State lawmakers were told in a Friday hearing that the Arizona election audit uncovered inconsistencies in the 2020 election.
The Maricopa County audit was commissioned by Arizona Senate republicans and conducted by the Florida-based company Cyber Ninjas. The review involved over 1,500 people and 100,000 hours.
On the same day, Senate President Karen Fann sent a letter to Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich recommending further investigation into the audit’s findings.
As reported by the Epoch Times, she expressed concerns about signature verification on mail-in ballots, the accuracy of voter rolls, the security of elections systems and the record-keeping of evidence.
“I am therefore forwarding the reports for your office’s consideration and, if you find it appropriate, further investigation as part of your ongoing oversight of these issues,” Fann wrote.
Brnovich said in a statement that he will “take all necessary actions that are supported by the evidence and where [he has] legal authority,” as “Arizonans deserve to have their votes accurately counted and protected.”
His office said that its Election Integrity Unit “will thoroughly review the Senate’s information and evidence,” though “specific allegations cannot be commented on until the review is complete.”
The audit found a recount vote discrepancy of 994 in the presidential race and 1,167 in the Senate race, but highlighted issues with a whopping 53,305 ballots in total.
Indeed, on Friday, a draft of the report was leaked ahead of the Senate audit hearing and the numbers did not entirely correlate with that of Cyber Ninja’s final report.
“As you know,” Fann said during the hearing, “somebody leaked one of the draft reports out over the last 24-48 hours. It was a draft report, so I can tell you that what’s in that is not entirely what’s in the final report.”
According to the final report, 23,344 mail-in ballots were received from previous addresses.
“Mail-in ballots were cast under voter registration IDs for people that may not have received their ballots by mail because they had moved, and no one with the same last name remained at the address,” the report says. “Through extensive data analysis we have discovered approximately 23,344 votes that may have this condition.”
Additionally, “9,031 more ballots show as returned in the EV33 Early Voting Returns File for a single individual who voted by mail than show as sent to that individual within the EV32 Early Voting Sent File.”
“In most of these instances,” the report continues,” an individual was sent one ballot but had two ballots received on different dates.”
To no surprise, the county disputed those findings.
Around 5,295 ballots were affected by voters who potentially voted in multiple counties. There was a total of 5,047 voters found in the other 14 Arizona counties with the same first, middle, last name and birth year. This represents around 10,342 votes among all the counties.
Also, “the official result totals do not match the equivalent totals from the Final Voted File,” the report said.
“The Cyber Ninjas’ opinions come from a misuse and misunderstanding of the data provided by the county and are twisted to fit the narrative that something went wrong,” Jack Sellers, Chair of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, said in a statement in response to the hearing. “Once again, these ‘auditors’ threw out wild, damaging, false claims in the middle of their audit and Senate leadership provided them the platform to present their opinions, suspicions, and faulty conclusions unquestioned and unchallenged. Today’s hearing was irresponsible and dangerous.”
