PHOENIX – The mistrust in Arizona’s Nov. 3 presidential election and the months-long audit it spawned is quickly spreading across the country, with politically driven efforts in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Florida, Michigan and Texas, the executive director of Secure Democracy said Wednesday.
Secure Democracy, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization whose stated mission is to improve U.S. election integrity, held a virtual press conference the day after the Arizona Supreme Court ordered that all audit documents be made public. Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer provided further insight into the audit process and Cyber Ninjas, the Florida company the state Senate hired to run the “forensic audit” of more than 2 million ballots.
“Twenty-five state legislatures have introduced legislation allowing the legislature and other partisan actors to exert greater control over the conduct of elections,” said Sarah Walker of Secure Democracy. “The threat of financial or criminal sanctions will certainly and likely deter local officials from taking necessary actions to ensure voter freedom and ensure that voters have sufficient access in our democratic process.”
The Arizona audit has captured the attention of former President Donald Trump and his allies, who – despite any proof – continue to claim the Nov. 3 election was stolen from him.
This is the third audit of Maricopa County votes. Although the first two found no issue with the total vote count, the state Senate insisted on conducting another.
Walker said Secure Democracy will continue to work with state-level allies to stop election subversion efforts across the country, which she said are wildly unpopular with voters.
“Republicans, Democrats and Independents are unified in opposing attempts to overturn election results,” Walker said. “However, they do support measures that would address honest collection systems and ensure that the systems are accountable to voters and not to the politicians.”
Also at the news conference was former Kentucky Secretary of State Trey Grayson, who said that before the 2020 presidential election, voters didn’t pay much attention to election audits and the process of counting votes.
“We saw this happen after the 2000 election in Florida where a lot of people don’t really pay close attention to policymakers and others,” he said. “We needed to make changes and the country would pass legislation to try to prevent that from happening again, so that’s one thing I think local officials can do is to show them the process.”
This webinar follows Tuesday’s Supreme Court’s ruling that the Republican-controlled Senate and Cyber Ninjas, the company hired by Senate President Karen Fann to conduct the audit, must release all documentation concerning their work.
After multiple lawsuits filed by The Arizona Republic and nonprofit group American Oversight, the high court ruled Tuesday that the Cyber Ninjas must make the documents public, which should happen by Friday, according to The Arizona Republic.
Richer, a Republican, said Cyber Ninjas had no previous experience auditing elections before last March, and that many election professionals had never heard of them until they came to Arizona.
Cyber Ninjas did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Richer said the Cyber Ninjas recruited almost entirely Republicans, some of whom were on the November ballot; have not been transparent in their audit process while only allowing limited media access; and have been led by people who contend Joe Biden’s presidency is illegitimate.
The Ninja audit has so far only served to defame good people and further erode confidence in our elections,” Richer said. “I can’t tell you the number of people on my staff who have been targeted, who have been denigrated,who have been harassed. This has a real human cost.”
Cyber Ninjas was recruited in March by the Arizona Senate to audit Maricopa County’s 2020 presidential election ballots, but the company has refused to release documentation or provide insight on how it conducted the audit or who paid for it.
“The Ninjas have made a whole series of claims that have later been brought back with only an ‘oops’ but never an apology,” Richer said. “This is what happens when you no longer believe in professionals.”
Richer said for future elections, the plan is to continue being transparent while inviting the public to be a part of the process.”
“One good thing that has come out of all this brouhaha is there seems to be a lot of interest in elections,” Richer said. “Hopefully we can get more people involved in the process.”
This article appears in Sep 16-22, 2021.
Wouldn’t we wait until the facts are shown next Friday to see if there is cause to mistrust the election process in AZ?
And you would have to do better than this….
“Cyber Ninjas had no previous experience auditing elections “
Lest we remind ourselves about Barrack Obama OR Kamala Harris’s prior experience.
I would like to view the evidence without all of this political posturing. Look what it has done to use of the vaccine.
“Cyber Ninjas had no previous experience auditing elections “
No one has any experience auditing elections. We’ve been auditing corporations and government agencies for over 600 years.
Why not elections, the control function for a $22 trillion economy?
The claim by the county that the 2020 election was audited is false. They did a limited random sample hand count to verify machine counts, but that sampling process is outdated and needs to be updated. They did a further inspection of the machines but that inspection only applied to the machines and not the other election processes.
The most important part of the audit is evidently not going to be performed. Did the people who are listed as voting actual cast those votes?
Or, were they illegally harvested?
Also, did people fraudulently submit tens of thousands of illegal voter registrations and requests for mail-in ballots without the permission of the person being registered?
Interestingly, Maricopa County is now taking the position that the processes they used to validate the voting machines can’t be used to validate the machines and the machines have to be thrown away. They don’t even trust their own “auditing” processes. $8 million in the garbage can.
Audit hell! They can’t even hold Hunter Biden accountable for his father’s and his crimes. Theft of taxpayer monies.
When a reasonable person looks at what happened with the 2020 election, there is no question that something was done improperly. That is all the audit is looking for, and to suggest overturning an election is the end goal is disingenuous. The end goal of course is to prove whether on not irregularities occurred. Only then can anything else be discussed.
If there is proof of shenanigans both here and in other states, THEN we have that discussion. And it will not be a pleasant talk.
That is why you call these audits unnecessary. You all are afraid of what will be said, or rather, not said!
May posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.
I am glad someone is actually auditing the election and not doing a recount.
We need to make it harder to cheat in elections without burdening the rightful voters – Regardless of your political affiliation.
There are some here that do not want an audit. We must ask why not? If inaccurate evidence would be proof. If found to be fraudulent how could you not cheer catching it?
An audit demanded by Republicans, run by Republicans, paid for by Republicans, will end with a result that is what the Republicans want to hear. After all the Republicans bought this audit.
That’s exactly the intent.
The GOP wants to spread mistrust. It’s all they got. They can’t win elections unless they gerrymander, oppress the vote, spread lies and create mistrust.
Audit results this Friday!
“An audit demanded by Republicans, run by Republicans, paid for by Republicans, will end with a result that is what the Republicans want to hear. After all the Republicans bought this audit.”
No, you are wrong on two counts. First for example, they were able to prove that of all the dead people who voted, the majority were Republicans and most likely voted for Trump.
Second, the county was able to respond in detail to explain every discrepancy pointed at by the audit.
Finally, it wasn’t an audit of the election. It was an audit of pieces of the election.
The big pieces still remain: auditing the mail-in ballots to determine whether thousands of mail-in ballots were illegally requested without the permission of the voter, auditing voting to determine whether the ballots were actually cast by the voter or were illegally harvested.