The revelations first published by The Washington Post on May 20 show that Ginni Thomas was more involved than previously known in efforts, based on unsubstantiated claims of fraud, to overturn Bidens victory and keep then-President Donald Trump in office. This, too, confirmed that Democrat Mark Kelly handily defeated incumbent Republican Martha McSally. Senate President Karen Fann tells Arizona Supreme Court that judges can't force her to give up the documents now held by Cyber Ninjas. He said Ayyadurai has identified a number of those. These include 23,344 mail-in ballots that were voted from someone's prior address and more than 10,000 voters who potentially voted in multiple counties, according to the draft report. County officials responded with a point-by-point rebuttal. The. Saquon Barkley And Daniel Jones Are Finally Making The Giants Look Good. Get up-to-the-minute news sent straight to your device. As part of a point-by-point rebuttal on Twitter, Maricopa County called that claim "laughable", suggesting those conducting the review may have failed to account for people with matching names and birth years in different counties, a not uncommon occurrence in a state of more than 7 million people. The states highest court said it will consider whether the Arizona Court of Appeals and a trial court properly rejected the Senates claim that the records were protected under legislative privilege. But not very likely.. For Star subscribers: The Department of Justice said Monday it will "monitor compliance with federal voting rights laws'' in five Arizona counties, also including Maricopa. The count raises more questions about Cyber Ninjas than Maricopa. Of note: The audit team's hand count of all 2.1 million ballots cast in the county concluded that President Biden not only won the county, but that he won by more votes than the official canvass recorded, which was 10,457. The Cyber Ninjas report includes several recommended areas that the firm suggests warrant further scrutiny, broken down by level of severity critical, high, medium, low and unknown (or, inits term, informational). U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Tuesday he had no knowledge at the time of any classified documents taken to the Penn Biden Center, after some classified documents from President Joe Biden's time as vice president were discovered at the center. From left, Ben Cotton, Doug Logan and Randy Pullen in the Arizona Senate in 2021. Yes, it seems thatArizonas elusive election fraud has finally been uncovered. And she said that includes everything from letter spacing to the apparent speed of the writing. alleged illegal breaches of election equipment. Arizona election administrators and the mostly Republican leaders of Maricopa County have always maintained that the 2020 election audit was flawed. The recount took several months and resulted in a three-volume report by the Cyber Ninjas, the lead contractor for the Senate. Watch as the Arizona Senate presents the results of the audit of the presidential election votes. The latest Arizona headlines, national news events of the day + weather updates. Ben Ginsberg, a longtime Republican election lawyer who represented Republican George W. Bush when he prevailed over Democrat Al Gore in a 2000 electoral dispute, called the review's conclusions a "huge defeat" for Trump. Two of them live in Maricopa County, one in Cochise County. Capitol Media Services has learned that the presentation of the final report, set for 1 p.m. Friday, Sept. 24, in the state Senate chambers, will also include at least two findings of problems with the election returns found by others involved in the review. Maricopa County ballots cast in the 2020 general election were examined and recounted by contractors working for Florida-based company Cyber Ninjas. Tool can help customers get canceled flight refunds. Frp Bypass 10 || Lenovo T430 Remove BIOS Lock / Bypass Supervisor Password But it isnt fraud. For example, Logan said in July there were 74,243 mail-in ballots being received where there is no clear record of them being sent. Logan also said there were 11,326 individuals who did not show up on the version of the voter rolls prepared the day after the election but did show up on the Dec. 4 list as not only being registered but having voted. Support local journalism by becoming a member. The intrigue: Bill Gates, the Republican chair of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors and a defender of the county's handling of the election, said he finds it concerning that legislators could enact new election laws based on the audit's erroneous findings. Between the lines: Gates and Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer said they believed the audit helped propel election deniers in this year's GOP primary. Salmon also said the county didnt cooperate. Former Secretary of State Ken Bennett last week temporarily stepped down from his role as liaison to the senate's self-styled audit of Maricopa County votes. BOMBSHELL UPDATE: Cyber Ninjas CEO Doug Logan has just provided a firm date for the release of his Arizona audit report! A judge said Thursday he's not ready to cite the Arizona Senate and its president, Karen Fann, for contempt of court. , Yahoo, Yahoo. The lead contractor was an obscure company, Cyber Ninjas, whose chief executive has promoted conspiracy theories about orchestrated fraud in the election. The Florida-based firm recounted ballots cast in both the race for president and the race for a U.S. Senate seat, in which Democrat Mark Kelly ousted Republican Martha McSally. The hand recount, a multistep process that included manual data entry from volunteers who were not professionally trained by election administrators, found 2,088,569 votes in the presidential contest and 2,088,396 votes in the Senate race a difference of 175 ballots. A wide array of election experts, Democrats and some Republican officials had long rejected the Arizona audit as a highly partisan boondoggle run by contractors without relevant expertise. There is very little transparency or public access to the count, and workers are looking into wild conspiracy theories. Build the strongest argument relying on authoritative content, attorney-editor expertise, and industry defining technology. The GOP state senators who ordered the review have been battling local election officials since November over the results. Threats are "completely unacceptable," said Senate President Karen Fann. The hand counts in Arizonas most populous county, home to Phoenix, started the Saturday after the election and wrapped up two days later. In Georgia this month, a judge ruled that 145,000 absentee ballots from Fulton County should be released for an audit paid for by plaintiffs nine voters in a lawsuit against the county alleging fraud. Also weighing in was former Congressman Matt Salmon, who is hoping to become the Republican nominee for governor. Doug Ducey said after Donald Trump called him "Republican in name only.". Aug. 4, 2021. This boondoggle not only fails to meet the standards weve set in place to make audits and recounts a valuable tool for cultivating confidence in our elections but also subverts them to the opposite result. What they're saying: Fann and former Cyber Ninjas head Doug Logan, who led the audit team, have never publicly responded to the county's rebuttal. No election can be conducted perfectly because its conducted by fallible human beings, he said. Per state law, after almost every countywide election in Arizona,1 a multiparty audit board must conduct a hand count of ballots from a sample of randomly selected voting precincts and compare them with the results from voting machines. 410Phoenix, AZ 85018-7271Phone: (602) 553-0333, Copyright (c) 2022 Arizona Auditor General. Ward even made a video about it (with a fundraising plea, no doubt, still to come). Although Trump carried Texas, Biden won three of the targeted counties. It is frustrating. The county blasted the 2020 election "audit" as "this adventure in never-never land.". Those ballots broke for President Biden by a 45,000-vote margin, about four times his winning margin statewide, making him the first Democrat to carry Arizona sinceformer President Clinton. . Among the bills killed were measures that would have created new criminal charges for a variety of missteps by election workers and contractors; created new rights for election observers, including the right to question election officials during counting; set new requirements for post-election audits and recordkeeping; required a unique serial number on each ballot. Conducted by a company founded by an election-fraud conspiracy theorist and Trump supporter, the process is funded mostly by Trump loyalists and fails to meet any of the standards required for official recounts or audits by state law. Attorney General Mark Brnovich largely reiterated concerns raised by a widely panned election review conducted last year by supporters of former President Donald Trump on behalf of state Senate Republicans. 15 Jan 2023 07:03:11 . Several have sought to launch Arizona-style "audits" in their own states. Republicans passed the bill out of the Senate Government Committee in a 4-3 party-line vote, but it is almost certain to die in a vote of the full Senate or in the House. Phantom voters! Trump said in a context-free statement released Friday. Fann said the state Senate was working on legislation to achieve an "unimpeachable electoral process", based on alleged issues found in the review. The report was the latest to find no evidence of any major problems with the election in Maricopa County. Perhaps the most interesting episode so far. Somethings widespread, all right, and rather fragrant, as well. Perp walks & prosecutions on the way! It seems to be prompted by political motivations because the earlier counts and checks didnt produce the outcome that the legislators wanted.. To date, the Maricopa County Board of. Hear from both sides of the aisle - CBS 13's Cody Lee reports. The choice of Logan by Fann, R-Prescott, raised questions from the beginning, at least in part because he had made public statements even before the audit started that there was fraud in the election. Here is one example of what is going on. The Arizona Supreme Court said it will not decide the issue of whether those records are subject to public disclosure until at least Sept. 14. Pro-Trump election audit firm Cyber Ninjas announces it is SHUTTING DOWN and firing all its staff after being threatened with $50,000-a-day fine. "Truth is truth, numbers are numbers," Fann said at a Senate hearing on the review, which found only small variations, yielding 99 additional votes for Biden and 261 fewer votes for Trump. What extraordinary measures can Treasury take to prevent US from default? Cyber Ninjas CEO Doug Logan, hired by Arizona's Senate Republican leaders to conduct an "audit" of the 2020 election in Maricopa County, was featured on a Thursday prayer call hosted by Intercessors for America, a network of "prayer warriors" that strongly backed former President Donald Trump. The top priority one that Trump seized on even before the final report came out is mail-in ballots cast from a voters prior address. And its being performed months after the election, after votes have been certified, after the winners of said election have been sworn into office. Gates said in a statement that the county had handed over thousands of records sought by the attorney general and would respond to the latest request. This special COVID-19 funding report presents information on the amounts, intended purposes, Department helps coordinate emergency management efforts throughout the State, but did not consistently develop and track corrective actions to address some emergency response deficiencies, impacting its ability toaddress these deficiencies during real-world emergency responses, and did not comply with Office provides economic, demographic, and tax research and analysis for the State but lacked documentation of benefits received for payments made to Commerce Authority, and Arizona Finance Authority, a related entity, lacked oversight controls for some key activities increasing risk for errors and fraud. "Whenever impartial, independent, and competent people have examined the Countys election practices, they have found no reason to doubt the integrity of those practices," said Gates, who is a Republican. From 2000 to 2019, there were only 31 statewide recounts out of 5,778 statewide general elections, according to a survey by FairVote, a nonpartisan group that advocates for election reforms. So. The Arizona Auditor General is seeking proposals for services of certified public accounting firms to perform annual financial statement and compliance audits and annual expenditure limitation report examinations for each of the following auditees: Yavapai County, Gila County Provisional Community College District, Graham County Community College District, and Santa Cruz County Provisional . American Oversight filed the lawsuit last year to get access to about 1,000 records sent between Republican Senate President Karen Fann and Cyber Ninjas, the Florida-based group that conducted the audit. Reach Roberts at laurie.roberts@arizonarepublic.com. The so-called "audit" in Arizona of Maricopa County's 2020 general election ballots started as a court battle between the state Senate and the county board of supervisors. Im not going to say in a verbal interview what Im going to be putting in writing for the report, Bennett said. My take on The Arizona Senate giving an update on the election audit in Maricopa County This was my post from Facebook on this subject. Sitemap . Who is Solomon Pea, the GOP candidate arrested in political shooting case? Yes, it seems that Arizona's elusive election fraud has finally been uncovered. Logan did not return a message from Axios. To my knowledge, we have never had a race with a margin of more than 1,000 votes overturned as a result of an audit or recount, said David Becker, the executive director of the nonpartisan nonprofit Center for Election Innovation & Research. District lacked internal controls and did not comply with requirements in multiple areas, putting public monies, sensitive computerized data, and student safety at risk. At a hearing this month, Arizona senate president Karen Fann said shes been contacted by legislators in other states who told her that this is whats going to lay the groundwork as to what is the future of how we audit our elections.. But election analysts and experts said that figure is meaningless without more context. For Star subscribers: The Senate and contractor Cyber Ninjas have failed to comply with judge's orders that they produce public records about the election audit, court is told. The. The county said they could not be handed over to the private firm the Senate hired last year to do a complete review of the countys 2020 election results and systems for security reasons. The findings in Pima County provide yet another official rebuttal of former President Donald Trumps claims that voter fraud led to his loss in Arizona and other battleground states. The main event of the so-called audit was a hand recount of theroughly 2,089,000 ballots voters in Maricopa County cast in 2020. Outside groups tied to the "Stop the Steal" movement and other efforts to cast doubt on the 2020 results raised nearly all of the $6 million to fund the inquiry, viewing it as a catalyst for similar investigations in Pennsylvania, Michigan and other battleground states that Trump lost. "This means the tabulation equipment counted the ballots as they were designed to do, and the results reflect the will of the voters,'' he said. Kaleigh Rogers is FiveThirtyEights technology and politics reporter. We did identify a few where they fell short, he told Capitol Media Services on Thursday. Randy Pullen, a former chairman of the Arizona Republican Party, will report a third count of the 2.1 million Maricopa County ballots by machine, to compare the number of ballots cast with both the countys tally and the number counted by Cyber Ninjas. I understand why people are frustrated.. In the weeks after Novembers election, a particularly bizarre conspiracy theory floated around Facebook and other social media networks: Arizona ballots cast with a Sharpie marker were allegedly disqualified. The judge rebuffed a claim by the private firm which is conducting the state Senate's review of the 2020 election that it cannot be sued under public records law. Hes worked for banks before, hes an expert on signature analysis and things like that, Fann said. There is no outcome that actually strengthens voter confidence, Becker said. Its frustrating to all of us," he said on Steve Bannon's podcast on Thursday. Secretary of State Katie Hobbs shared a summary of incidents witnesses have noted in the. Some Republicans seeking to align themselves with Trump raced to perpetuate the former presidents wrong claims despite the audit results. Even after the majority-Republican Maricopa County Board of Supervisors hired two separate, independent firms to perform a forensic audit of the voting equipment used an audit which found no irregularities the state Senate was unsatisfied. 6. Six-plus months later, Maricopa Countys ballots are still being counted but by another group entirely. More from this show. And there are three women who returned their recently deceased mothers early ballots. Those allegations were false, but it didnt stop some Trump voters from claiming their votes had been disproportionately thrown out. A recount was performed, and the rightful winners were elected. Cyber Ninjas undercuts some of the most egregious conspiracy theories. Browse an unrivalled portfolio of real-time and historical market data and insights from worldwide sources and experts. Not even Brnovich the Senate candidatewho is slipping in the polls and desperately chasing Donald Trumps endorsement could bring himself to claim Arizona'selection was stolen, though he came as close as he possibly could. The Senate and Cyber Ninjas have been battling for months over two public records lawsuits, one each filed by the parent of The Arizona Republic and American Oversight, a government watchdog group. Here are five takeaways from the report and the testimony delivered Friday before the state Senate, which underscored what were already the results of the election: President Biden won both Arizona and the Electoral College. The audit went 0-3, said Mike Noble, a Phoenix-based pollster and political strategist. Trump trounces DeSantis in potential GOP primary match-up, new poll finds, McDaniel says she has enough support to win race for RNC chair, White House rips appointment of extreme MAGA members to House Oversight panel, McCarthy goes on attack against red-state Senate Democrats, What is ChatGPT? She said the county has a multi-step procedure for verifying signatures, comparing the signatures on the envelope with what already is on file. ), 35 fun events happening in Tucson this weekend Jan. 12-16 , Oumar Ballo still rebounding from health scare that left him hospitalized 3 times, A green comet will appear in the night sky for the first time in 50,000 years, Find concha slippers, horchata lip balm and more at this downtown maker shop, NOW OPEN: New downtown restaurant Blue Front is home to American comfort foods, Tucson police: 1 killed, 2 wounded in shooting. In fact, the report says that, based on a hand count of all 2.1 million ballots cast in Maricopa County, official winner Joe Biden tallied 99 more votes than the county recorded and Donald Trump had 261 fewer votes than officially recorded. I will take all necessary actions that are supported bythe evidence and where I have legal authority, Brnovich said. Over the last 11years, we have identified public money losses in Arizona governments District had higher administrative costs than peer districts and spent unauthorized monies on its community preschool program, and its lack of compliance with important standards and requirements put public monies and sensitive information at risk. For contempt of Court Copyright ( c ) 2022 Arizona Auditor general Katie Hobbs shared a summary incidents. Voters from claiming their votes had been disproportionately thrown out conducted by fallible beings... 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