Audit Debunks Trump’s ‘Big Lie’ – Sedition Party Will Just Invent A New Conspiracy Theory

Maricopa County has completed the audit of its election equipment, performed by the only two companies certified by the Election Assistance Commission to conduct such an audit. The audit came back clean, just as the post-election audit for accuracy and logic came back clean, and the statutory random hand count of ballots came back clean. In other words, “there’s nothing to see here, move long.” If only.

Donald Trump’s Big Lie that the election was stolen in Arizona, pursued by Arizona Republican Sedition Party Chair Kelli “Chemtrails” Ward in numerous lawsuits was just that, a big lie. (We’re still waiting on the audit of her election as Republican Sedition Party Chair in January, an election marred by actual irregularities). Will Arizona’s Sedition Party cult members of the personality cult of Donald Trump accept the results of this audit? Of course not. Like all conspiracy theorists, when their conspiracy is debunked they invent a new conspiracy theory to explain it away. For the Trump/QAnon conspiracy cultists, “Dear Leader” is never wrong – there will be clues hidden in Q’s next cryptic missive to prove it!

The Arizona Republic reports, Maricopa County’s 2020 election votes were counted correctly, more county audits show:

The results of Maricopa County’s independent audit of 2020 election results are in.

The verdict: The election was sound.

Maricopa County on Tuesday released the results of election audits from two independent auditors it hired to verify that voting machines were not hacked, were not connected to the internet and counted votes properly during the 2020 general election.

The auditors found that the county used certified equipment and software, no malicious hardware was found on voting machines, the machines were not connected to the internet, and the machines were programmed to tabulate ballots accurately, according to a letter from county election directors to the supervisors.

These results, along with the previous audits the county and political parties did and other security protocols “confirm that Maricopa County Elections Department’s configuration and setup of the tabulation equipment and election management system provided an accurate counting of ballots and reporting of election results,” county election directors Scott Jarrett and Rey Valenzuela wrote in the letter.

The county’s Board of Supervisors will review the audit results at a 1 p.m. meeting on Wednesday. The results and results summary were posted Tuesday as an attachment to the meeting agenda.

Supervisors Chairman Jack Sellers said in a statement on Tuesday that the county was releasing the audit results “so that the public can see what we see and know what we know: no hacking or vote switching occurred in the 2020 election.”

While this audit is complete, there is still a chance that one more will occur.

A Maricopa County Superior Court judge is set to hear a lawsuit from the supervisors asking the court to stop subpoenas issued by the Arizona Senate seeking 2020 ballots and voting machines so that the Senate could conduct its own audit of results.

The Senate wants the ballots in part so it can do another hand count of ballots — something not included in the county’s latest audit, but that the county has done previously.

The Arizona Republic took an in-depth look earlier this month at what kind of post-election audits are best.

The findings of the audit

The supervisors hired the two outside firms, Pro V&V and SLI Compliance, to offer an independent look at the county’s voting machines and election results.

Here is what the county-hired auditors examined and found in the two weeks they spent in Phoenix earlier this month:

• • Pro V&V performed another logic and accuracy test on the tabulation machines to see that the “system correctly captures, stores, consolidates, and reports the specific ballot selections, and absence of selections, for each ballot position.”Pro V&V found no issues.
  • Both firms checked to see if the county is using certified hardware and software.The auditors inspected and verified the software and said it was certified.
  • The firms examined what’s called “hash values” — the code that dictates how the machine functions — to see if they were the same as when the machines were certified. If the hash code is different, that may indicate tampering. No hash value discrepancies were noted.
  • The auditors also checked that hackers didn’t install any software or hardware onto the machines by running malware tests and opening up the machines. They also conducted a network analysis to “ensure the network is a ‘closed network’ and can’t reach the internet.” No malicious hardware and software discrepancies were identified, and the firms did not see any proof of internet connectivity.
  • The auditors examined all nine of the large tabulators that count ballots at the election center, a random selection of 20% of the county’s precinct-based tabulators and a random selection of 40% of the county’s adjudication stations. No issues were found with the machines.

The audit of voting machines cost the county about $56,815, according to estimates from both firms. An additional part of the audit, which will examine the county’s procurement process to lease Dominion Voting System machines, will cost between $34,000 and $69,000, according to an estimate.

One firm’s report more detailed than the other

SLI Compliance did five days of work with five team members, and Pro V&V did seven days of work with two team members, according to a county document.

SLI Compliance was much more thorough in the way it reported results, compared with Pro V&V. SLI Compliance called its audit a “forensic audit,” while Pro V&V said its audit was a “field audit.”

SLI Compliance’s 18-page report shows every step that the auditors took, including a timeline of what was done each day.

Internet connectivity and hacking checks

SLI Compliance gave details on how it checked to see whether any connection was made to the internet on the machines from July 6 to Nov. 20.

This is key because some claimed that this could have been how votes could have been switched after the election — although previous audits had found no proof of vote switching.

This included checking whether there were any instances of the systems being connected to an internet-routed network, including manually inspecting system data, files, logs and settings.

One test found one log entry of a connection attempt on Aug. 26 — someone had attempted to search for how to adjust screen brightness. But the auditors did not find any evidence that the machine successfully connected to the internet, this time or any other time.

SLI Compliance also listed five malware programs, including a digital forensic tool, it ran to check whether malicious software had been installed — in other words, whether the machines had been hacked. The team also manually checked for any malware programs on the machines.

The auditors found no malware.

Logic and accuracy test on counting ballots

Pro V&V performed a logic and accuracy test on the voting machines to ensure the software “correctly captures, stores, consolidates, and reports the specific ballot selections and absences of selections for each ballot position.”

Volunteers with the League of Women Voters scanned the ballots for this test, and election staff acted as poll workers if the volunteers had any issues.

The tests reviewed “1.5 million ballot positions,” according to a county report, found “no evidence of vote switching” and “concluded that the equipment tabulated and adjudicated ballots accurately.”

Pro V&V’s report identified two times that a ballot jammed during the test, but no miscounted votes came from that.

Some questioned the depth of the county’s audit, but the county has said that it was comprehensive and more in-depth than any previous audit it had done.

* * *

The county hired the only two firms accredited by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission to certify voting machines across the country, with officials saying they were the only companies that could be trusted with looking at the machines and their source code.

Yet, this connection alone — that the companies who certified the county’s machines are now the ones auditing them — has some questioning whether there is a conflict.

WTF? Why are you providing the Trump/QAnon cultists the seeds of their next conspiracy theory?

The Republic found that, while there are still some questions, election consultants say the firms are probably best to do the work, simply because their background and conflicts have been vetted by the elections commission.

The Arizona Senate plans to try to find another independent firm to conduct its audit.

Yeah, one of the bogus firms used by Trump’s “elite strike force “team of incompetent lawyers who lost 64 cases across the country because they could present no credible evidence to the court.

The Arizona Mirror adds, Audits find no problems with Maricopa County election machines (excerpt):

The audit results come as Maricopa County continues its legal battle with the Arizona Senate over Republican lawmakers’ attempt to conduct their own audit of the election. Senate President Karen Fann and Sen. Warren Petersen, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, have issued subpoenas demanding the county’s tabulation machines, the nearly 2.1 million ballots cast, and a trove of other materials and data.

The Board of Supervisors argue that the Senate lacks legal authority to demand the ballots and the machines, and are fighting the subpoenas in court. A judge will hear arguments in the case on Thursday.

Fann and Petersen had preemptively declared the county’s audits as insufficient because they wouldn’t examine any of the ballots, and Fann took issue with the hiring of SLI Compliance and Pro V&V, insisting that the audit should be conducted by companies that hadn’t already certified Dominion’s machines and software.

The two senators were unavailable for comment when the audit results were released.

Fann sought to hire Allied Security Operations Group, a company with a well-documented history of spreading falsehoods and misinformation about the election, at times during legislative hearings in which its employees served as witnesses for the Trump campaign. 

One ASOG employee, Phil Waldron, falsely claimed during an unofficial hearing in Phoenix that election workers don’t verify the signatures on early ballot envelopes, and alleged without evidence the Maricopa County’s tabulation machines were connected to the internet. During a recent report by the far-right media outlet One America News Network, Waldron claimed, again without evidence, that hundreds of thousands of Maricopa County votes were added for President Joe Biden.

Kelli “Chemtrails” Ward will likely be next on Dominion Voting Systems’ list of people to sue for defamation. Take her for everything she has. Leave her penniless and homeless. Show no mercy.

Laurie Roberts of the The Republic reiterates what I said above, “Like all conspiracy theorists, when their conspiracy is debunked they invent a new conspiracy theory to explain it away.” Maricopa County election audit is clean? That must mean fraud!

Two things are certain after Tuesday’s long-awaited release of Maricopa County’s audit of its Dominion Voting Systems machinery.

1. The county’s election equipment performed as advertised, delivering an accurate count of the county’s 2.1 million ballots in the November election. Two independent auditing firms found the tabulation machinery wasn’t hacked or even connected to the internet. The software wasn’t modified and there’s no evidence that votes were switched.

And No. 2. The results of the audit will not change a single mind among those Republicans who have been misled down the primrose path – the ones who have been duped into believing that the only valid election result is the one that ends with Donald Trump in the White House.

Why believe truth when falsehoods abound?

Just this week, one of the right-wing news sites hoping to elbow aside Fox News as the go-to source for All Things Trump produced an expose entitled “The Arizona Election Heist”.

As Arizona Mirror’s Jeremy Duda pointed out, the One America News Network‘s Sunday report was full of unsupported claims, invented facts and imagined conspiracies – so ridiculously ridiculous that about the only thing you can do is laugh.

I particularly liked that aHA! moment when OANN reported that 11,676 more ballots were counted than there are voters in Maricopa County.

Here in the real world, 2,089,563 ballots were cast, or just over 80% of the county’s 2,595,272 registered voters.

The “reporter,” simply put, doesn’t know what she’s talking about.

Yet a fair number of Trump Republicans will believe every word of it.

What they won’t, what they simply cannot believe is that President Joe Biden won the election fair and square.

So the audit? Yeah, we know. Just another part of the conspiracy.

County supervisors now face recall efforts

Even the four Republicans who sit on the five-member Maricopa County Board of Supervisors are now suspect because they dare to suggest that on the issue of re-election in this county, Emperor Trump is walking around buck naked.

For this, and their mask mandate, efforts to recall them are now under way.

The supervisors have gone the extra mile to demonstrate that there was no plot by Dominion or anyone else to steal the election in Maricopa County. It is to their credit that they have stood by facts rather than running off half-cocked with the conspiracy crowd in order to score political points.

The supervisors are hoping the audit will restore Republicans’ faith in our elections.

The supervisors are dreaming. But I do give them credit for trying.

* * *

The problem is, the facts are irrelevant to the truest of Trump’s true believers. They contact me every day to express their disdain for any opinion that does not conclude with “what everyone knows” – that is, that the election was stolen.

[N]or will they accept the results of the county audit.

Count the Reublican-run Arizona Senate among them, either because Republican senators are true believers or truly scared of their own voters. They already have signaled that they don’t trust two auditors hired by the county, Pro V&V and SLI Compliance.

This, because the auditors are certified by a federal agency that employs a key official who once worked for Dominion. (Another aAH! moment.)

So they plan to do their own audit.

So, what’s next? An audit of the audit?

Senate President Karen Fann was about to hire Allied Security Operations Group, the company that supplied error-riddled information to Trump lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, to conduct its audit, until reporters got wind of it. Giuliani called one of the company’s employees, retired Army Col. Phil Waldron, his “information warfare officer” during his post-election push to uncover election fraud.

So yeah, the county audit is done and now the Senate wants to conduct its own audit with someone like Trump’s “information warfare officer” and maybe even do a total recount of the vote and to heck with state laws governing ballots and recounts.

Laws are meant to be changed, after all, and another audit is needed in the unending quest for all that evidence that is rock solid and overwhelming.

Possibly to be followed by an audit of the audit or an audit of the audit’s audit or whatever it takes until they find what they are looking for. Whatever it takes.

There is, after all, a giant conspiracy out there somewhere.

Isn’t there?

Based upon the audit, Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Timothy Thomason should reject the Senator’s subpoena after today’s hearing. These authoritarian Rethuglicans have already teed up a bill to disregard the judge’s authoirty and to declare themselves to be above the law. Lawless Authoritarian Rethuglican Senators Declare Themselves Above The Law.