A Republican-ordered audit of the 2020 election in Arizona’s most populous county is back after a week’s hiatus and growing bipartisan backlash from officials in the state.
Republicans who lead the Arizona Senate ordered the audit, which includes a review of roughly 2.1 million ballots cast in Maricopa County, and it began in April after a legal fight with the county over subpoenas. Before auditors paused on May 13 to allow high school graduations to commence at the Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Phoenix, officials said they had made it through 500,000 ballots cast in the county, according to the Arizona Republic.
The floor of the coliseum now has 44 tables for counting and 32 for ballot inspection, but just half of those were in use as of Monday morning.
MARICOPA COUNTY REQUESTS PRESERVATION OF AUDIT MATERIALS FOR POTENTIAL LITIGATION
Auditors initially said they would conclude the recount by May 14, but they have since said the counting would finish before June 30, which is the new deadline organizers established for the coliseum lease. The audit also includes an examination of the county’s voting machines and other election materials.
Criticism of the audit has been levied by both Democrats and Republicans in the state, saying that the Senate-hired private auditing firm, Cyber Ninjas, is mismanaged and organized by an unqualified contractor. Other critics have said the audit could undermine voter confidence in the system by amplifying unproven allegations about the election.
A left-leaning watchdog group, American Oversight, sued the Arizona Senate on Wednesday over a lack of documents the group said it never received regarding information on Cyber Ninjas, the audit’s donors, and investigation techniques.
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Cyber Ninjas CEO Doug Logan has also drawn backlash for now-deleted social media posts touting unsupported claims of voter fraud in the 2020 election, but he insists the audit will not be swayed by his opinions.
The GOP-majority Maricopa County Board of Supervisors and other county officials sent Senate President Karen Fann a letter last week, accusing the audit of not being conducted in good faith.
“We have wasted enough County resources. People’s tax dollars are real, your ‘auditors’ are not,” the letter said.
Earlier, Fann wrote to Maricopa County Board of Supervisors Chairman Jack Sellers, raising concerns about “serious issues” found in the course of the audit, including questioning whether someone deleted a main database from the Election Management System, although last week CyFIR founder Ben Cotton, who is tasked to examine voting machines, said the “deleted files” were recovered.
Fann has said the audit is not meant to overturn the results of the 2020 contest, although former President Donald Trump has touted how he believes it will show “massive” election fraud. Instead, the Senate president insisted that the audit is meant to restore trust in the system and influence potential changes to the law.
President Joe Biden won Arizona by more than 10,000 votes out of more than 3.3 million cast across the state, and his lead was due in part to his victory in Maricopa.
Bill Gates, a GOP member of the board, said some of his fellow party members who publicly support the audit do not mean what they are saying about the goals of the recount.
“They think this is what they have to do to be reelected, and I’m not going to do it,” Gates said in an interview with the Republic.
Sellers on Friday sent an additional letter to Fann with a litigation hold notice and document preservation request for all materials from the state Senate’s audit ahead of possible legal action.
“It is clear the Arizona Senate and its contractors do not intend to retract false allegations defaming the County and its employees,” Sellers wrote.
Republican state Sen. Paul Boyer, who also has supported the audit, said the perceived mismanagement of the Maricopa audit “is a gift to the Democratic Party,” according to the Wall Street Journal.
“If my own … party leaders are sowing distrust in the electoral process through this, whatever this outcome is, I think you’re going to see less turnout by Republicans,” Boyer added.
Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs and some Republicans have criticized the audit and pointed out that the results from two previous election machine audits, conducted for the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, showed no irregularities in the county’s 2020 election. There was also a recount of a sample of ballots that did not turn up any problems.
Hobbs, a Democrat who sent observers to the venue, wrote a letter to Ken Bennett, the Arizona Senate liaison for the audit, listing out multiple concerns about the procedures that have been disclosed in documents. The Arizona secretary of state also raised the alarm after her observers reported a Wi-Fi router connected to audit servers. The Maricopa Arizona Audit, which claims to be the Twitter account for the 2020 review, responded in saying: “No wireless was ever enabled.”
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Last week, Hobbs told officials in Maricopa County that she would consider de-certifying election equipment subpoenaed as part of the Senate-commissioned 2020 election audit if the county moves to reuse the equipment in future elections.
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The Arizona Senate is spending $150,000 on the audit, and the rest is coming from donors. OANN anchor Christina Bobb is helping to raise funds through a nonprofit group, Voices and Votes. The total cost has not been made public.
