Maricopa County has begun responding to claims made in the Cyber Ninjas audit ahead of its official release at 4:00 p.m. EDT:
NEW: After a preliminary review of the draft #azaudit report, we can provide a #FactCheck on several of the claims Cyber Ninjas identified as the most serious in their report:
🧵⬇️— Maricopa County (@maricopacounty) September 24, 2021
There’s a lot to go over by, but items listed as critical and high severity in the report are 23,344 “Mail-in ballots voted from prior address,” 10,342 “Potential voters that voted in multiple counties” and 9,041 “More ballots returned by voter than received”:
This is from the leaked audit report & it clearly shows that the margin of potentially fraudulent votes in ONE COUNTY compared to what was verified is way beyond the 10,457 votes (0.3%) that “won” Arizona in 2020. #AmericasAudit pic.twitter.com/FkzYErlN6Y
— Dr. Kelli Ward 🇺🇸 (@kelliwardaz) September 24, 2021
Former President Trump said the leaked report “conclusively shows there were enough fraudulent votes, mystery votes, and fake votes to change the outcome of the election 4 or 5 times over”:
NEW!
President Donald J. Trump:
"The Fake News is lying about the Arizona audit report! The leaked report conclusively shows there were enough fraudulent votes, mystery votes, and fake votes to change the outcome of the election 4 or 5 times over… pic.twitter.com/D11UQbt0Q4
— Liz Harrington (@realLizUSA) September 24, 2021
Maricopa County, however, disagrees with that conclusion. Here’s what they say is going on with these items:
CLAIM: 23,344 mail-in ballots voted from a prior address.
BOTTOM LINE: Cyber Ninjas still don’t understand this is legal under federal election law. To label it a “critical” concern is either intentionally misleading or staggeringly ignorant. AZ senators should know this too.
— Maricopa County (@maricopacounty) September 24, 2021
EXPLANATION:
1) Military and overseas voters can cast a “federal only ballot” despite living outside the U.S. The address tied to their ballot would be their prior address in AZ.— Maricopa County (@maricopacounty) September 24, 2021
2) People are allowed to move from one house to another (or even one state to another) in October and November of an election year (yes, shocking!). If the driver’s license address matches the voter registration address, they are still allowed to vote.
— Maricopa County (@maricopacounty) September 24, 2021
3) For the November General Election Maricopa County had 20,933 one-time temporary address requests. In addition, snowbirds and college students tend to have forwarding addresses when they are out of the county.
4) Mail-in ballots are not forwarded to another address.
— Maricopa County (@maricopacounty) September 24, 2021
CLAIM: 10,342 potential voters that voted in multiple counties
BOTTOM LINE: There are more than 7 million people in Arizona and, yes, some of them share names & birth years. To identify this as a critical issue is laughable.
— Maricopa County (@maricopacounty) September 24, 2021
EXPLANATION: 10,000+ votes in multiple counties is unlikely.
More likely: different people, same name. Example: if you search for Maria Garcia born in 1980, you’ll get 7 active voters in Maricopa County and 12 statewide. And that’s just one name.
— Maricopa County (@maricopacounty) September 24, 2021
If Cyber Ninjas understood data analysis, they would have performed standard processes to rule out situations that lead to faulty conclusions.
— Maricopa County (@maricopacounty) September 24, 2021
CLAIM: 9,041 more ballots returned by voters than received
BOTTOM LINE: This suggests a lack of understanding about how EV 33 files work. It’s not unusual for more ballots to be returned by voters than received.
— Maricopa County (@maricopacounty) September 24, 2021
EXPLANATION: The majority of these involve cases where voters returned a ballot without a signature or with a signature discrepancy. In those cases, election staff contact the voter to ensure their vote counts.
— Maricopa County (@maricopacounty) September 24, 2021
The most common reasons for a single voter having multiple entries in the EV 33 file are:
• a voter sent back an envelope unsigned
• there’s a signature discrepancy— Maricopa County (@maricopacounty) September 24, 2021
A record for the original ballot is entered into the EV 33 file (where we track returned ballots). A second entry is recorded when a ballot envelope is signed or the signature discrepancy is resolved.
— Maricopa County (@maricopacounty) September 24, 2021
The appropriate conclusion to draw from this finding is that the early voting team was performing their statutory-required responsibility by reviewing signatures on all returned mail-in ballots.
Back with additional fact-checking in one hour.
— Maricopa County (@maricopacounty) September 24, 2021
And now we wait for the official report and presentation.
Update: More fact-checking:
NEW: Here’s round two of our #FactCheck on several of the claims Cyber Ninjas identified as the most serious in their report: 🧵
— Maricopa County (@maricopacounty) September 24, 2021
CLAIM: Election management database purged
BOTTOM LINE: This is misleading. Nothing was purged. Cyber Ninjas don’t understand the business of elections. We can't keep everything on the EMS server because it has storage limits.
— Maricopa County (@maricopacounty) September 24, 2021
We have data archival procedures for our elections and @MaricopaVote archived everything related to the November election on backup drives. So everything still exists.
EXPLANATION: The Election Management System (EMS) database does not store election information forever.
— Maricopa County (@maricopacounty) September 24, 2021
That’s what archives are for. The Feb 2nd activity referenced in the report was simply standard practice in the data archival process. The EMS server needed to be readied so our certified auditors could test the equipment for accuracy. The Senate never subpoenaed our archives.
— Maricopa County (@maricopacounty) September 24, 2021
CLAIM: Election files deleted
BOTTOM LINE: This is misleading. As stated above, servers have space limitations. Files are not deleted; they are archived. The Senate never subpoenaed our EMS archives.
— Maricopa County (@maricopacounty) September 24, 2021
CLAIM: 263,139 corrupt ballot images on the county’s EMS server.
BOTTOM LINE: This is inaccurate. The server isn't the place to find all ballot images. We provided the hard drives that contain all ballot images and confirmed these images were not corrupted and could be opened.
— Maricopa County (@maricopacounty) September 24, 2021
BACKGROUND: These claims of “deleting” and “purging” are reminiscent of the false claim Cyber Ninjas made in May, accusing Maricopa County of deleting an election server. The truth was, the Ninjas looked in the wrong place for the info. It was there all along.
— Maricopa County (@maricopacounty) September 24, 2021
They just didn’t know how to correctly set up a RAID server. Despite falsely accused us of a crime, Senate contractors have never issued a retraction or an apology. https://t.co/UWO4VEctJ9
— Maricopa County (@maricopacounty) September 24, 2021
Unfortunately, AZ Senators gave unvetted, unqualified, private companies with known biases a platform to share misguided theories and faulty assumptions about Maricopa County elections.
— Maricopa County (@maricopacounty) September 24, 2021
You can find claims we’ve already debunked at https://t.co/BN4LkyzxER. We will continue to respond to other #azaudit claims as appropriate.
— Maricopa County (@maricopacounty) September 24, 2021
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Editor’s note: This post has been updated.
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