Election auditors defend divisive recount of votes
PHOENIX — Contractors hired by Arizona Senate Republicans to oversee a partisan review of the 2020 election say they don’t have enough information to complete their report, and urged legislators to subpoena more records and survey voters at home.
Leaders of the GOP audit described a variety of reasons their review is taking months longer than the 60 days initially planned, including confusion about damaged ballots and a lack of access to certain data. They appeared during a meeting livestreamed at the Capitol on Thursday.
As the audit drags on, some Republicans worry the spectacle of widely discredited operations will drive away voters in next year’s elections. Yet as long as it continues, it provides fodder for former President Donald Trump and other Republicans making false claims of fraud and vague allegations about ballot problems.
A hand count of a statistical sample of ballots matched the machine count, and two postelection audits found no manipulation of the machines. Trump lost Arizona by 10,457 votes.
Senate President Karen Fann told reporters after the meeting that she was still considering new procedures as part of the audit, which is focused on the vote count in Maricopa County, Arizona’s largest county.
Senate Republicans had planned to canvass homes and ask people about their voting patterns, but in May dropped the idea under pressure from the U.S. Department of Justice,
which warned the effort could violate laws against voter intimidation. Fann said she would consult with lawyers before deciding whether to proceed.
Fann and Judiciary Committee Chairman Warren Petersen used the Senate’s subpoena power to take control of Maricopa County’s voting machines and ballots after Trump claimed without evidence that
the 2020 election was rigged against him in Arizona and other battleground states.
The Senate hired Cyber Ninjas to oversee an audit. The small cybersecurity consulting firm is led by a Trump supporter who has spread conspiracy theories backing Trump’s false claims of fraud. The review calls for hand counting 2.1 million ballots and forensically evaluating voting machines,
servers and other data. The firm had no prior experience in elections, and experts in election administration say it’s not following reliable procedures.
The county’s Republicancontrolled Board of Supervisors has called the auditors incompetent and refused to cooperate.