Auditors hide donors, look for secret watermarks on ballots
Cyber Ninjas owner Doug Logan, left, a Florida-based consultancy, talks about overseeing a 2020 election ballot audit ordered by the Republican lead Arizona Senate at the Arizona Veterans Memorial Coliseum, as a Cyber Ninjas IT technician demonstrates a ballot scan during a news conference Thursday, April 22, 2021, in Phoenix. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)
What the Senate election audit lacks in transparency, it makes up for in QAnon conspiracy theories.
From the Arizona Senate to the cybersecurity company overseeing the audit of nearly 2.1 million ballots from the November election, everyone involved has said one way or another that they want and hope to be transparent about the process, but to date, there is little evidence to support those claims.
What are the Senate s contractors doing with election equipment that they obtained from the county government? It doesn t make any sense, and I ve seen a lot of audits, said Tammy Patrick, a senior adviser of elections at Democracy Fund who previously worked for Maricopa County Elections Department and reviewed the recount procedures on Thursday.
The questions left unanswered by the documents added to those already swirling around the Republican-controlled Senate s efforts to recount two races Democrats won in Maricopa County last year president and U.S. Senate.
Counting continued at the Arizona Veterans Memorial Coliseum on Thursday for a sixth day. While everyone close to the process has refused to say who is funding the undertaking beyond the $150,000 that the Senate agreed to pay the Florida-based firm Cyber Ninjas to manage it a new private organization has sprouted up seeking $2.8 million to pay for the process.
Group running Arizona election audit releases documents it had tried to keep secret Andrew Oxford, Arizona Republic
The public has received the most detailed explanation yet of the route that every Maricopa County ballot will take through an unprecedented recount ordered by the state Senate.
The private company overseeing the recount released Thursday documents outlining policies and procedures for the audit, as ordered by a judge Wednesday, though one document remained under seal.
The 191 pages detailed a process that departs significantly from Arizona’s election procedures. But the documents leave much unclear.
What are the Senate s contractors doing with election equipment that they obtained from the county government?