Local authorities in Maricopa County, Arizona, sound fed up with a so-called audit that Republicans from the state Senate have been conducting in the area. Despite the lack of meaningful evidence of systematic election fraud, those Republicans in the Arizona state legislature subpoenaed and obtained materials from last year’s election from Maricopa County authorities, and these Republican state Senators subsequently tasked a company called Cyber Ninjas with leading a so-called election audit — despite a total absence of experience in election auditing on the part of Cyber Ninjas.
This week, Maricopa County authorities shared public fact-checks of certain claims from those behind the sham audit. These fact-checks and overall rebuttals went up on the main, official Twitter account for the Maricopa County government. Maricopa authorities addressed a range of false claims, from the idea that more mail-in ballots were counted for last year’s general election than were sent out to the notion that local election workers were lax in their implementation of signature verification methods for mail-in ballots. One comment in particular sums up the problem. Referring to Cyber Ninjas, Maricopa authorities wrote that “Since the Senate contractors are unqualified and untrained for this work, it’s tough to know exactly what data they’re using to come up with numbers.”
As for the claim that more mail-in ballots were counted than were sent out, it’s just flat out wrong. A full 1,918,024 mail-in ballots were returned to local authorities, while close to 2.4 million mail-in ballots were originally requested. Meanwhile, referring to the claim that “Maricopa County relaxed signature verification requirements,” local authorities shared via the official Twitter account that “This is simply not true. Maricopa County follows rigorous state signature verification guidelines. Staff receives training prior to elections to ensure compliance.”
The major problems with the fraud claims keep on going from there — for instance, certain interests have alleged that the system Maricopa County uses to count ballots is connected to the internet — and thus able to be hacked — but this claim is simply not true. “There are no routers connected to the system and there never have been,” Maricopa County leaders shared through that Twitter account. They also included a handy diagram. Overall, it’s clear — those who have pushed false claims about supposed fraud and fraud-related issues in Maricopa County, Arizona, are in way out of their depth. The nonsense is believed — by some, at least — anyway.
There are no routers connected to the system and there never have been. See attached network diagram of the Election Management System (County’s Tabulation System). pic.twitter.com/zvaaelsbeM
— Maricopa County (@maricopacounty) July 16, 2021
