Surprise, Arizona! Dead voters weren't a thing in 2020, despite what Cyber Ninjas said

Attorney General Mark Brnovich has wrapped up his investigation into the Cyber Ninjas’ claim that hundreds of dead voters cast ballots into the 2020 election.

To the surprise of absolutely no one, he concluded that the Senate’s auditors didn’t know what they were talking about.

The ninjas, as part of their five-month audit, reported that 282 dead voters cast ballots in the November 2020 election.

After hundreds of hours of investigation, the AG’s office concluded that 281 of those 282 voters were alive and kicking when they cast ballots.

“Our agents investigated all individuals that Cyber Ninas reported as dead, and many were very surprised to learn they were allegedly deceased,” Brnovich wrote on Monday, in a letter to Senate President Karen Fann.

A letter that just coincidentally comes one day before Arizona's primary election and the likely end of Brnovich's Senate race.

Conspiracies are like playing Whac-A-Mole

AG investigators also checked out four other reports of nearly 6,500 supposedly dead people who either cast ballots or were on the voter registration rolls. They came up with “only a handful of potential cases,” all of them isolated instances.

Brnovich said some of the claims were "so absurd the names and birthdates didn't even match the deceased, and others included dates of death after the election."

Yet another conspiracy gone kaput – consigned to the graveyard of crazy to rest in peace alongside Sharpies, green buttons, bamboo ballots, hacked machinery and all the other supposedly nefarious ways in which Arizona’s 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump.

No compliance: Fines over public records stack up for Cyber Ninjas

I’d like to say that Brnovich’s latest findings on the not-so-dead voters should give Arizonans renewed confidence that our election system works. But, of course, it won’t.

It’s like Whac-A-Mole. Every time you beat down one conspiracy theory, another one pops up to replace it.

Don’t expect that to change any time soon.

Decertification can't happen. But they'll still try

The Trump-endorsed candidates on Tuesday’s ballot are obsessed with 2020. Undermining confidence in our elections is their claim to fame and, they believe, their ticket to power.

Kari Lake, Mark Finchem and Abe Hamadeh all have have called for the 2020 election to be decertified.

On Sunday, Hamadeh promoted a tweet from Steve Bannon, in which Bannon promises that once the threesome is in office, Arizona’s 2020 vote will be counted (yet again) and the Biden electors decertified.

Never mind that decertification isn’t, you know, a thing.  At least, not a legal one.

Then again, with a Governor Lake, a Secretary of State Finchem, an Attorney General Hamadeh?

With a Legislature that is about to lurch even farther to the right, if that’s even possible?

Who’s to stop them from trying?

Reach Roberts at laurie.roberts@arizonarepublic.com. Follow her on Twitter at @LaurieRoberts.

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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Mark Brnovich refutes Cyber Ninjas claim about dead people voting