We always love the handoff from Rachel Maddow to Lawrence O'Donnell. And Wednesday we learned the new term for Arizona's bamboo sniffing "recount" team: whackjobs!

You may have heard that the "Cyber Ninja" totally-not-secure "recount" going on in Maricopa County, Arizona has turned to photography in order to determine if there are sekrit ballots printed on bamboo that were dumped into the legitimate ballot pool by CHINA.

Bamboo!

And also it appears that this team is going door-to-door to "confirm" votes? That's in violation of federal law. There really is a secret ballot when you vote for President and Vice President. No one counting votes gets to "check-in" with you in person later to confirm who you voted for.

Secret Ballot. It's a thing.

Also, federal law requires state officials to be "in possession" of the ballots for 22 months following an election. Giving the ballots to "Cyber Ninjas" doesn't count. Even if the Republican State Senate wants to.

So now the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice has sent a letter telling Arizona that there may be federal charges leveled at the re-counters if they are violating the law.

The Secretary of State for Arizona concurs:

And during the handoff to The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell, Rachel Maddow used the term "whackjob" to describe those engaged in bamboo ballot conspiracies.

Lawrence O'Donnell defended the term: "I think 'whackjobs' is in The New York Times stylesheet for describing what is happening in Arizona."