Although the process has been called an “audit” or a “recount,” it doesn’t match the procedures laid out in state law for either of those. To conduct the audit, the state hired a Florida software-security firm called Cyber Ninjas. The company refused to tell me whether it has any experience with election audits, and its website, while featuring an impressive array of ninja stock photos, offers no indications that it is qualified to conduct election-security reviews. The only apparent reason for Cyber Ninjas’ selection is that the company’s founder, Doug Logan, was a noisy proponent of “Stop the Steal” theories of fraud in the election. (Logan has not responded to my requests for comment or an interview.) The state Senate allocated just $150,000 for the audit, far too little to cover all the costs. So despite recently banning boards of elections from using private money, the Senate has turned to private donors to fill the gap. Cyber Ninjas hasn’t disclosed all of its funding sources, though some have emerged. Unsurprisingly, much of it has come from people invested in the idea of fraud. Patrick Byrne, the eccentric former head of Overstock.com, has donated $1 million and set a goal to raise almost $2 million more. Employees of One America News Network, the conspiracist pro-Trump news outlet, have also raised hundreds of thousands of dollars, and the outlet has been given special access as the official broadcast partner of the audit. The results of this audit so far have been exactly what one might expect from an ill-defined process led by an apparently unqualified and partisan actor. Cyber Ninjas tried to avoid even explaining its putative procedures for the audit, labeling them a trade secret, until a federal judge ordered the company to release them. Not only is the process bad; it’s also likely to run far longer than anticipated. The state Senate initially planned for the count to finish by May 14, but at the current pace, it could take months more.