Arizona Senate Hears of Multiple Inconsistencies Found by Election Audit
Arizona attorney general says his office will review findings
By Jack Phillips and Mimi Nguyen Ly September 24, 2021 Updated: September 26, 2021

This article was updated with the findings presented during the Arizona Senate’s hearing and the auditors’ final report provided to the Arizona Senate.

Lawmakers were told on Friday during a hearing on an audit conducted in Arizona’s most populous county, Maricopa County, of inconsistencies uncovered during a forensic audit into the 2020 election commissioned by the state’s Senate.

Senate President Karen Fann, a Republican, said the audit had faced unnecessary obstruction from the county, which went to court in a bid to ward off the audit and subpoenas.

Fann said that while the audit did not uncover a significant difference in the total vote tallies, which she said showed a difference of only hundreds in the final report, evidence was uncovered of other anomalies such as statutes being broken and chain of custody not followed.

In a letter to the state’s attorney general recommending further investigation, Fann raised concerns over signature verification on mail-in ballots, the accuracy of voter rolls, the securing of election systems, and the record-keeping of evidence related to the elections.

“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 in her letter to Attorney General Mark Brnovich.

Brnovich said Friday in response to the letter that he’s prepared to “take all necessary actions” after the audit results were unveiled.

“I will take all necessary actions that are supported by the evidence and where I have legal authority,” Brnovich, a Republican, said in a news release. “Arizonans deserve to have their votes accurately counted and protected.”

Cyber Ninjas, a Florida-based company that was hired by the Senate to conduct the audit, said its review involved over 1,500 people and a total of over 100,000 hours.

While the company said in the recount it only found a vote discrepancy of 994 in the presidential race and 1167 in the Senate race, the report highlights potential problems with tens of thousands of ballots.

The company said that 23,344 mail-in ballots were received from voters’ previous addresses, 9,041 more ballots were returned by voters than received, 5,295 voters potentially voted in multiple counties, there were 2,592 more duplicate ballots than original ballots sent to duplication, and 2,081 ballots were from voters who had moved out of state prior to the election.

“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. Through extensive data analysis we have discovered approximately 23,344 votes that may have this condition,” the report states.

The company suggests canvassing to be conducted to further validate the findings. The company also said that “there are potential ways a voter could receive their ballot which in some cases would not violate the law,” but suggested “additional investigation by the Attorney General is recommended for any conclusive determination.” It also suggested that voter registration be linked to changes in driver’s licenses or state identification.

According to the company’s report, the official results do not match the totals from the “Final Voted File.”

“These discrepancies are significant with a total ballot delta of 11,592 between the official canvass and the VM55 file when considering both the counted and uncounted ballots.” Cyber Ninjas said the finding is significant because “the number of individuals who showed up to vote should always match the number of votes cast.”

Another area of concern were duplicate ballots found during the review of the over 2 million ballots.

A total of 29,557 duplicate ballots were identified in the presidential election, according to Cyber Ninjas. Of those, 26,965 had been sent for duplication, showing 2,592 more duplicate ballots were counted in Maricopa County than had been sent for duplication.

“This is probably one of the more interesting parts … that we had more duplicates than original ballots,” Cyber Ninjas CEO Doug Logan said at the Senate hearing on Sept. 24. “According to our counts from our audit, we had 26,965 original ballots and we had 29,557 that were duplicate ballots, and those numbers should be the same. Based on the numbers received from Maricopa county, we should have had 27,869 of both originals and duplicates and they should have matched up perfectly.”

The auditors wrote in their report that its team “attempted to resolve the discrepancies, but those efforts were impeded by the County’s failure to properly identify duplicate ballot batches and failure to assign unique serial numbers to each damaged ballot sent to duplication and then match that number to the duplicate ballot printed to replace it.”

“The County delivered boxes of paper ballots that were commingled and incorrectly identified … the auditors could not rely on the County’s description of ballot boxes or batches identified on the manifest,” the report states.

Shiva Ayyadurai, who was commissioned by the Senate to “check the signatures or lack thereof” on the ballot envelopes, said during Friday’s hearing before the Senate that “our audit reveals anomalies raising questions on the verifiability of the signature verification process.”

Shiva said that his team was hired only to verify whether the envelopes contained a signature—not whether the actual signature matched that of the voter in question.

According to Shiva, out of the 1,929,242 return envelopes provided by the Senate, 17,322 duplicates were found, with some voters having cast the same ballot three to four times. According to Shiva, over 25 percent of the duplicate ballots were received between Nov. 4 and Nov. 9, 2020.

Meanwhile, the report states that there were “hundreds of damaged ballots with unreadable serial numbers.” According to the report, regular audits of the duplicate ballot process should be required.

The audit also identified other ballots affected, in smaller numbers, such as 397 mail-in ballots sent without there being a record of them having been sent, 393 ballots that had incomplete names, 282 votes cast by individuals who “were flagged as deceased,” 198 votes cast by individuals who registered to vote after the Oct. 15 deadline, among other categories.

The audit also found that 50 ballots had been double counted on election machinery. “The image shows one of 50 ballots that were tabulated twice giving each associated over – two votes.”

The audit team said that it had intended to conduct research into the paper that was used, as well as the ink, toner, and format of the ballots, but that the company that prints the ballots for the county had been instructed by Maricopa County “not speak with auditors.”

Auditors also say that despite a subpoena dated Jan. 13, 2021, they did not receive original ballots for rejected provisional ballots, uncured mail ballots, and ballots that were returned to the county as undeliverable.

“Failing to receive these components prevented portions of the audit from being completed, such as validating that the right number of provisional ballots existed, and ballots returned to the County as undeliverable were properly accounted for and were not reused in some other context,” the report states.

“Since these items were not provided, this work was not able to be completed.”

While auditors finished part of the audit that deals with the ballots, they say an evaluation of voting machine equipment is ongoing.

“Because the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors and the Arizona Senate have recently settled their dispute concerning outstanding subpoena items, this portion of the audit is not yet complete,” the report states.

Auditors also said that “the Election Management System (EMS) database, which holds all details associated with the 2020 General Election, was purged and all the election results were cleared by a Results Tally and Reporting Admin.” Maricopa County previously disputed the claim that the files had been deleted.

In response to the draft report of the audit, the Maricopa County government said on Twitter that the audit “confirms the county’s canvass of the 2020 General Election was accurate and the candidates certified as the winners did.” Maricopa officials, in another statement, also disputed Cyber Ninjas’ claim that they didn’t comply with their investigation and alleged the firm lacked the auditing experience to undertake such an effort.

“This means the tabulation equipment counted the ballots as they were designed to do, and the results reflect the will of the voters,” Maricopa County Board of Supervisors Chairman Jack Sellers said in a statement on Friday. “That should be the end of the story. Everything else is just noise.”

Arizona Democrats, meanwhile, pounced on the auditors’ report.

“The Cyber Ninjas embarrassed Arizona for months, violated voters’ trust, refused transparency, and stuck AZ taxpayers with a multi-million dollar bill. What’d they find? Biden won,” Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, a Democrat who has frequently criticized the audit and has aspirations to become Arizona’s governor, wrote on Twitter. “The so-called leaders who allowed and encouraged this need to be held accountable in 2022.”

But Fann has long said that the goal of the audit was to improve Arizona’s election system and wasn’t designed to overturn the results.

“Our No. 1 goal is to make sure those laws are followed,” Fann said during Friday’s hearing, adding that there are “a lot of people” with questions about the state’s election integrity. Citing a poll, Fann said that 45 percent of Arizona’s voters had significant distrust in the election system.

Ahead of the official release of the report on Friday afternoon by the state Senate, Trump said the audit uncovered “significant and undeniable” fraud in the 2020 presidential election and dismissed findings that Biden gained votes in Maricopa County.

“The audit has uncovered significant and undeniable evidence of fraud!” he said in an emailed statement. “I have heard it is far different than that being reported by the fake news media.”

Trump added, “Until we know how and why this happened, our elections will never be secure. This is a major criminal event and should be investigated by the Attorney General immediately.”

Arizona was one of several key swing states, including Georgia, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Michigan, and Wisconsin, that were certified for Biden during the Nov. 3 election. Trump won all of those states in 2016.

Maricopa County hasn’t responded to a request for comment.

Correction: An earlier headline on this article incorrectly stated that Arizona Senate President Karen Fann said the report confirmed a specific candidate had won the election in Maricopa County. Instead, in her comments said she affirmed the findings in the draft audit report, which stated there was no significant difference in the vote tally when re-counted. Fann did, however, in her remarks highlight specific concerns with the process, which she referred to Arizona’s attorney general. The Epoch Times regrets the error.

Jack Phillips
SENIOR REPORTER

https://www.theepochtimes.com/arizona-se...ts_4015286.html

Forensic Audit Aftermath: Top 12 LIES and TRUTHS
The America Project
Published September 25, 2021 68,274 Views

The America Project discusses 12 Lies and Truths that have surfaced from the aftermath of the Maricopa County Forensic Audit.

VIDEO

https://rumble.com/vmydr7-forensic-audit...and-truths.html