Arizona auditors complete third ballot recount and ship materials back to Maricopa County

.

Auditors working on the Arizona Senate-led Maricopa County 2020 general election review completed a third and final ballot recount late on Wednesday and prepared materials to return to county custody on Thursday.

The monthslong audit conducted at the Phoenix state fairgrounds since late April will now shift its focus to drafting a comprehensive report based on the results of the election machines and other voting material analyzed during the review. The Maricopa County Elections Department arrived with trucks at the audit site Thursday morning to retrieve the materials.

“Maricopa County is picking up the nearly 2.1 million 2020 General Election ballots and other subpoenaed items today,” the department wrote on Twitter. “We expect to take two trips and much of the day to retrieve the subpoenaed items.”

MARICOPA ELECTION AUDIT DONOR LIST RELEASED

Arizona Senate President Karen Fann, who hired the Florida-based firm Cyber Ninjas to lead the audit, said on July 13 the third recount was necessary because initial audit counts and the number certified by Maricopa County officials did not match.

The move of materials away from the state fairgrounds comes one day after Cyber Ninjas CEO Doug Logan released a statement detailing the long-awaited list of donors for the audit, as the Republican-led Senate previously disclosed it would provide $150,000 for the audit effort but did not reveal where external funding was coming from.

Logan’s statement showed a monetary tally from five conservative donation sources, including the America Project, which gave $3.25 million for the audit. The total amount raised was $5,711,514.43, Logan said, but a calculation of all the received donations amounts to $5,661,514.43, a $50,000 difference.

A spokesperson for Cyber Ninjas said the Senate has paid a third of its provision to the firm, clarifying the $50,000 difference was “inadvertently included in the total” funding list published on Wednesday, according to a statement sent to the Washington Examiner.

Fann is expected to release a comprehensive audit report by mid-August.

President Joe Biden won Arizona and its 11 electoral votes by more than 10,000 votes out of the 3.3 million across the state. His lead was due partly to his advantage in the populous Maricopa County, where the Democrat scored nearly 45,000 more votes than Trump among roughly 2.1 million ballots cast.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER

The Washington Examiner contacted Maricopa County for comment but did not immediately receive a response.

Related Content

Related Content