Major problems at the ongoing audit of presidential election results in Maricopa County, Arizona, have been documented by observers associated with the office of Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs (D), seriously undercutting the legitimacy of any report coming out of the effort. The so-called audit is under the supervision of Republicans from the Arizona state Senate, who subpoenaed and successfully obtained materials from last year’s election from local authorities — who have publicly derided the unfolding debacle.
The problems that have been found at the Maricopa audit vary. For instance, observers discovered that across “several days,” a document that was identified as confidential “was left out and sometimes unattended at the check-in counter,” while on one recent occasion, “the external security gate was left unattended and partially open, allowing observers to walk in,” all of which comes from observer notes shared by Hobbs’s office. In another instance, a software update “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,” according to those same notes.
These are serious problems, all of which seem underpinned by glaring incompetence. Cyber Ninjas — a Florida-based firm that Republicans in the Arizona state Senate hired to run the sham audit — has no previous experience conducting election audits. None. Biden won Maricopa County in 2020 and was the first Democratic presidential nominee to win Arizona overall since the 1990s, and state Republican leaders have launched this inept audit effort on the basis of lies about the integrity of that win. Hobbs — who has announced a campaign for Arizona governor — commented as follows in a recent interview, discussing the audit effort:
‘There’s really nothing going on here that gives any confidence that they’re going to produce a report that is valid. They’re not going to produce results that are going to be able to be replicated. They don’t know what they’re doing and they didn’t have a clue how long it was going to take them to do this.’
Republican officials from Maricopa County have raised similar concerns. Maricopa County board chairman Jack Sellers noted that the “contractors hired by the Senate President are not auditors and they are not certified by the U.S. Elections Assistance Commission.” Instead, Sellers observed, it’s “clearer by the day” that the so-called auditors are “in way over their heads.” The situation, he added, is not “funny” — rather, it’s “dangerous.” The audit is helping keep Trump’s lies about the integrity of last year’s election going on the foundation of baseless conspiracy theories.
Read Sellers’s statement by clicking on the post below:
Chairman @jacksellers responds to "false and ill-informed" allegations from Arizona Senate and Senate audit account. "It's clearer by the day the people hired by the Senate are in way over their heads." Full statement below: pic.twitter.com/kBkVKgbEcD
— Maricopa County (@maricopacounty) May 14, 2021
