Arizona’s top election official urged an overseer of the Republican-backed audit of the 2020 election in Maricopa County to either “do it right, or don’t do it at all.”
In a letter dated Wednesday, Democratic Secretary of State Katie Hobbs told Ken Bennett, himself a former Republican secretary of state in Arizona and who is serving as the Republican-led state Senate’s audit liaison, that she took issue with numerous counting procedures outlined by the audit team, as well as those observed at the audit site in Phoenix’s Veterans Memorial Coliseum.
Bennett, Arizona Senate President Karen Fann, and Cyber Ninjas, the Florida-based firm leading the audit, have two days to respond under the terms of a lawsuit settlement filed on Tuesday, and according to KPNX, a local NBC affiliate, Hobbs could take them back to court for breach of contract if her concerns are not addressed.
Hobbs relayed seven concerns based on the disclosure of counting procedures by the state Senate and Cyber Ninjas, saying first that the procedures “are vague and insufficient to ensure accuracy and consistency.”
MARICOPA COUNTY 2020 ELECTION AUDIT EXPANDING AS LIAISON SAYS ‘NO DEADLINE’
“The procedures offer no specifications on the standards that will be used in determining voter intent. Voters don’t always mark their ballots cleanly or consistently,” Hobbs wrote. “If a voter fills in two bubbles and circles one of the names, how do you count that vote?”
Hobbs said the counting process outlined in the procedures incorporates the use of untested systems and departs from best practices for accurate hand tallying of ballots.
Hobbs also took a swipe at Cyber Ninjas’s employment of forensic audit procedures, which include the use of UV lights to examine ballots and the examination of ballots under a microscope. The procedures “appear better suited for chasing conspiracy theories than as a part of a professional audit,” Hobbs wrote.
She said, in addition, the procedures lack details about hiring unbiased counters, that they fail to “adequately protect and document chain of custody of ballots,” and that they do not disclose a process for adding up vote tallies.
“When asked by my Office about the process that will be used to aggregate the tens of thousands of individual tally sheets that will be generated, we received no real explanation other than that an accounting firm will handle it later,” she wrote.
Beyond her qualms with the disclosed procedures, Hobbs said observers from her office witnessed various procedural lapses when they visited the audit site, including “inadequate physical security of ballots.”
Hobbs said workers “appear to be violating the procedures and there is an inexplicable disregard for best security practices,” alleging in particular that observers saw ballots left on unattended tables, ballots tallied on scrap paper rather than official tally sheets, counters receiving training “on the fly,” and the use of cellphones on the counting floor, among other things.
“As a former Secretary of State, you know that our elections are governed by a complex framework of laws and procedures designed to ensure accuracy, security, and transparency. You also must therefore know that the procedures governing this audit ensure none of those things,” Hobbs wrote to Bennett, ending the letter, “I’m not sure what compelled you to oversee this audit, but I’d like to assume you took this role with the best of intentions. It is those intentions I appeal to now: either do it right, or don’t do it at all.”
The Washington Examiner reached out to Bennett for comment on Hobbs’s letter but did not immediately receive a response.
However, a Twitter account for the audit effort wrote on Wednesday, “AZ @SecretaryHobbs continues to make baseless claimes [sic] about this forensic audit but has never led an election audit in her entire career. The audit continues!”
AZ @SecretaryHobbs continues to make baseless claimes about this forensic audit but has never led an election audit in her entire career. The audit continues!
— Maricopa Arizona Audit (@ArizonaAudit) May 5, 2021
Democrats have pushed back against the audit, filing a lawsuit against state Senate leadership on the day before it began to try to put a stop to it, but the audit has been allowed to continue.
Hobbs will reportedly discuss the audit with the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division on Thursday. It later emerged that the DOJ Civil Rights Division wrote a letter to Fann on Tuesday also raising concerns about the audit and asking for a response on steps being taken to ensure that federal laws are not being violated.
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The results of the audit, which was secured through legal action by the Republican-led state Senate after leadership alleged fraud in the 2020 election, are expected to be available around two months after it began on April 23.
