JUDY WOODRUFF: The widely discredited
election review in Arizona is over.

But more than 10 months after
the 2020 election, there is
growing alarm about other efforts

launched with no credible
justification to sow doubt about
elections past, present and future.

William Brangham explains.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: That's right, Judy.

It was Republicans in the
Arizona state Senate who

commissioned this review of ballots in
Maricopa County, even though election

officials in the state said there was no
large-scale fraud in the 2020 election.

But a partisan group called
Cyber Ninjas undertook a
controversial review of the vote,

and they affirmed that Joe Biden in
fact won Maricopa County and Arizona.

And here with us to look at the
larger context is Nate Persily,

a scholar of election law at
Stanford University Law School.

Nate, great to see you
back on the "NewsHour."

I hesitate to call this an actual audit,
what this organization did in Arizona.

But they affirmed what we already knew,
that Joe Biden won Maricopa County and

he won Arizona. But what do you make
of this when you look at this process?

NATE PERSILY, Stanford Law
School: Well, you're right to
hesitate in calling it an audit.

Audits are good things. We know
how to do election audits. Every
state should audit its elections.

But that is not what this was. This
really was part of a coordinated
disinformation campaign to

try to undermine the legitimacy
of the election. And we should
not put too fine a point on it,

that the whole goal here after the
fact, many months after the fact,

now almost a year after the
election, was to cast doubt on the
basic machinery of this election.

And, as we have seen, even in the sort
of public reception of this draft report,

the fact that Cyber Ninjas did
not find that it affected the
outcome hasn't sort of decreased

speculation or this lack of
confidence that the whole
audit process has generated.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: And for people
who haven't been following this

rather circuitous process they took, I
mean, this was a very bizarre process,

the way they went about this. These
people had no experience in election law.

They spent a period of time searching
for bamboo fibers, allegedly
looking for counterfeit Chinese

ballots. I mean, the whole
process seems -- bizarre is the
official term, I think, for this.

NATE PERSILY: Well, one of the problems is
that we don't really know what the basic

allegation was as to why there
might have been fraud, whether
in Arizona or elsewhere.

Throughout the last 10, 12 months,
what we have seen are allegations,
again, of Chinese ballots,

as you were saying, in Arizona,
of Italian satellites as having
manipulated voting machines,

or of Dominion voting machines
not being secure, of dead
people voting and the like.

There's this very heterogeneous
set of complaints. And so what
Cyber Ninjas was doing was going on

a fishing expedition to find out if there
was anything that implicated the outcome.

Now, they didn't find that the results
would have been different. In fact,

they had -- from their results,
they suggest that Joe Biden
actually increased his vote totals

through their audit than what
was found on Election Day.

But the fact that it may have sort
of confirmed the result should not

be any solace to those of
us who worry about the lack
of confidence that this type

of process has engendered
among the mass public.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: And, as you
say, if this were just Arizona,
that might be one thing.

We might be able to put this
behind us, but this is going on
in multiple other states now.

NATE PERSILY: That's right.

This is now a playbook for other
states. If you are a sort of
disgruntled politician or one trying

to make a name for yourself, then,
whether it's in Pennsylvania or
Wisconsin or some other states,

Georgia, now that this is a
pathway that they have chosen.

Now, again, recounts and audits
are part of our process. We want

to encourage that in the month or so
after an election, because we want to

know that the election machinery
is working as intended. But
a year after an election,

right, all this is trying to do is to
undermine confidence in the result.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: And it sounds
like, on some level, that
perpetual argument that is made is

having an effect, there was a Monmouth
University poll out a month or two ago

that showed that a third of Americans
believe that President Biden was elected

only because of fraud and
that Donald Trump should have
properly won the election.

I mean, from an election
administrator standpoint,

if a third of the country thinks that
you're engaged in a widespread fraud,

what does that do to their ability
to run elections safely and soundly?

NATE PERSILY: Well, this is a very

dangerous period, I think, for our
democracy, that we have not seen this

erosion of confidence in the
basic infrastructure America, of
the elections, in our history.

We see lots of retirements
among these veteran election
officials. We see that many of them

feel that they're taking their
lives in their own hands because
of death threats and the like.

And so these are challenges we have not
faced before, and they're a direct result

of the concerted disinformation
campaign that's trying to undermine
the legitimacy the outcome.

But these folks are heroes.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Nate Persily of
Stanford University Law School,

thanks so much for being here.

NATE PERSILY: Thank you.