Arizona election audit spin

PJ Media:

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“The partisan review of Maricopa County’s 2.1 million ballots cast in the 2020 election found a vote count nearly identical to what the county had previously reported,” CNN reported. Like other liberal outlets, CNN focused on the results of the hand-recount part of the audit. As we know, hand recounts may account for slight discrepancies in counting but do not address irregularities or potentially illegally cast ballots.

So, let’s look into what the audit actually says.

“What has been found is both encouraging and alarming,” the report summary reads. “On the positive side there were no substantial differences between the hand count of the ballots provided and the official canvass results for the County.”

The summary continues:

However, while it is encouraging for voters, it does not allay all of the concerns:

• None of the various systems related to elections had numbers that would balance and agree with each other. In some cases, these differences were significant.
• There appears to be many ballots cast from individuals who had moved prior to the election.
• Files were missing from the Election Management System (EMS) Server.
• Ballot images on the EMS were corrupt or missing.
• Logs appeared to be intentionally rolled over, and all the data in the database related to the 2020 General Election had been fully cleared.
• On the ballot side, batches were not always clearly delineated, duplicated ballots were missing the required serial numbers, originals were duplicated more than once, and the Auditors were never provided Chain‐of‐ Custody documentation for the ballots for the time‐period prior to the ballot’s movement into the Auditors’ care. This all increased the complexity and difficulty in properly auditing the results; and added ambiguity into the final conclusions.

The audit team faults Maricopa County officials for not cooperating with the audit, which would have resolved many of these obstacles. “By the County withholding subpoena items, their unwillingness to answer questions as is normal between auditor and auditee, and in some cases actively interfering with audit research, the County prevented a complete audit,” the summary explains. “This did not stop the primary goal of offering recommendations for legislative reform to the Arizona Senate, but it did leave many questions open as to the way and manner that the 2020 General Election was conducted. As a result, while many areas of concern were specifically identified, our full audit results validating the 2020 General Election are necessarily inconclusive.”

While the media is claiming that the audit report confirms Biden’s victory, it does not. “There are sufficient discrepancies among the different systems that, in conjunction with some of our findings, suggest that the delta between the Presidential candidates is very close to the potential margin‐of‐error for the election,” the audit summary explains.

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Why do these matter? Because, according to the state-certified results, Joe Biden barely won the state by a 10,457-vote margin. The tiny margin of victory in the state-certified results means that these discrepancies are very troubling. There were 42,727 impacted ballots ranked as “high” or “critical” severity—that’s four times the certified margin of victory. If you include “medium” severity discrepancies, there were 53,214 impacted ballots—more than five times the certified margin of victory. Overall, there were 57,734 impacted ballots.

These findings don’t prove fraud, but certainly demonstrate the potential for fraud. And these impacted ballots have not been vetted.

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The results continue to be inconclusive but raise enough questions for further investigation of a very tight race.   It looks like aspects of the audit are incomplete because of a lack of cooperation from the county.  For traditional audits, this looks like a red flag.

See, also:

‘Decertify!’: Trump Supporters Explode After Seeing What’s Actually In Arizona Election Audit Results