Arizona Senate President Says Auditors, Maricopa County Have Different Ballot Totals; State To Purchase New Counting Machines

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State Senate President Karen Fann speaking with attendees at the 2019 Legislative Forecast Luncheon hosted by the Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry at the Arizona Biltmore in Phoenix, Arizona. Photo credit: Gage Skidmore.
State Senate President Karen Fann speaking with attendees at the 2019 Legislative Forecast Luncheon hosted by the Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry at the Arizona Biltmore in Phoenix, Arizona. Photo credit: Gage Skidmore.

PHOENIX, AZ – Arizona Senate President Karen Fann announced on Tuesday that a discrepancy allegedly exists between the number of ballots counted by auditor Cyber Ninjas and the number of ballots that Maricopa County reported were cast in the November 2020 presidential election.

A canvass report released by Maricopa County stated that 2,089,563 ballots were cast in November; however, Fann was quoted as saying in an interview that she does not currently know the size of the discrepancy when it comes to the county’s figures and those claimed by the auditor.

“They haven’t released a number yet,” she said. “However, we do know that those numbers do not match with Maricopa County at this point.”

Fann also noted that the mis-matched numbers have driven the state Legislature to purchase new counting machines to handle yet another recount of the ballots.

Arizona was won by President Joe Biden over former President Donald Trump by a margin of over 10,000 votes, which amounts to 2 percentage points; the main deciding factor in the state were the number of votes Biden received in Maricopa County – the state’s largest country – which amounted to approximately 45,000 more than Trump.

Since losing the election, Trump has repeatedly pushed unproven claims that the election was “rigged” and “stolen” due to widespread voter fraud; election officials in Maricopa County have denied that there were any issues relating to fraud in the county’s 2020 election, and have previously conducted two election machine audits of their own – as well as a recount of a sample of ballots – and stated that they had encountered no discrepancies or irregularities.

The auditor teams have noted that a report on their findings will be made available possibly at some point in August.

Jack Sellers, the GOP chairman of Maricopa County’s Board of Supervisors, complained about Fann’s choice of Florida-based Cyber Ninjas – which had never conducted an election audit before – to head up the recount, stating that he was not surprised that the “woefully underqualified” team had come up with different numbers than his team of “experienced professionals.”

Fann, however, noted that the audit was made up of the combined efforts of several companies who possess election auditing experience.

“I’m confident because it’s not just [Cyber Ninjas],” she said. “Everybody keeps just counting on them when actually they are working with a number of other contractors that have experience in audits and in their expertise in their own fields. This is a joint effort.”

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