Arizona Mock Election Audit Report Delayed After Cyber ​​Ninjas CEO and Others Tested Positive for Covid-19



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Cyber ​​Ninjas CEO Doug Logan, whose cabinet was hired by the Republican-led Arizona Senate to audit the 2.1 million votes cast in Maricopa County in the 2020 presidential race , and two other members of the five-person audit team tested positive “and are quite ill,” Senate Speaker Karen Fann said in a statement.

Logan and other members of his team were often seen without a mask during the recount process. It is not clear whether those who tested positive had been vaccinated. CNN has reached out to Cyber ​​Ninjas for comment.

Election experts from both parties have said for months that the results of the “audit” – requested by Republican lawmakers and conducted by the Florida-based company, which had no experience auditing election results and whose CEO, Logan, repeated a savage plot. theories on voter fraud – will not be credible.

Fann said senators were receiving “part of the draft report” on Monday, but did not specify which part and what will be left out. Fann also said senators wanted the envelopes with the ballots posted last year included in the final report – but got the images of those envelopes from Maricopa County too late.

“In addition to the illnesses, it was not until Thursday that the Senate received the images of the Maricopa County voting envelopes and hopes to have them analyzed as soon as possible to incorporate these results into the final report,” Fann said in a statement. declaration. “The Senate legal team will meet on Wednesday to begin reviewing the draft report, and when the rest of the draft is submitted, the Senate team will hold another meeting to continue to verify accuracy, clarity and evidence. documentation of findings. completed, the final report will be presented to the Senate Judiciary Committee and the findings will be made public. “

Last week, Maricopa County officials said they had sent the images to Cyber ​​Ninjas review team in the past and were simply sending them back. Randy Pullen, spokesperson for the Senate-sponsored audit, told CNN the poll footage would not be processed by Cyber ​​Ninjas.

The report was due in the Senate – but it could be weeks or months before its results were released to the public. Fann and a team selected by Senate Republicans planned to review the report.

Ken Bennett, the Senate liaison with the audit team, said last week that a group will spend the following “days or weeks” verifying the report and “verifying the accuracy.”

Bennett said he wanted to “spread facts, not rumors” that this would only be a draft report and would not be made public. The Senate team may ask Cyber ​​Ninjas for further clarification on its findings.

“The Senate team will then review the accuracy and clarity of the final report which will be made public,” Fann, a Republican, tweeted last week.

Bennett told CNN on Monday that he expects there to be an “adjustment to how the meeting will be conducted on Wednesday,” when the Senate legal team reviews the draft partial report. He didn’t know the details or whether Logan could brief the Senate legal team via video conference or phone rather than in person.

Once the audit team submits the full draft report, Bennett expects the review process to take “several weeks” before the report is released to the public.

Trouble-ridden audit

The company and its volunteers and contractors did not follow standard audit procedures. Observers from Democratic Secretary of State Katie Hobbs’ office have repeatedly noted instances in which auditors broke their own rules.
And the partisan nature of the audit and its funders – $ 5.7 million came from external and conservative sources, compared with just $ 150,000 from the State Senate, which ordered the audit – has long threw away serious doubt about his credibility.
Regardless of the audit results, the reality that Joe Biden is president and won Arizona’s 11 electoral votes last year will not change. But that hasn’t stopped former President Donald Trump and his allies – especially far-right and pro-Trump propaganda outlets – from claiming the opposite and saying that other states should follow suit. Arizona in the conduct of audits. Trump released a series of false statements ahead of a campaign-style rally in the state last month, and used the rally to repeat those lies.

“Does everyone here understand that the 2020 election was a total disgrace?” Trump said.

Trump allies attempted to export Arizona’s audit to other states – including Pennsylvania, where a state senator sought to conduct his own review of each county’s results but was pushed back by those counties, and Wisconsin, where Republican lawmakers are considering multiple approaches, but have come up against the ways forward.

Warnings about “unreliable” conclusions

The finalization of the audit – and the possibility that the report detailing its results will soon become public – has led Republican and Democratic election officials in Arizona, including GOP officials in Maricopa County, to warn that it will not shouldn’t be taken seriously.

Hobbs, Arizona’s secretary of state and 2022 Democratic gubernatorial candidate, also released a 46-page report pre-empting the results of the audit.

“It is clear that any reported ‘outcome’ or ‘conclusion’ of the Senate review, by the Cyber ​​Ninjas or any of their contractors or partners, are unreliable,” Hobbs report says. .

The report calls the Senate recount “secret and disorganized.” It reiterates most of the issues Hobbs has cited for months: lack of security, changes in ballot selection and counting processes, chain of custody and transparency issues.

Time and time again, the report notes that there were no consistent procedures for reading, counting and storing ballots. One person working through the paper in the ballots complained that the process was changing “every day, every day!”

In one example, a Senate subcontractor told observers that after a week the scanning of paper ballots “was abandoned because the subcontractors performed a software update which resulted in the loss. of all images of the ballot papers “.

Stephen Richer, the Maricopa County recorder – a Republican whose 2020 victory was one of the few GOP gains in the state as they lost the presidential race and a Senate seat – posted a letter of 38 pages titled “Dear Arizona Republicans” last week.

In the letter, Richer, who has become a vocal critic of the Cyber ​​Ninjas audit, details his own political history as a staunch Republican who voted for Trump and explains the missteps that Senate listeners and Republicans have made. who hired them committed who led him to respond. forcefully – including refuted allegations of criminal acts posted on a Twitter account maintained by the audit team.

Richer notes that three post-election partial audits of Maricopa County’s results found them accurate.

He also said he would still be willing to conduct a review of the 2020 election to allay Republicans’ concerns, and would do so with Fann and GOP lawmakers – if they ditch Cyber ​​Ninjas.

“What I’m not prepared to do is give in more to the partisan, inexperienced, incompetent, conspiracy theory and unscrupulous Cyber ​​Ninjas,” said Richer.

He wrote that the audit “is an abomination which has so far eroded electoral confidence and vilified the right people.”

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