The state Senate that ordered the process is calling it an audit, and all the ballots are being recounted, but its not really an audit or a recount its a partisan inquisition. 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. BOMBSHELL UPDATE: Cyber Ninjas CEO Doug Logan has just provided a firm date for the release of his Arizona audit report! Its frustrating to all of us," he said on Steve Bannon's podcast on Thursday. Circuit Court of Appeals to revive their lawsuit. 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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. Sen. Michelle Ugenti-Rita, R-Scottsdale, running against Finchem for the Republican nomination for secretary of state, said she supported an audit but that it has been botched, blaming that on total lack of competence by Fann.. Reach Roberts at laurie.roberts@arizonarepublic.com. Support local journalism: Subscribe to azcentral.com today. Audit draft report confirms Biden got more Arizona votes than Trump Howard Fischer Capitol Media Services Sep 23, 2021 Updated Nov 8, 2022 Maricopa County ballots cast in the 2020 general. Fann said the state Senate was working on legislation to achieve an "unimpeachable electoral process", based on alleged issues found in the review. Within hours of Brnovich's report, Republican legislative hopeful Steve Zipperman had already pumped out afundraising plea. Photo: Jeremy Duda/Axios. 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. Two of them live in Maricopa County, one in Cochise County. A full hand-count of ballots and review of election equipment done by contractors hired by the Senate and released in September found no major problems. County Recorder Leslie Hoffman said that she is fed up with the nastiness and has accepted a job outside the county. 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. Two weeks ago, he demanded the county turn over thousands of signatures and other records after an election conspiracy theorist said he compared signatures from public documents to those on mail-in election envelopes and said many did not match. related: The Senate was responding to theories that hacking or the injection of ballots over an internet connection led to Trumps loss in the county and statewide to President Joe Biden. Yes, election fraud by individuals who have been or will be prosecuted for various election crimes Wow. Garrett Archer, a former top aide in the Arizona secretary of states office who now reports for Phoenixs ABC affiliate, told The Hill that the official data maintained by the county would have answered questions raised by the commercial data but that Cyber Ninjas did not take that step. Hes worked for banks before, hes an expert on signature analysis and things like that, Fann said. 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. Shadegg then hired three computer experts to review the equipment. Election Readiness Update Memo (PDF) 07/17/20: County Contract Audit - Axon Products and Services (PDF) . The Arizona Republic has gone to court to demand records from the state Senate and one of its contractors to shed light on the audit of 2020 election results, much of which has been kept from. Doug Logan did not say whether his new firm would do essentially the same work as Cyber Ninjas, who ran the 2020 election audit, but he said his efforts have been running into obstacles. Dismiss. Some Republicans seeking to align themselves with Trump raced to perpetuate the former presidents wrong claims despite the audit results. Repeating this kind of action in other states opens the door to a new era where our most important democratic process is undermined because there are two results in an election: the actual results, and the results of the partisan inquisition conducted by the losers. The AWS Cloud Engineer will be responsible for developing solutions to resolve highly complex technical and business issues. Click here to subscribe to any of our publications. Also weighing in was former Congressman Matt Salmon, who is hoping to become the Republican nominee for governor. Essentially we came up with the same number, Pullen said Thursday. And its being performed months after the election, after votes have been certified, after the winners of said election have been sworn into office. Keep reading with a digital access subscription. 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. Observers of the ongoing Arizona election audit have alleged several security and equipment concerns. The panel focused on Trumps efforts to undo Joe Bidens victory in a most local way by leaning on officials in key battleground states to reject ballots outright or to submit alternative electors for the final tally in Congress. And she said that includes everything from letter spacing to the apparent speed of the writing. Lawyers representing governor candidate Kari Lake and secretary of state hopeful Mark Finchem filed a notice saying they would ask the 9th U.S. Just moments after she was sworn . But in some cases, he said, what appears in the signature box is just a line or a mark. 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. Using its subpoena powers to seize the ballots from the local board, the state Senate hired Cyber Ninjas to conduct the audit. Notably, the firm has never performed any kind of election audit, and its founder and CEO, Doug Logan, has publicly supported Trump and shared election-fraud conspiracy posts. I have been listening to The Arizona Senate giving an update on the election audit in Maricopa County. The mechanics of the Maricopa County assessment have little in common with traditional attempts to ensure the accuracy of a vote. The overlap with Trumps cause doesnt end there. Standardization on these details would more greatly facilitate future audits, the report says. Tempe, Gilbert, Glendale, Flagstaff, and Chandler, BeachFleischman provides accounting, audit, consulting, and tax services to businesses, organizations, and individuals (U.S. and foreign-based), doing business domestically and internationally. No word on Steve's ability to read a footnote. The report wont mollify election deniers. norcal soccer tournaments 2022 . Get more local stories in your inbox with Axios Phoenix. 74,000 Ballots Returned with No Record of Ever Being Sent: Shocking AZ Audit Update By Michael Austin July 15, 2021 at 1:52pm UPDATE, Jul. What eye color is the rarest in the world? "This tops the level of constituent interest those issues have. Gates repeated that on Wednesday and said the report from Shadegg was the latest in a long string of evidence that showed that the election was well run. She hired the now-defunct Florida company Cyber Ninjas, which had little election experience and whose CEO tried to undermine the 2020 election results. A handful of U.S. firms are certified by the independent, bipartisan Election Assistance Commission to do these kinds of checks, a process that requires the firms themselves to be audited every two years by the EAC, according to Jack Cobb, the laboratory director and co-founder of Pro V&V, an EAC-accredited firm that tests voting systems. All rights reserved. He acknowledged, though, that does not necessarily mean the ballots that were in those envelopes were invalid. The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors announced an agreement Friday night that will prevent it from having to turn over election routers to Cyber Ninjas, the firm GOP Senators hired to review ballots there. But Fann did not dispute the key finding about the outcome of the races. Concerns about the audit have reached the U.S. Justice Department, which sent a letter to Arizona Senate President Karen Fann to warn about "potential non-compliance with federal laws," including . About that misleading statistic: The information Cyber Ninjas include inits report shows that human error was present inits hand count. President Trump's spokesman Liz Harrington posted a great Twitter thread summarizing yesterday's briefing on the final stages of Arizona's audit of the Maricopa County election results - and it was stunning. 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. It wont be as smooth for the report by Ayyadurai, whom Fann added to the audit team midway through the process to examine signatures on the envelopes of the approximately 1.9 million early ballots. If you are looking for a professional, rewarding career where you can make a difference in the State of Arizona, come join our team. Out of 3.4 million votes cast. They wasted nearly $6 million to tell us what we already knew, meanwhile exacerbating an already unhealthy political environment, state Sen. Paul Boyer (R), an audit opponent, told The Hill in a text message. The Republican-led Arizona audit being conducted by the Florida-based tech company Cyber Ninjas took an unexpected turn after voter data was transported to a mystery "lab" in Montana to be. Republican Senate President Karen Fann had cut a deal with the county board last August for the outside report after pressing for months to access some equipment the county believed said was too sensitive to hand over to contractors the Senate hired to review the election. The industry leader for online information for tax, accounting and finance professionals. The Senate established its authority to demand voting records from Maricopa County, or any other jurisdiction in Arizona responsible for running elections. 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