congress impeach a corrupt Democrat president. 

If the Republican Party takes control of Congress in 2022, and if Liz Cheney, Mitt Romney, and the other quislings can be kept from sabotaging the impeachment effort, you could have a trial by January 2023.  But that's as far as you'll get.  It still takes two thirds of the Senate to vote for conviction.  A dozen of more Democrat senators would have to put country over party.  Honestly, what are the odds?

So bouncing Biden before 2024 isn't happening.  This may not be a bad thing.  Biden isn't the real threat to the Republic.  The real threat is the network of local politicians who rig elections, national leaders who pay for the rigging, and the Democrat-controlled media who refuse to report the truth to the American people. 

Biden doesn't control these people.  They control him.  Bouncing Biden while leaving the network intact doesn't solve the problem.  Dismantling the corrupt network that gave us President Biden is what solves the problem.  (Not that we're letting Joe Biden off the hook.  A republican Congress can release the contents of Hunter Biden's laptop and take other actions to bring old Joe to justice.) 

Not focusing electoral reform on Biden frees us from any deadlines.  We can push the state-level inspections forward and run a national campaign at the same time.  As long as we're willing to push through the obstruction, the truth can will come out.  Pennsylvania, one of twenty states to send delegates to observe the Maricopa audit, is moving toward auditing three of its most corrupt counties.  Every successful audit, every corrupt local official publicly identified by the post-audit investigations, makes the next audit easier and faster. 

When the investigations reach a point where the Democrat media can no longer hide the truth, and the public is free to act, we win; they lose.  But winning can happen only if we quit trying to fix 2020 and focus on the people caught trying to fix the election.  

Image: Marc Nozell via Flickr, CC BY 2.0.

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