The Arizona Senate’s GQP Sham ‘Fraudit’ Exposed As A Grift By Its Incompetent Cyber Ninja

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If you really want to subject yourself to the mendacity of QAnon conspiracy theorists, you can read the Arizona State Senate Hearing on the 2020 Election Audit in Maricopa County July 15.

What a clown show conducted by Senator Karen Fann. If she had any integrity, she would resign in disgrace.

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Howard Fischer reports, Election officials call Arizona audit ‘bombshell’ a dud:

Claims made about the election audit in Maricopa County that some have labeled a “bombshell” are really a dud, Maricopa County officials say.

County officials have issued what they said is a point-by-point knockdown of the most serious charges leveled by Doug Logan, the CEO of Cyber Ninjas, the firm hired by Senate President Karen Fann, and Ben Cotton founder of CyFir which bills itself as a digital forensics investigative company.

But the county was not allowed to provide a response at Thursday’s hearing at the state Senate as they were not invited and public testimony was not allowed.

All of this means that the issue is unlikely to be resolved in the near future. In fact, Jack Sellers, who chairs the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, said he is prepared for a future legal fight.

“Finish your audit, release the report, and be prepared to defend it in court,” he said in a prepared statement.

On Thursday, Logan and Cotton presented their findings to date to Fann and Sen. Warren Petersen, R-Gilbert, who chairs the Judiciary Committee. Democrats on the panel were not allowed to participate or ask questions.

* * *

“Stop accusing us of not cooperating when we have given you everything qualified auditors would need to do this job,” Sellers said, taking a slap at the firms the Senate has retained.

But Sellers and county officials also felt it necessary to dispute much of what the contractors told Fann and Petersen they had found.

“The Senate’s uncertified contractors asked a lot of open-ended questions, portraying as suspicious what is actually normal and well known to people who work in elections,” the supervisors chairman said. “In some cases, they dropped bombshell numbers that are simply not accurate.”

The two contractors said they are likely months away from a final report. Ah, there it is. Grifting the MAGA/QAnon cult well has not yet run dry. Grifters gotta grift while the grifting is good.

CNN fact checker Daniel Dale:

The Associated Press weighs in with yet another fact check, FACT FOCUS: A false narrative of 74K extra votes in Arizona:

Cyber Ninjas, the cybersecurity consulting firm hired by Arizona Senate Republicans to oversee a partisan review of the 2020 election, on Thursday pushed a false narrative that Maricopa County received thousands of mail-in ballots that had no record of being sent out to voters.

The firm’s CEO Doug Logan used the baseless claim to urge legislators to subpoena more records and canvass voters at home, grasping for evidence of fraud even as a hand count of a statistical sample of ballots and two post-election audits showed no proof of wrongdoing in Maricopa County’s election.

The false claim has reverberated online in the day since Logan’s comments, parroted by lawmakers and Republican commentators including Arizona Republican Party Chair Kelli Ward, Colorado Rep. Lauren Boebert and former President Donald Trump.

Yet Maricopa County officials and election experts confirm that the claim isn’t true and represents a misunderstanding of how early voting works in Arizona.

Here’s a closer look at the facts.

CLAIM: Arizona’s largest county in the 2020 election received and counted 74,000 mail-in ballots that had no record of ever being sent out to voters.

THE FACTS: False. The claim mischaracterizes reports that are intended to help political parties track early voters for their get-out-the-vote efforts, not tally mail-in ballots through Election Day. The reports don’t represent all mail-in ballots sent out and received, so the numbers aren’t expected to match up, according to Maricopa County officials and outside experts.

“We have 74,243 mail-in ballots where there is no clear record of them being sent,” Logan said at a meeting livestreamed at Arizona’s Capitol on Thursday. “That could be something where documentation wasn’t done right. There’s a clerical issue. There’s not proper things there, but I think when we’ve got 74,000, it merits knocking on a door and validating some of this information.”

Logan based his false claim on two types of early voting reports issued by Maricopa County: EV32 files and EV33 files. He claimed that EV32 files are “supposed to give a record of when a mail-in ballot is sent” and EV33 files are “supposed to give a record of when the mail-in ballot is received.”

That’s not accurate, according to Maricopa County officials, who tweeted on Friday that “the EV32 Returns & EV33 files are not the proper files to refer to for a complete accumulating of all early ballots sent and received.”

Instead, the EV32 and EV33 files are reports created for political parties to aid them in their get-out-the-vote efforts during early voting, according to Tammy Patrick, a senior adviser at the Democracy Fund and a former Maricopa County elections official. Arizona law requires county recorders to provide this data to political parties and candidates, Patrick said.

Arizona reports both mail-in ballots and early in-person votes at voting centers as early votes, so both are included in the data in files EV32 and EV33, Patrick said.

The EV32 file includes all requests that voters make for early ballots, either by mail or in person, up to 11 days before Election Day, Patrick said. The EV33 file includes returned early ballots up to the Monday before Election Day.

That means there is a 10-day period between the final day of each report, during which thousands of mail-in votes are submitted and thousands of additional voters go to voting centers, request early ballots in person and submit them. Furthermore, the files don’t include any early ballots that came in on Election Day.

“To use these files as an attempt to understand the number of voters who were mailed a ballot or who returned a ballot is misguided,” Patrick said. “That information is obtained from the Voted File, not a GOTV tool for the political parties and candidates.” “GOTV” is short for “get out the vote.”

Maricopa County officials tweeted later Friday that they calculated the true number of mail-in ballots requested and returned in November’s election. According to that count, nearly 450,000 more mail-in ballots were requested than returned.

It’s almost as if these yahoos have never conducted an election audit before and have no idea what they are doing. Oh wait …

Logan is a Trump supporter who has spread conspiracy theories backing Trump’s false claims of fraud. His firm is overseeing the GOP audit despite having no prior experience in elections. Experts in election administration say it’s not following reliable procedures.

Jack Sellers, the Republican chairman of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, said in a statement on Thursday that the auditors are “portraying as suspicious what is actually normal and well known to people who work in elections.”

“What we heard today represents an alternate reality that has veered out of control since the November General Election,” Sellers wrote.

And now for Mr. “Alternative Facts” and “Alternate Reality” himself, the delusional Florida Man. AP FACT CHECK: Trump makes false claims about Arizona audit. If you do not believe that the Arizona Senate’s GQP sham “fraudit” is coordinated with the Florida Man to create a framework for his Big Lie, I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.

The Associated Press investigates, Few AZ voter fraud cases, discrediting Trump’s claims:

An Associated Press investigation found 182 cases where problems were clear enough that officials referred them to investigators for further review. So far, only four cases have led to charges, including those identified in a separate state investigation. No one has been convicted. [Of the four Arizona cases that have resulted in criminal charges, two involved Democratic voters and two involved Republicans.] No person’s vote was counted twice.

While it’s possible [but unlikely] more cases could emerge, the numbers illustrate the implausibility of Trump’s claims that fraud and irregularities in Arizona cost him the state’s electorate votes. In final, certified and audited results, Biden won 10,400 more votes than Trump out of 3.4 million cast.

AP’s findings align with previous studies showing voter fraud is rare. Numerous safeguards are built into the system to not only prevent fraud from happening but to detect it when it does.

“The fact of the matter is that election officials across the state are highly invested in helping to ensure the integrity of our elections and the public’s confidence in them,” said Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, a Democrat. “And part of that entails taking potential voter fraud seriously.”

* * *

In addition to the AP’s review of county election offices, a [partisan] Election Integrity Unit of the state attorney general’s office that was created in 2019 to ferret out fraud has been reviewing potential cases of fraud.

A spokesman for Attorney General Mark Brnovich told the AP in April that the unit had 21 active investigations, although he did not specify if all were from last fall.

A month later, the office indicted a woman for casting a ballot on behalf of her dead mother in November. A spokeswoman declined to provide updated information this week.

Maricopa County, which is subject to the disputed ballot review ordered by state Senate Republicans, has identified just one case of potential fraud out of 2.1 million ballots cast. That was a voter who might have cast a ballot in another state [Snowbirds]. The case was sent to the county attorney’s office, which forwarded it to the state attorney general.

[T]he Associated Press conducted the review following months of Trump and his allies claiming without proof that he had won the 2020 election. His claims of widespread fraud have been rejected by election officials, judges, a group of election security officials and even Trump’s own attorney general at the time. Even so, supporters continue to repeat them and they have been cited by state lawmakers as justification for tighter voting rules across the country.

In Arizona, Republican state lawmakers have used the unsubstantiated claims Big Lie to justify the unprecedented outside Senate review of the election in Maricopa County and to pass legislation that could make it harder for infrequent voters to receive mail ballots automatically.

Trump, in a statement, called AP’s tally an attempt to “discredit the massive number of voter irregularities and fraud” in key battleground states and said the “real numbers” will be released “shortly.” He did not provide any evidence to back up his assertions.

Arizona’s partisan hack Attorney General, Mark Brnovich, instead of investigating the Arizona Senate and its agent, Cyber Ninjas and the cast of clowns it has hired to conduct this obviously sham “fraudit” for grifting fraud, (this is what a real Attorney General does, Michigan Attorney General Nessel to investigate false claims about election), instead wants to get in the Florida Man’s good graces by perpetuating his Big Lie, because this partisan hack is running for the U.S. Senate. If he had any integrity, he would resign in disgrace.

The Arizona Republic reports, AG’s office asks secretary of state for potential evidence of illegal voting after Republic report:

Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich’s office has asked Secretary of State Katie Hobbs for potential evidence of illegal voting — a move that counters her request that he investigate a pressure campaign by former President Donald Trump’s allies to “stop the counting” last year.

The attorney general’s email response pointedly notes that Hobbs, a Democrat, hasn’t submitted referrals for double voting. It marks the first time in more than a decade a secretary of state has not done so.

The Hobbs administration is waiting for a report from a national organization that works with states across the nation to help identify potential incidents of double voting, a spokesperson for Hobbs said Friday.

The email, sent Wednesday to the Secretary of State’s Office and obtained Friday by The Arizona Republic, was sent by Jennifer Wright, an assistant attorney general who focuses on Brnovich’s election integrity unit.

The rest of this report suggests that the Attorney General’s Office will investigate Trump’s pressure campaign on Arizona election officials as requested by the Secretary of State. This is just wishful thinking on the part of The Republic. There is no way this partisan hack is going to investigate Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani, and Kelli Ward. Let’s get real.





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