AP investigation finds fewer than 200 cases of voter fraud out of 3.4 million ballots cast in Arizona presidential election
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
© AP ASSOCIATED PRESS
PHOENIX (AP) — Arizona county election officials have identified fewer than 200 cases of potential voter fraud out of more than 3 million ballots cast in last year's presidential election, undercutting former President Donald Trump's claims of a stolen election as his allies continue a disputed ballot review in the state's most populous county.
An Associated Press investigation found 182 cases where problems were clear enough that officials referred them to investigators for further review. So far, only four cases have led to charges, including those identified in a separate state investigation. No one has been convicted. No person's vote was counted twice.
While it's possible more cases could emerge, the numbers illustrate the implausibility of Trump's claims that fraud and irregularities in Arizona cost him the state's electorate votes. In final, certified and audited results, Biden won 10,400 more votes than Trump out of 3.4 million cast.
AP's findings align with previous studies showing voter fraud is rare. Numerous safeguards are built into the system to not only prevent fraud from happening but to detect it when it does.
"The fact of the matter is that election officials across the state are highly invested in helping to ensure the integrity of our elections and the public's confidence in them," said Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, a Democrat. "And part of that entails taking potential voter fraud seriously."
Arizona's potential cases also illustrate another reality: Voter fraud is often bipartisan. Of the four Arizona cases that have resulted in criminal charges, two involved Democratic voters and two involved Republicans.
AP's review supports statements made by many state and local elections officials — and even some Republican county officials and GOP Gov. Doug Ducey — that Arizona's presidential election was secure and its results valid.
And still, Arizona's GOP-led state Senate has for months been conducting what it describes as a "forensic audit" of results in Phoenix's Maricopa County. The effort has been discredited by election experts and faced bipartisan criticism, but some Republicans, including Trump, have suggested it will uncover evidence of widespread fraud.
"This is not a massive issue," said Adrian Fontes, a Democrat who oversaw the Maricopa County election office during the 2020 election and lost his re-election bid. "It is a lie that has developed over time. It's been fed by conspiracy theorists."
The AP tallied the potential cases after submitting public record requests to all Arizona counties. Most counties — 11 out of 15 — reported they had forwarded no potential cases to local prosecutors. The majority of cases identified so far involve people casting a ballot for a relative who had died or people who tried to cast two ballots.
In addition to the AP's review of county election offices, an Election Integrity Unit of the state attorney general's office that was created in 2019 to ferret out fraud has been reviewing potential cases of fraud.
A spokesman for Attorney General Mark Brnovich told the AP in April that the unit had 21 active investigations, although he did not specify if all were from last fall.
A month later, the office indicted a woman for casting a ballot on behalf of her dead mother in November. A spokeswoman declined to provide updated information this week.
Maricopa County, which is subject to the disputed ballot review ordered by state Senate Republicans, has identified just one case of potential fraud out of 2.1 million ballots cast. That was a voter who might have cast a ballot in another state. The case was sent to the county attorney's office, which forwarded it to the state attorney general.
Virtually all the cases identified by county election officials are in Pima County, home to Tucson, and involved voters who attempted to cast two ballots.
The Pima County Recorder's Office has a practice of referring all cases with even a hint of potential fraud to prosecutors for review, something the state's 14 other county recorders do not do. Pima County officials forwarded 151 cases to prosecutors. They did not refer 25 others from voters over age 70 because there was a greater chance those errors — typically attempts to vote twice — were the result of memory lapses or confusion, not criminal intent, an election official said.
None of the 176 duplicate ballots was counted twice. A spokesman for the Pima County Attorney's Office, Joe Watson, said Wednesday that the 151 cases it received were still being reviewed and that no charges had been filed.
Pima County's tally was in line with previous elections, but there were some new patterns this year, said deputy recorder Pamela Franklin. An unusually high number of people appeared to have intentionally voted twice, often by voting early in person and then again by mail. In Arizona, where nearly 80% of voters cast ballots by mail, it's not unusual for someone to forget they returned their mail-in ballot and then later ask for a replacement or try to vote in person, she said. But this pattern was new.
Franklin noted several factors at play, including worries about U.S. Postal Service delays. In addition, Trump at one point encouraged voters who cast their ballots early by mail to show up at their polling places on Election Day and vote again if poll workers couldn't confirm their mail ballots had been received.
The results in Arizona are similar to early findings in other battleground states. Local election officials in Wisconsin identified just 27 potential cases of voter fraud out of 3.3 million ballots cast last November, according to records obtained by the AP under the state's open records law. Potential voter fraud cases in other states where Trump and his allies mounted challenges have so far amounted to just a tiny fraction of Trump's losing margin in those states.
The Associated Press conducted the review following months of Trump and his allies claiming without proof that he had won the 2020 election. His claims of widespread fraud have been rejected by election officials, judges, a group of election security officials and even Trump's own attorney general at the time. Even so, supporters continue to repeat them and they have been cited by state lawmakers as justification for tighter voting rules across the country.
In Arizona, Republican state lawmakers have used the unsubstantiated claims to justify the unprecedented outside Senate review of the election in Maricopa County and to pass legislation that could make it harder for infrequent voters to receive mail ballots automatically.
Senate President Karen Fann has repeatedly said her goal is not to overturn the election results. Instead, she has said she wants to find out if there were any problems and show voters who believe Trump's claims whether they should trust the results.
"Everybody keeps saying, 'Oh, there's no evidence' and it's like, 'Yeah well, let's do the audit.' And if there's nothing there, then we say, 'Look, there was nothing there,'" Fann told the AP in early May. "If we find something, and it's a big if, but if we find something, then we can say, 'OK, we do have evidence and now how do we fix this?'" Fann did not return calls this week to discuss the AP findings.
Aside from double voting, the cases flagged by officials mostly involved a ballot cast after someone had died, including three voters in Yavapai County who face felony charges for casting ballots for spouses who died before the election.
In Yuma County, one case of a voter attempting to cast two ballots was sent to the county attorney for review. Chief Civil Deputy William Kerekus told the AP that there was no intent at voter fraud and the case was closed without charges.
Cochise County Recorder David Stevens found mail-in ballots were received from two voters who died before mail ballots were sent in early October. Sheriff's deputies investigating the cases found their homes were vacant and closed the cases. The votes were not counted.
Continue ReadingShow full articles without "Continue Reading" button for {0} hours. Microsoft and partners may be compensated if you purchase something through recommended links in this article.
Tags
Who is online
95 visitors
The Associated Press has been the gold standard for non partisan news reporting for well over 100 years in the United States and around the world.
There is no voter fraud. Out of the 4 cases being prosecuted in Arizona, 2 were by Democrats and 2 were by Republicans.
Trump is fuming again , complaining because Fox News reported this AP story.
And by the same token, there is no voter suppression. Common sense rules and regulations to make the vote secure and fair is not voter suppression or Jim Crow 2.0
Not everyone is complaining about those Greg. It's just the silly and vindictive rules.
Why eliminate drive through voting in TX when only apparently Democratic Counties employed this, if both sides benefit?
Why lower the days for a runoff in GA to 28 while keeping newly registered from voting for 29 days? Coincidence after the Dems won 2 Senate seats recently? Probably not.
Why make it a felony for TX county election officials to continue to mail out applications for mail in ballots to those over 65?
With zero proof of fraud but an over abundance of caution because someone else might fill it out and mail it in, they make that convenience illegal and revert to the voter filling out a printable .pdf to either fax, scan or mail in (if the voter has a PC with a printer ) No more secure than before.
Some of the laws are just vindictive, again, GA, with notoriously long lines based on race, you can no longer approach a voter in line or offer food or water. Do you honestly think the GOP led government of GA would have done that if they ended up with two GOP US Senators?
Taken collectively, the 89 pieces of legislation around the country by Red states just reeks of poor sportsmanship. It's not a coincidence that minorities who feel like their entire lives are walking uphill, feel like the GOP just steepened the hill.
Remember, politics is perception, and sometimes that perception bites you in the ass.
What the gop is doing in red states to make voting more difficult is not just mean spirited, it is bassackwards. At a time when we can safely and securely bank and do our taxes online, only to vote must we stand in lines...
I expect that people will crawl through broken glass to repudiate the damn gop in '22, again.
In normal times the gop would have a good chance to gain, butt they are shitting on us...
My whole position has always been “prove these measures are warranted.”
So far the GOP has failed miserably at this.
Please justify the law in Georgia that prohibits Johnny from giving a bottle of water to his grandma, who has been standing in line to vote for 2 hours.
Ridiculous. Here is your drivers license, now you can't drive for 29 days...
It's never been easier to vote, and that includes minorities.
None of these laws make it more it more difficult for anyone to vote.
The law doesn't prohibit that, just electioneering at the polls.
With all the days and times available to vote, she should have planned better...and brought water and snacks.
You need to reread the law.
And back to blaming the victim. She should have known that it would take hours and hours to cast your vote in Georgia. Right???
Is HR-1 warranted? Which would give the Feds control of elections in the states?
You are confused...there are not victims here, and no evidence of ANY voter suppression.
all white suburbs most likely.
"Here is your drivers license, now you can't drive for 29 days..."
"Thank you for buying your new Winchester. Now you can pick it up in three days." - common sense controls, you know.
Is it common sense to make people that registered not be able to vote in the current election?
Because that is what you are championing.
Hey, as a famous Democrat put it--elections have consequences!!
You can bet your last sip of water that if it was them who are being denied their right to vote they would be up in arms in protests. But, as long as it is those they consider unworthy and unfit to vote they think they have the right to deny them their own right to vote unless they are willing to vote the way the deniers want them to. For every one of those they deny their right to vote they should have one of their own denied their right to vote as well. Let's see how well they accept those terms.
And yet, for all the whining, no one has been denied their legal right to vote.
Democratic fearmongering is in overdrive.
Take your words and go away, I'm opposed to diminishing any right.
Yet you are for this, which is nothing but barriers and speedbumps.
A report from 1998 estimated that 3.9 million Americans (2 percent of the eligible voting population) could not vote because of laws disenfranchising those with felony convictions. (Human Rights Watch and the Sentencing Project, Losing the Vote: The Impact of Felony Disenfranchisement Laws in the United States , 1998.) Of that 3.9 million, 1.4 million were black men, which represented at that time 13 percent of all adult black men and reflected “a rate of disenfranchisement that is seven times the national average”.
Stunningly, most of those disenfranchised in 2016, more than 3 million people, had completed their sentence. ( Id . at Figure 1.) Provisions for re-enfranchisement vary widely across states. A number of states restore voting rights when an individual leaves prison. Others restore voting rights after an individual completes probation or parole. In many states, however, voting rights cannot be restored until someone has not only been released from incarceration and/or completed probation and parole, but also paid all fines and fees resulting from their criminal case .
In short, in 30 states individuals are being denied the right to vote because they have not yet paid criminal justice debt. And there is every reason to believe that they have not repaid this debt because they simply cannot afford to pay.
Should those who have served their time but not been able to afford the fines they were levied be stripped of their right to vote?
There are many States that will not renew a State Drivers license or State ID with unpaid parking tickets or moving violations. Should those people be denied their right to vote because they owe fines?
Should those who poor and can't afford the fee required for getting a valid photo ID in their State be denied the right to vote?
Some piece of shits think so, they apparently think voting is only a "right" if you can afford it and have had your record scrubbed clean by a wealthy parent using generationally gained money to bail their ass out of jail and pay any fines when they do something wrong. This is a luxury only some can afford. Considering the facts behind the racial inequity of our justice system it seem obvious that the system is rigged to disenfranchise minority voters.
Which only proves my point that no one has been denied their legal right to vote.
Thank you.
Because it was only ever an emergency accommodation for Covid, which is no longer needed. Same thing with 24 hour voting.
The rule as I understand it will be that they can only send you a mail in ballot if you request one. Presumably they'll only accept those they know they've sent.
It is illegal to campaign that close to polling location, and there is zero chance that food and water will not be offered in an attempt to influence voters. There is also zero chance we'll be able to police that.
If we had 150 assaults at voting locations on election day in any state, everybody would be demanding systemic changes to keep that from recurring. If 150 cars were stolen, we'd be guarding the parking lots. If 150 people had their pockets picked, action would be taken.
Projection, deflection, and denial. Good job!
Wait.....so now if people do not give me free water and snacks I'm a "victim"?
That's hilarious.
[deleted]
[deleted]
Welcome back, Jack,
Plus the GOP added 5 feet of snow
I think I would take a wait and see attitude on that....
I would take issue with "which is no longer needed."
Same issue.
And I would continue to argue that if Trump had won the popular and electoral vote,
not one state would be changing or tinkering with any election laws.
We've managed every prior election without them. People managed to get out of their cars, even in broad daylight.
I dunno. The losers always bitch and moan about how unfair it all was. Look at the shitstorm surrounding Facebook when Trump won, or the screams and wails for election overhauls after the whole hanging chad fiasco.
and here comes the virus variants again, for how long?
It's partisan, pure and simple.
True, but if the Dems had lost, they would have no control in Austin to pull this nonsense. None at all.
Which would obviously change the discussion, but I still don't think we re-introduce 24 hr or drive through.
It's in response to partisanship, outlawing actions that created an electoral advantage for the party in power in Harris County. So yeah, it's partisan, but it's also anti-partisan.
Harris County sent unsolicited mail-in ballots to everybody. They are able to do that because they're the largest county in Texas and have that kind of cash. They run drive-through and 24 hour voting, again because they're big enough to get election volunteers to man those stations.
But what about someplace like Bosque County or Panola County or Lubbock County? They don't have that kind of cash, and they can't get election volunteers for 3am.
So now you've created a situation where Harris County residents have election rights no other county can provide. That's hardly fair. If heavily Republican precincts started a program where they offered concierge ballot delivery service to nursing home residents that they advertised on Fox News, you'd rightfully call bullshit on that.
What we need is a standardized process that affords everybody the same reasonable opportunity to vote easily. I don't necessarily think this bill represents such a plan, but it's certainly not "Jim Crow 2.0" or any other such ridiculous nonsense being described by Texas Democrats.
Wrong
Tarrant County also sends out unsolicited prefilled mail in ballot applications to 65 year old like my wife and I.
Have for at least six years. Didn't phase them or stop them when Trump won...
They also had drive through voting and drive through vaccinations in 2020/2021.
The government SHOULD BE making things easier for people regardless of the pandemic
to foster more voting, which is pretty pathetic nation wide.
They do the best they can under the circumstances.
I agree, but all partisans exaggerate like their opposites, it doesn't take much of a filter to sort out the obvious.
Have you looked at the recent figures for the number of new cases not that the latest variant is spreading rapidly?
OK.... Harris County residents have elections rights "most" other counties cannot provide.
Election officials should have a standardized system that makes it easy to vote. That system should be the same, regardless of income, race, language, or whatever.
Yes. But that doesn't really impact the parity aspect.
Then it becomes a density issue?
I bet if each county had a drive through at their Election Board office like Tarrant did,
they could close a bunch of locations like Tarrant did. I don't think the drive through option is more expensive
and probably 2/3s of Texans live in barely populated counties and have to drive to the election Offfic anyway.
Density tends to be Democratic.
Then I understand why GA's lines were so long and our dense counties will follow suit.
In a way, yes. Texas elections are funded by state grant, which is paid per registration activity (new, cancel, update, etc). Places like Harris County are going to have a lot more activity, so they're going to get vastly higher amounts of money.
There are certainly some positives to the idea.
Democratic voters are notoriously unreliable. You never know when they're going to feel like coming out in big numbers, so it's harder to plan for that.
IMHO, the key here is a uniform long window for early voting.
I was looking at data relative to the "slave auction" story about Traverse city.
Voter registration is about 55/45 favoring the GOP but 2/3s of the Dems stayed home while 2/3s of the Rep's voted.
I trust the AP.
Is that you BF?
Wow, 200 cases? So Trump was right and the election was stolen. Oh wait.... Lol
Hey, that’s .000001% of the votes, more than enough to swing the election results!
You forgot the "
" Lol
gee, that's 1 dead republican voter out of every every 17,000 votes cast. stop the steal!
Gee, only about 16,000 more to go to get up to Democratic Party standards!
God that “audit” is embarrassing. Apparently now they need even more files and even more time to finish, never mind that they were supposed to be done a month and a half ago. They are grifters pure and simple and have no idea why they are doing.
Watch, some might start claiming "the audit was stolen" next, Lol
This is 9 months after the election too. At this point, it's time to give it up.
Meh, Associated Press is a radical center news outlet.
According to a news site from Slovenia, of the 197 discredited votes, 196 were for Trump and 1 was for Kanye West.
Oh, not getting the news from the late-night comedians any more?
Fake news, everyone knows the election was stolen and the AP is part of the deep state. /s
I had to put the sarcasm sign there cuz some maroon on NT would believe it.
[Removed]
What this article fails to touch on is that the auditors have found approx 74,000 mail-in ballots that do not have the corresponding records of the ballot being sent out.
While I doubt if the auditors will be given the approval to actually talk with the voters, and that they do admit the discrepancy in the count could be simple clerical error, the number is large enough to cause concern and should be explained. Future elections will need stronger processes and accounting to prevent this from occurring in future elections.
You left out the most important sentence in the ABC15 (Phoenix television station) article.
ABC15 determined and verified with county election officials that the 74,000 voters Logan is referring to voted in person in the last week of the November election.
You believe the crackpot grifters of Cyber Ninjas and I'll believe the county election board and the Phoenix television station.
Some people are far too willing to take the proclamation of conspiracy theorists at face value.
That's why I included the link so that people could read the entire article. You have now posted a he said/she said argument. I don't trust the cyber Ninja's any more than I trust the Maricopa election officials (and I live in Maricopa County). I didn't fucking say I believed any single theory over another, all I did was point out the article you seeded in this didn't include that information. So it looks to me like you are guilty of taking one theory at face value over another.
Will any of this make any difference in the 2020 election? NO!! Don't care about that election anymore. It's done, over with. But if there are questions that need to be answered there is still work to be done for future elections. Just having a county office come out and say something and a news station saying "yep, you're right" is not showing proof.
Its not a "he said, she said" argument. Saying it is is how we end up with tens of millions of Americans who will believe any conspiracy theory they see.
Cyber Ninjas took something that is not an issue , that in one mode of counting (an unofficial one used for the political parties to track early voting turnout) two sets of numbers dont match up, and are not expected to, and have tried to make it look suspicious.
Your problem is you want to give a conspiracy group ( Logan is a vocal Trump supporter) equal claim on the facts as people entrusted by the people of Arizona to run elections. That is NOT a reasonable point of view.
To you it's not. I live in Maricopa County and I do not trust our elected officials and the way they run their offices. There is way too much partisan politics towards both sides. IMO the Maricopa Country elections office is just as biased as Cyber Ninjas, just not paid as well.
And you're statement was most definitely a 'he said / she said' argument because you have no proof of anything here other than the news articles you read and/or post. You have no more proof of any of this than I do, you are taking the word of one side of the argument. I'm saying both sides are problematic. Either side wants me to believe them then they need to put the proof into the public sphere.
I dont trust the officials in Dogpatch Oklahoma where Trump got 95% of the vote. Let's have an audit there. Here there and everywhere. Right wing conspiracy theorists will drive this country insane.
You cannot see my point of view because of your own partisan bias. I'm not trying to give a conspiracy group any equal claim, I'm stating neither side is worthy of my trust in the first place. You want to read my comments as being pro-Trump because I'm not firmly on your bandwagon. You seem to refuse to accept that I'm not pro-Trump. I'm also not pro-Biden. I'm not pro-Republican or pro-Democrat. Like most people in this country I'm a mix of all the different pieces. I did like some of the policies that the Trump administration put forth but just because I'm not jumping up and down demanding his crucifixion you seem to think that I'm on his side. I'm not on his side because he's not on my side. Hell, I liked some of the policies that Obama put forth, doesn't mean I'm going to invite him to dinner.
This election bullshit is going to continue on until we the People take back our elections and our government. I don't know how to do that short of a revolution and I'm definitely not advocating for that. But IMO as long as you continue to argue from a partisan bias you are only another piece of the problem that will continue until the population wakes up and takes back control of the government. The government is not going to willingly give up control, there's too much money and power in it. And corporations go right along because of the same reasons.
Your comment represents a major problem in this country over the last ten years or so - the idea that every opinion is as good or valid as another.
You say Trump had good ideas and bad ideas, just like Obama, thus the implication that were equally qualified or fit to be president of the United States. That is complete nonsense. A homeless derelict or a neo Nazi could both conceivably have "good ideas and bad ideas" , so are they equally fit to be president as well?
Trump was , without a shadow of a doubt, the most unfit person to ever hold the office of president of the United States. That means nothing to you because you think he had some good ideas or policies?
I actually fear for the future of this country, and feel bad for myself (and millions of others that are no longer young) that we will likely have to live the rest of our lives in a country where the truth is whatever a bunch of disgruntled and deluded cult followers want it to be.
Well said.
This is how you continue to show your partisan bias. Nowhere did I talk about Trump or Obama being equal, being equally qualified, or being fit to be the President. Since when does a good idea only come from a "good" person?
The bold above is mine. You don't know what I think here because you don't know me. All you continue to show is that you cannot have a conversation without tossing in how unfit Trump is for the office and use that to attack someone. Good ideas are just that, good ideas. Doesn't matter who they come from. Same thing with bad ideas.
If you were suffering from dehydration, would you refuse a glass of water just because it was Trump handing it to you?
As do I. The difference is that I see the disgruntled and deluded extremists from both sides as the problem.
It's larger than "he said she said", to date, concession has kept this country viable for 45 election cycles.
It's customary to concede with grace...
Might as well give it up.
If you haven't hopped aboard the "I Hate Trump" train yet, well, then to some folks that automatically makes you a Trump loyalist.
Dissenting views not accepted!
Which then almost immediately makes you a racist to most leftists. There is no other alternative to them.
if not for projection, how could they communicate?
FACT FOCUS: A false narrative of 74K extra votes in Arizona
Cyber Ninjas, the cybersecurity consulting firm hired by Arizona Senate Republicans to oversee a partisan review of the 2020 election, on Thursday pushed a false narrative that Maricopa County received thousands of mail-in ballots that had no record of being sent out to voters.
The firm's CEO Doug Logan used the baseless claim to urge legislators to subpoena more records and canvass voters at home, grasping for evidence of fraud even as a hand count of a statistical sample of ballots and two post-election audits showed no proof of wrongdoing in Maricopa County’s election.
The false claim has reverberated online in the day since Logan's comments, parroted by lawmakers and Republican commentators including Arizona Republican Party Chair Kelli Ward, Colorado Rep. Lauren Boebert and former President Donald Trump.
Yet Maricopa County officials and election experts confirm that the claim isn’t true and represents a misunderstanding of how early voting works in Arizona.
Here's a closer look at the facts.
CLAIM: Arizona’s largest county in the 2020 election received and counted 74,000 mail-in ballots that had no record of ever being sent out to voters.
THE FACTS: False. The claim mischaracterizes reports that are intended to help political parties track early voters for their get-out-the-vote efforts, not tally mail-in ballots through Election Day. The reports don’t represent all mail-in ballots sent out and received, so the numbers aren’t expected to match up, according to Maricopa County officials and outside experts.
“We have 74,243 mail-in ballots where there is no clear record of them being sent,” Logan said at a meeting livestreamed at Arizona’s Capitol on Thursday. “That could be something where documentation wasn’t done right. There’s a clerical issue. There’s not proper things there, but I think when we’ve got 74,000, it merits knocking on a door and validating some of this information.”
Logan based his false claim on two types of early voting reports issued by Maricopa County: EV32 files and EV33 files. He claimed that EV32 files are “supposed to give a record of when a mail-in ballot is sent” and EV33 files are “supposed to give a record of when the mail-in ballot is received.”
That’s not accurate, according to Maricopa County officials, who tweeted on Friday that “the EV32 Returns & EV33 files are not the proper files to refer to for a complete accumulating of all early ballots sent and received.”
Instead, the EV32 and EV33 files are reports created for political parties to aid them in their get-out-the-vote efforts during early voting, according to Tammy Patrick, a senior adviser at the Democracy Fund and a former Maricopa County elections official. Arizona law requires county recorders to provide this data to political parties and candidates, Patrick said.
Arizona reports both mail-in ballots and early in-person votes at voting centers as early votes, so both are included in the data in files EV32 and EV33, Patrick said.
The EV32 file includes all requests that voters make for early ballots, either by mail or in person, up to 11 days before Election Day, Patrick said. The EV33 file includes returned early ballots up to the Monday before Election Day.
That means there is a 10-day period between the final day of each report, during which thousands of mail-in votes are submitted and thousands of additional voters go to voting centers, request early ballots in person and submit them. Furthermore, the files don’t include any early ballots that came in on Election Day.
“To use these files as an attempt to understand the number of voters who were mailed a ballot or who returned a ballot is misguided,” Patrick said. “That information is obtained from the Voted File, not a GOTV tool for the political parties and candidates.” “GOTV” is short for “get out the vote.”
Maricopa County officials tweeted later Friday that they calculated the true number of mail-in ballots requested and returned in November's election. According to that count, nearly 450,000 more mail-in ballots were requested than returned.
Rod Thomson, a public relations consultant working for Cyber Ninjas, said Maricopa County refused to answer questions posed by the audit team in private, forcing Logan to ask for explanations in public.
“Mr. Logan never said this was fraud or criminal, he merely stated the facts as they were provided to him and did not have an explanation,” Thomson said. “None of this would be necessary if the county would simply communicate with the audit team when there are questions.”
Logan is a Trump supporter who has spread conspiracy theories backing Trump’s false claims of fraud. His firm is overseeing the GOP audit despite having no prior experience in elections. Experts in election administration say it’s not following reliable procedures.
Jack Sellers, the Republican chairman of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, said in a statement on Thursday that the auditors are “portraying as suspicious what is actually normal and well known to people who work in elections.”
“What we heard today represents an alternate reality that has veered out of control since the November General Election,” Sellers wrote.
___
This is part of The Associated Press’ ongoing effort to fact-check misinformation that is shared widely online, including work with Facebook to identify and reduce the circulation of false stories on the platform. Here’s more information on Facebook’s fact-checking program:
I cannot believe this farce of a recount is still ongoing. Unfreakingbelievable!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
while previous official recounts had taken mere days to complete, the recount by partisan republican contractors has taken months. the main reason being that the building being used isn't large enough to accommodate the number of participants needed to take their shoes off to count past the number ten. the contractor continues to seek a local venue that will hold 170,000 people.
Some of the 'male' auditors have to drop their pants to count to 21 (although that one is so small, hard to see).
Excuse me, 'forensic audit'.
But...but...whaddaboud all those Bamboo fibers which were revealed by the Ninja Warriors Top Secret Ultra-Violet light technology?
(Proof those ballots came from China. And: many people are saying that that's proof...because everyone knows that Bamboo can't grow in the U.S. it only grows in China! And China is a Communist Country-- still yet further proof that "THE ELECTION WAS STOLEN!)
I think your going to find state govts that run forensic audits will be more reliable than the associated press.
So. Unless AP runs a complete forensic audit. They are just guessing or full of shit.
In Az more than. 70 thousand mail in ballots came back than were sent out.
Joe won Az by 11000 votes
You do the math
outcome of election changed.
Oh please. How gullible are you ?
You think the press knows more than the people who ran a forensic audit and your calling me gullible
Your funny.
That's 'you're' XMDM9mm
Plus total nonsense.
stop beating around the bush and just say that the election was rigged...
It absolutely was.
Never meant to imply otherwise.
So. When _the news does an actual forensic audit and counts every single mail in and scanned ballot 3 times their opinion might actually mean something.
Claiming the election was rigged is an empty claim, and one which has no supporting evidence even 9 months after the election.
How can anyone still believe this utter bullshit? There is NO evidence that the election was rigged leading to the defeat of Trump. After all the recounts and litigation coming up with nothing that could even get close to altering the election results, it is pure ignorance or delusion to still believe Trump is the legitimate PotUS.
Deliver the evidence supporting this claim.
The evidence was presented to the az senate.
It is online and available.
If you cant be bothered to keep up or do your own research your no better than the associated press
So, when you complete a forensic audit let us all know okay?
It takes no talent to make a claim and not back it up.
Your snarky deflect shows your claim is bullshit.
Nothing new, that's his MO.
A long rebuttal to this nonsense is already up on this very seed.
We are on a hamster wheel version of reality.
I know, and that illustrates how pathetic the 'go look it up for yourself' deflection is.
Please leave your conspiracy nonsense at the door. That has already been debunked by Maricopa County officials and others.
So people should just hand over to these fraudsters all of their sensitive information?
It probably happened during your months away from here while you played World of Warcraft
at work to fill in your time previously spent trolling NV & NT.
I did. The big lie is joe won.
When people are told to sit down and shut up. That's when they rise up.
The left trying everything possible to stop the audits only proves they have much to hide.
Prove Joe didn't win!
Another one who just makes utterly stupid claims and fails at every turn to back them up. Pure trolling.
Exactly! And it's best not to feed the trolls. Let them starve from inattention
Over & over & over again.
Or we can "censor" them. That really seems to trigger some.
And conversely, when people rise up...that's when they are told to sit down and shut up!
And what about all those mysterious Bamboo fibers, eh!
What about that????
That's just absolutely nuts XMDM9mm
Link?
So far, every time someone has been named who used a dead person's vote have been Trumptards.