What little we do know about the auditors themselves does not bode well for an impartial count. The counters have been drawn mainly from the ranks of the grassroots Republican Party, and the few who have been identified publicly are self-described partisans. One of the workers who spoke with CNN, Elouise Flagg, was straightforward about her perspective. “I think Donald Trump won the election—firm believer,” Flagg told the network. “I hope we come to a point where we’re happy with the results and truth is told.” Another auditor was a former Republican state legislator named Anthony Kern who participated in “Stop the Steal” events, was photographed on the steps of the Capitol during the Jan. 6 riot, and had been fired from a law enforcement job for lying to a supervisor and placed on an official misconduct list. Kern’s name was also on the ballot as an official elector for Donald Trump—under normal Arizona audit procedures, it is illegal to count a vote when your name is on the ballot. Kern was ultimately removed as a counter because of “optics,” Senate liaison Ken Bennett told reporters in the press pool when I was at the coliseum. And then there are those hasty counting procedures, which seem almost designed to create errors. Despite Smith’s insistence that this recount was not a recount, the audit supporters and the rest of the Republican base seem ready to view it as exactly that. Bennett, the former Arizona secretary of state who is now the leader of the audit, said this count—and he called it a “count”—is being conducted to look for “more than acceptable variance” from the official tally. “More than acceptable variance” is 0.3 percent, or Joe Biden’s margin of victory in the state, Bennett told me.