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A lengthy manual ballot recount conducted as part of the GOP-led Arizona Senate review of Maricopa County ballots and election materials in 2020 confirmed the certified results nearly 10-month-old: President Joe Biden won Arizona.
That result appears in a draft copy of the voting review report, which was obtained by CBS News Thursday night via a request for public documents from the Arizona Secretary of State’s office.
According to the draft, Mr. Biden’s victory of about 45,000 votes in the state’s most populous county even extended by a few hundred votes.
The report surfaced less than 24 hours before the Arizona Senate was set to consider the report with contractors, led by cybersecurity firm Cyber Ninjas, who were hired to lead the exam.
Arizona Republican Senate Speaker Karen Fann did not respond to a request for comment. An audit spokesperson noted that more of the report will be released on Friday. A separate audit spokesperson told KJZZ, which released similar documents from the draft report, that “this is not the final report, but it is near.”
“This means that the counting equipment counted the ballots as they were designed to do, and the results reflect the will of the voters,” said Maricopa County Supervisory Board Chairman Jack Sellers, a Republican, in a press release. “That should be the end of the story. Everything else is noise.”
Although the draft report raises issues with the election administration, it says the votes were counted accurately.
“What was found is both encouraging and alarming. On the positive side, there were no substantial differences between the manual count of the ballots provided and the official poll results for the county,” said the draft report.
Yet the authors criticized the county’s record keeping, cited problems with some of its electoral systems, and proposed reforms to the state’s electoral processes. The contractors who wrote the report criticized Maricopa County for not fully cooperating with the process and said it prevented “a full audit”.
“Had Maricopa County chosen to cooperate with the audit, the majority of these obstacles would have been easily overcome,” the draft report said.
One of the biggest supporters of the scrutiny of the ballot, GOP State Senator Wendy Rogers tweeted that she had spoken with Doug Logan, CEO of Cyber Ninjas, and he noted that the leaked project is “only a partial report” and said that “tomorrow’s hearings will deliver conclusions of great consequence.”
Sellers said in his statement, which was released before the draft report, “How could we cooperate with an investigation by people who have no idea how to run an election, let alone an election? in the second largest electoral district in the United States? “
“The board approved the electoral plan, we hired and supported our election experts, and they produced a well-organized and accurate election in accordance with Arizona law,” he added.
Democratic Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, candidate for governor, called the review a waste of resources.
“The Cyber Ninjas embarrassed Arizona for months, violated voter confidence, denied transparency, and blocked AZ taxpayers with a multi-million dollar bill. What did they find? Biden won, “Hobbs tweeted. “The so-called leaders who allowed and encouraged this must be held accountable in 2022.”
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