Maricopa County ballot audit

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It's going forward.
GOP-backed recount of Maricopa County ballots appears on track to move forward after initial pause ordered by Arizona judge

After state Democrats filed a lawsuit this week to halt the proceedings, an Arizona judge on Friday ordered that the recount be paused for the weekend to consider their allegations that the process violates state laws governing the security of ballots.

However, he required that the Democratic Party post a $1 million bond to cover the potential costs of a delay. On Friday afternoon, the state party said it would not put up the money, meaning the recount is on track to press ahead.

In response to Coury’s bond requirement, Desai said later that the party was not willing to risk turning over $1 million to “a group of conspiracy theorists running a sham audit.” She said she was pleased that the judge had ordered the Senate to make public the procedures governing its process.

Langhofer said the Senate viewed the order as an attempt by the judiciary to inappropriately manage the work of the legislature and would appeal.

As far as what the results are likely to be...
Trump ninjas don't know what ink color to use on ballots. And they're auditing our election?

During a press conference on Thursday, reporters weren’t allowed to ask the head auditor, Cyber Ninjas CEO Doug Logan, about his previous tweets promoting the Stop the Steal movement.

Who, exactly, are the 150 people that will be counting the ballots? Logan says there will be three-person teams but he wouldn’t assure reporters that those teams each will be balanced to include a Republican, a Democrat and an independent.

Why is it that the only races being counted are the presidential and Senate races? Logan says it’s a function of time. But if widespread fraud is suspected, surely the inquiry should extend beyond the two races won by Democrats. Surely, the Senate Republicans who ordered this audit would want to ensure their own elections were valid.

No matter what the outcome of this audit is, it will not be credible. If the Arizona Republican Party was actually concerned about verifying their state's elections (which they are not), this would be an entirely state-funded, statewide audit, with independent, credible auditors examining all the election results.

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Cyber Ninjas, hired by Arizona Senate to recount Maricopa County's ballots, asks court to keep its procedures secret

Lawyers for Cyber Ninjas, the Florida-based company the Arizona Senate hired to lead a recount of Maricopa County’s 2.1 million general election ballots, are asking a judge to keep secret its procedures for the recount and shut out the public as well as the press from a hearing in which the documents might be discussed.

Judge Christopher Coury asked the company on Friday to turn over its plans and procedures amid concerns about the security of the county's ballots and voter privacy.

But the company argued on Sunday that filing the documents in court publicly would compromise the security of its recount. And it argued that the records include protected trade secrets. The company also maintained that the documents are protected by legislative privilege, as it is working on behalf of the state Senate.

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UV lights, cars with Trump bumper stickers and a lack of transparency illustrate ongoing GOP-driven ballot review in Arizona

Bennett, the former Arizona secretary of state hired by Republicans to serve as an audit liaison, told reporters earlier in the week that "the UV lights are looking at the paper, and it's part of several teams that are involved in the paper evaluation."

When CNN asked if he could specify the purpose the UV lights served, he said he did not know.
Under order by Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Martin, Cyber Ninjas on Thursday released some of their procedures, including acknowledging the use of UV lights. In the Cyber Ninjas document, however, it wasn't clearly explained why they were needed.

Another Cyber Ninjas document revealed security plans for the coliseum where the audit is being performed. Called "The Arizona Audit Security Overview," it lays out potential security breaches, numbers of private security guards and singles out "Antifa" as a security threat.

The document shows that Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey denied a request for members of the Department of Public Safety and National Guard members to provide security. (Trump has often attacked Ducey for his loss in Arizona, and the state Republican Party censured the governor earlier this year.)

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Republican says 'embarrassing' Arizona recount 'makes us look like idiots'

A GOP state senator blasted the 2020 election vote audit in an Arizona county, saying “it makes us look like idiots.”

“Looking back, I didn’t think it would be this ridiculous. It’s embarrassing to be a state senator at this point,” Arizona state Sen. Paul Boyer, who previously supported the audit in Maricopa County, added on Friday, according to The New York Times.

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2020 ballots relocated in semi trucks as Arizona election audit pauses over space availability

The first semi truck full of 2020 election ballots rolled slowly through the Arizona State Fairgrounds on Friday, past the "Crazy Times Carnival" set up in the south parking lot to a warehouse where the approximately 2.1 million ballots cast by Maricopa County voters will be stored for the next week.

This is the latest bizarre act in the replay of the Big Lie -- that the 2020 election was stolen from former President Donald Trump.

On Thursday night, a three-week ballot review led by the GOP-controlled Arizona Senate came to a temporary halt. The lease for the Senate and its tech consultants, Cyber Ninjas, was up at the Veteran's Memorial Coliseum, where openly partisan volunteers and hourly workers had been conducting the ballot count.

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GOP-led Maricopa County board decries election recount a 'sham'

In a letter to GOP senators announcing that the board will cease all cooperation with the GOP state senators' efforts, the board accused state senators of allowing Arizona to become a "laughingstock" as they pursued discredited, false claims of election fraud perpetrated by former President Trump.

"You are photographing ballots contrary to the laws that the Senate helped enact, and you are sending those images to unidentified places and people. You have repeatedly lost control of your Twitter account, which has tweeted things that appear to be the rantings of a petulant child—not the serious statements of a serious audit," wrote the board.

“I will not be responding to any more requests from this sham process. Finish your audit and be ready to defend what you’re finding in a court of law,” added Chairman Jack Sellers (R) at Monday's meeting of the board, according to The Washington Post.

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https://twitter.com/JenAFifield/status/1397242119933370376

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Controversial audit of Arizona ballots continues amid new allegations of incompetence

On Tuesday, the office of Secretary of State Katie Hobbs released a report detailing what it described as serious problems with the audit that had arisen over the last week. Among the issues listed were a Monday software update “that created so many errors and problems during the first shift that they stated they were going to roll back to the old software during the afternoon shift” and the fact that “copies of voting system data [were] sent to a lab in Montana.”

Per Hobbs’s office, there were no specifications on “what security measures were in place, or what the lab in Montana will do with the data or how long it will be in possession of the copies.”

Observers saw that at least three people who are not residents of Maricopa County rifling through thousands of military and overseas ballots,” read the report. “Observers had been previously told that only Maricopa County residents would be allowed to handle any ballots, yet all three people were not residents.”

The report accused workers of carrying black pens on the floor, which is not allowed because the pens can be used to alter ballots. Observers quoted in the report also stated that “audit co-chair Randy Pullen told an observer that the shirt he was required to wear on the floor made him ‘look like a transgender’ because of the color of his shirt.”