Memo to the Arizona GOP: you'd be well-advised to stop your stupid audit

 It's causing a rift among you:

An ongoing and extraordinary audit of the 2020 vote count in the state’s largest county — rooted in conspiracy theories and the false belief that Biden’s election was not legitimate — is deepening the schism six months after the election, with no clear end in sight.

And that has ramifications for upcoming elections:

[Some state] Republicans are speaking out to warn that the amateurish conduct of the audit and the conspiracy theories it has amplified could cause lasting damage to the party. Next year they must defend an open governor’s seat and try to flip back one of the two Senate seats Democrats took in the last two elections.

Instead of a wake-up call spurred by those two Trump-era losses and Biden’s narrow statewide victory, they worry the audit is the latest sign of the Republican Party marginalizing itself in a state where it once reigned supreme.

“First of all, you do need to get to a point where you say, 'Okay, we're done. We have sufficiently addressed concerns that might be out there in the community.' And I feel like we had gotten to that point,” Bill Gates, a Republican Maricopa County supervisor, said in an interview. He said the county’s previous audit and recounts of ballots already determined there were no issues in the election.

“I believe that this is only appealing to a certain segment of the Republican Party,” Gates said. “I think there are many Republicans who are horrified by what's going on. I think there are very few independents who aren't horrified by what's going on. But it's not too late.”

At least one of the firms conducting the audit is a decidedly underbaked, tinfoil-hat outfit:

The audit is being run, in part, by a firm called Cyber Ninjas. The little-known firm is run by a man who has previously promoted baseless conspiracies about the 2020 election and appears to have little past experience in conducting elections or running audits.

“This is not an audit. It’s not even a recount,” said Tammy Patrick, a former Maricopa County elections official who is now a senior adviser at the Democracy Fund. “If we continue to indulge this kind of activity, we will not be living in a true, healthy democracy.”

Then. there is the broader implication. This many people - the majority of Republicans * - continuing to proceed on the basis of a lie about the election being stolen erodes faith in the nation's basic institutions.  A pervasive mistrust in the foundations of our representative democracy cannot lead to anything good. 

*Not that Democrats are immune to jeopardizing our foundations. Stacy Abrams has yet to concede the Georgia governor's race.