Karen Fann, the Arizona Senate President, said on Tuesday that the election audit of the 2020 presidential election being led by Cyber Ninjas differs from the Maricopa County tally. Due to the discrepancy, the election review team will acquire new machines to recount the ballots.
Fann said the numbers have not yet been released, but noted at this point they know the numbers do not match with Maricopa County.
Maricopa County’s official canvass shows a total of 2,089,563 ballots cast in the 2020 general election. Both the Arizona Senate Democrat Caucus and the chair of the county’s Board of Supervisors cast doubt on the findings of the election audit.
According to The Epoch Times, the ballots submitted in Maricopa County were tabulated as normal by election officials. They were then recounted by hand by audit teams hired by the state Senate. The Senate was set to conduct its own recount, which will provide a number to compare with those from the county and from the auditors — it will focus on the number of ballots and not the actual votes, unlike the first two tabulations.
Interestingly, Maricopa County officials announced they would replace all of their election machines afterward due to concerns about the equipment being probed by auditors. After defending voting machines and talking about how difficult it would be to hack the systems, Arizona’s Democrat Secretary of State Katie Hobbs told the county Board of Supervisors she believed the security of the machines had been compromised due to the work by Cyber Ninjas. She said she would consider decertifying the machines if Maricopa County tried to reuse them.
Maricopa County’s most recent expense for election equipment was a $6.1 million contract with Dominion Voting Systems. The new machines will also be produced by Dominion, according to the county’s communications director.
Randy Pullen, the audit coordinator, said this second recount is a sign Senate Republicans are “being super careful.” Pullen said they know Maricopa County is going to be “hostile.”
