In Arizona, a GOP civil war is brewing because the GOP person in charge, who possibly has some shred of decency left, saw the results were the same as the offical tally, and sent what he was seeing to outside experts to confirm. Below are excerpts from a Newsweek article about this incident, which referenced an Arizona Republic article from Friday. I haven’t seen this posted here, so I thought I’d throw it out there. Basically, the guy in charge who is the Republican former Secretary of State of AZ, Ken Bennett passed the data from the ‘audit’ to experts to look over it and it tracked “very closely” to the Maricopa Co. official tally, because of course. His efforts to confirm these results have in turn resulted in Karen Fann (who is the Republican AZ Senate president and originator of this whole debacle) apparently banning him from the building where the audit is taking place.
The Republican overseeing the controversial GOP-backed election audit in Arizona has reportedly been banned from entering the building where the recount process is ongoing, after he shared some data with experts that showed the results match the officially certified numbers in Maricopa County.
The Arizona Republic reported on Friday evening that Ken Bennett, Arizona's former Secretary of State who has been described as the audit's "director," was barred from entering the building on the state fairgrounds where the audit is moving forward. The newspaper reported that Bennett had shared some of the audit data with outside experts showing that the ballot recount was tracking "very closely" with Maricopa County's certified results.
Also, in a fun twist (my emphasis below):
Ryan Randazzo, a reporter for the Arizona Republic, summed up the situation in a Friday evening tweet: "The liaison for the Arizona election audit gave some data to outside experts who want to check the Cyber Ninjas' work, and then he was locked out of the audit. Also it looks like the ninjas miscounted and the roof on the budget building is leaking."
* This article has been updated for grammar, to add context, to reflect that both of the people referenced in the first paragraph are Republicans, and to indicate that the original information contained in the Newsweek article came from the Arizona Republic newspaper. (Sorry for so many edits, I didn’t think it would be so widely read and I should have spent more time on it).