Trump loses more than 200 votes in GOP-led recount in Arizona’s Maricopa County, report shows
The numbers don’t lie.
The Republican Party’s latest effort to uncover fraud in the 2020 presidential election ended in another embarrassment, with a months-long controversial recount in Arizona’s largest county showing a net gain of 360 votes for President Biden, according to a report released Friday.
The report by Cyber Ninjas, a cybersecurity consulting firm with no experience in elections and whose CEO appears to be a conspiracy theorist, found that former President Donald Trump received 261 fewer votes in Maricopa County than previously thought while Biden had 99 more. It also found no evidence of widespread voter fraud despite Trump’s baseless claims that he was cheated.
“This means the tabulation equipment counted the ballots as they were designed to do, and the results reflect the will of the voters,” said Maricopa County Board of Supervisors Chairman Jack Sellers, a Republican. “That should be the end of the story. Everything else is just noise.”
The GOP-financed review, which has been widely criticized as flawed and biased, follows two previous election audits led by nonpartisan professionals who followed industry standards and confirmed that Biden won most of the county’s 2.1 million votes.
Maricopa County is home to Phoenix and an increasingly diverse population.
The Cyber Ninjas hand recount has no bearing on the official election results that have long been certified. But the process has helped fuel skepticism about the nation’s election system and may boost efforts to restrict voting in the state and across the country, experts have said.
The one-term Republican president released a misleading statement Friday saying the recount uncovered “significant and undeniable evidence of FRAUD!”
The Florida-based consulting firm began presenting its report to the state Legislature on Friday afternoon. Senate President Karen Fann, one of many GOP lawmakers backing the recount, described the efforts as an attempt to identify and correct problems with the county’s election process.
“This has never been about overturning the election,” Fann said as she opened Friday’s hearing. “This has never been about decertifying. This has never been about anything other than election integrity.
“Our No. 1 goal is to make sure that we have election integrity so when you go to the polls you know your vote was counted and was counted accurately,” she said.
The Cyber Ninjas presentation began with Dr. Shiva Ayyadurai, a controversial scientist who claims to have invented email, outlining the recount process and listing a series of supposed flaws with the 2020 elections.
The draft report that began circulating Thursday night suggests that the final Maricopa County tally could not be relied upon and includes multiple recommendations, which officials and experts said show the company’s lack of understanding about Arizona’s elections.
One suggestion, for instance, was for voting machines to have paper ballot backups. All ballots in the state are already paper. Another suggestion was for all voting machines to be disconnected from the internet — even though no election equipment in Arizona is ever connected to the internet.
“Cyber Ninjas has no expertise in election audits, so it’s no surprise that the methodology of their report makes it impossible to validate their findings,” said Matthew Weil, of the Bipartisan Policy Center.
“Despite finding almost no change in the overall vote totals from 2020, they have succeeded in degrading faith in the results of a free and fair election and delaying discussions of real reforms to improve the voting experience,” Weil said in a statement Friday.
The recount was led by Cyber Ninjas CEO Doug Logan, who has supported the “stop the steal” conspiracy. He once wrote on Twitter that Dominion Voting Systems robbed Trump of 200,000 votes, one of many lies promoted by the former president’s loyalists.
“They are trying to scare people into doubting the system is actually working,” said Adrian Fontes, a Democrat heading the county’s election office in last year’s election.
“That is their motive. They want to destroy public confidence in our systems,” he said. .
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Current county officials described the report as “littered with errors & faulty conclusions.” Sellers said he expects those behind the false voter fraud allegations to continue attacking his board and accusing it of not cooperating with the so-called audit.
“How could we cooperate with an inquiry that was led by people who have no idea how to run any election, let alone in the second largest voting district in the United States?” Sellers said.
“I hope those holding on to their anger for the past 10 months will see the truth and put their energy into supporting the democratic process instead of trying to tear it down,” he said.
With News Wire Services
