Franklin, Andrews, Kramer & Edelstein

[scion]

Draft report of GOP-backed ballot review in Arizona confirms Biden’s win

By Rosalind S. Helderman
Today at 12:18 a.m. EDT
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/arizona-ballot-review-draft-report/2021/09/24/7c19ac08-1562-11ec-b976-f4a43b740aeb_story.html

A Republican-commissioned review of nearly 2.1 million ballots cast last year in Arizona confirmed the accuracy of the official results and President Biden’s win in Maricopa County, according to a draft report prepared by private contractors who conducted the recount.

The draft was obtained by The Washington Post late Thursday night in advance of a planned public release of a final version on Friday.

The ultimate findings will cap a costly and drawn-out recount launched by the GOP-led Arizona Senate that had been championed by former president Donald Trump and kept alive false claims that fraud tainted the election in the state’s most populous county. The process was pilloried by election experts who warned that the methods used by the firm hired to run the review were sloppy and biased.

After nearly six months and almost $6 million — most of it given by groups that cast doubt on the election results — the draft report shows that the review concluded that 45,469 more ballots were cast for Biden in Maricopa County than for Trump, widening Biden’s margin by 360 more votes than certified results.

The draft report found the count to have “no substantial differences” from the county’s certified tallies.

If included in the final report, that finding would puncture unsubstantiated claims made by Trump and his allies that vote tabulating machines had miscounted paper ballots or been hacked to flip thousands of Trump votes to Biden.

The draft report sought to undercut that conclusion by suggesting that some ballots could have been improperly accepted and counted by the county. But the document includes key notes of caution, saying only that further investigation is warranted.

The report could still go through additional revisions before its public release, scheduled for Friday afternoon. The draft was provided to The Post by the Arizona secretary of state’s office, which had obtained a copy.

Randy Pullen, a spokesman for the ballot review, told an NPR affiliate in Phoenix that the draft version was “close” to the final report. He added, “Was there massive fraud or anything? It doesn’t look like it.”

Later, in a text message to The Post, he cautioned there will be “updates in the final report.”

Biden’s win in Maricopa County, home to Phoenix, helped him earn a narrow victory in Arizona and become the first Democrat to win the state since 1996. The state’s results were upheld by state and federal courts.

The state Senate’s ballot review began in April over the objections of the Republican-led county leadership. Lawmakers used a subpoena to obtain Maricopa County’s ballots and tabulating machines, which were handed over to private contractors for review.

State Senate President Karen Fann (R), who has led the effort, has said publicly that the goal is not to revisit Biden’s win but instead to look for ways to improve the state’s election laws.

But Trump has repeatedly said he believes the investigation will vindicate his allegations about the election and show he was in fact the victor.

On Thursday night, apparently unaware of the findings of the draft report, the former president said in a statement, “Everybody will be watching Arizona tomorrow to see what the highly respected auditors and Arizona State Senate found out regarding the so-called Election!”

The Florida-based firm that led the review, Cyber Ninjas, had never before been involved in administering an election or recount, and its chief executive, Doug Logan, publicly embraced Trump’s false claims of fraud before getting the job.

After his firm was selected to conduct the review, Logan did not deny his potential bias but said that it is “the most skeptical person” who makes the best auditor, “not the person who thinks it is impossible to find anything.”

Election experts criticized the process as opaque, insecure and frequently changing, and said the recount followed few best practices established over decades for conducting unbiased and accurate election audits.

In May, all of Maricopa’s seven elected officials — including five Republicans — joined to demand the Senate put an end to the review, calling it a “con” and a “sham.”

“Our democracy is imperiled,” they wrote in a letter to Fann.

The Justice Department also warned in the spring that the recount risked violating federal law, which requires that ballots be securely maintained for 22 months following a federal election.

After the leak of the draft report late Thursday, Maricopa County Board of Supervisors Chairman Jack Sellers (R) said in a statement that the findings mean “the tabulation equipment counted the ballots as they were designed to do, and the results reflect the will of the voters. That should be the end of the story. Everything else is just noise.”

He added: “Board members told the truth in the face of angry phone calls and emails fueled by a coordinated campaign to shake Americans’ faith in the power of their vote. Will they accept the truth now?”

A spokesman for Fann did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Trump allies tried to play down the conclusion in the draft report. GOP state Sen. Wendy Rogers wrote in a post on Twitter that she had just spoken to Logan by phone, who told her that the early version of the report that leaked was “simply a draft and is only a partial report.”

“Tomorrow’s hearing will render findings of great consequence,” wrote Rogers, who has been calling for Biden’s win to be decertified. “Then he said ‘God is in control’. Please pray for our audit team tomorrow as they present their findings.”

Election experts said the Arizona experience should serve as a warning sign to other Republican legislators who have in recent weeks responded to pressure from Trump and agreed to embark on their own reviews of the 2020 election, including in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Texas.

“Every time Trump and his supporters have been given a forum to make their case, they have swung and missed,” said Ben Ginsberg, a Republican election lawyer who has been critical of Trump’s false claims of fraud. He spoke to reporters in a call organized by the Center for Election Innovation & Research Thursday before the draft leaked.

“If Trump and his supporters can’t prove it here — with the process they’ve designed — then they can’t prove it anywhere,” Ginsberg said.


By Rosalind Helderman
Rosalind Helderman is a political enterprise and investigations reporter for The Washington Post. She joined The Post in 2001. Twitter
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/arizona-ballot-review-draft-report/2021/09/24/7c19ac08-1562-11ec-b976-f4a43b740aeb_story.html