Today in Phoenix, Maricopa County election officials, the majority of them Republicans, issued their response to the Cyber Ninjas’ supposed “forensic audit” of the County’s 2020 election. To no one’s surprise, the County’s 93-page report squashes every claim of voter fraud and concludes that the costly audit was a boondoggle conducted by inexperienced, conspiratorial right-wingers looking for problems that didn’t exist.
Every claim made by Cyber Ninjas and other Arizona Senate contractors who reviewed Maricopa County's 2020 presidential election was either misleading, inaccurate or false, according to a point-by-point response by county officials issued on Wednesday.
my bold
While Trump and his local cronies frothed about 50,000 illegal votes cast in the County, the months-long investigation uncovered fewer than 100 suspicious votes, certainly not enough to eat into Biden’s 45,000-vote victory margin in Maricopa County. Further, of those 100 questionable ballots, only 37 were referred to the AG for investigation.
The County’s report (pdf) addresses every one of the 76 claims and conspiracies made by Trump, Giuliani, Cyber Ninjas, the Arizona GOP, and others. For instance, the wackadoodles said more than 33,000 mail-in ballots were cast from old addresses that didn’t exist. How could this be?
The county explains that there are numerous reasons why mail-in ballots may be cast from old addresses, such as overseas voters or voters who moved shortly before an election, and they are all legal.
After reviewing all of the supposed illegal mail-in ballots from old addresses, the County and its election contractors found five that are suspicious—not 33,000.
Among other conspiratorial claims, Team Trump said the election machines were hooked up to the internet, a clear sign of some monkey business. No, that didn’t happen. The list goes on: Trumpers said the County deleted important files that would expose the truth, they claimed there were known breaches to the computer system, thousands of duplicate ballots were counted, the wrong people had access to the hard drives, and the ballots used the wrong paper and corrupted barcodes—among many other conspiracies. All 76 claims are addressed and dismissed in today’s report, concluding:
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22 were misleading. The claims lead the reader to assume a conclusion that is not supported by the evidence.
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41 were inaccurate. The claims include flawed or misstated analysis.
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13 were false. The claims are demonstrably false and can be proven false using materials provided to theSenate.
Not only was Cyber Ninjas an inexperienced firm led by a Q-bot who said the election was stolen before he even started his “audit,” but the Ninjas’ six-month clusterfuck, which cost more than $9 million, concluded that, yes, Joe Biden won Arizona—by an even larger margin!
"Truth is truth, numbers are numbers," [Senate President Karen] Fann said at a Senate hearing on the review, which found only small variations, yielding 99 additional votes for Biden and 261 fewer votes for Trump.
Regardless of today’s report, and three recounts that found no fraud, I guarantee that tomorrow, when we stroll by the AG’s office on our morning walk, dozens of “Stop the Steal” boobs will be protesting the 2020 election with their big signs and bullhorns. They’re outside the AG’s office a lot and especially tomorrow they’ll be celebrating the 1/6 brave patriots traitors. I used to engage them but no more, not since assault weapons started to make an appearance.
