AUDIT UPDATE: 1 Million Ballots Counted in Maricopa County, Halfway Point Reached

With over a million ballots counted thus far, the Arizona Senate is inching closer to the halfway point in its Maricopa County 2020 election audit. 

The total ballot count needed to complete the audit is 2.1 million. 

Dr. Kelli Ward, chairwoman of the Arizona Republican Party, discussed the progress of the audit in a video posted to Twitter on Memorial Day. 

“As for ‘America’s Audit,’ counting continues today and the latest total has hit 1 million ballots evaluated and hand-counted,” she said.. “That’s in large part due to more volunteer centers in place, and what gets us to nearly 50 percent of the 2.1 million 2020 ballots cast in Maricopa County.” 

The audit, which is being conducted by the firm Cyber Ninjas, has been going on since April and is expected to finish in late June. 

Ward also noted that there are efforts to expand the audit. 

“We also know there has been additional discussion among the Arizona Senate and the auditors regarding the possibility of hiring a California-based election transparency group called Citizens Oversight to run an entirely electronic recount of digital images of ballots to count all votes cast for every single race on the county’s ballots. These totals could be used in every race to compare totals with official totals for Maricopa County and from the audit itself,” she added. 

The decision, however, will fall on Arizona State Senate President Karen Fann and her team. 

Ward warned that “attacks on the audit have never waned” and “we can only expect them to continue and ramp up considerably as we get closer to the end of ballot counting.” 

The audit is being “undermined by through the distorted lens of the democrats and their partners on the far left, and in the mainstream media,” she continued, listing out several nicknames including “the bogus audit, the republican audit, the fake audit, the fraudit, the right-wing inquisition,”