Company in Charge of Arizona Election Audit Accuses Court of Releasing Security Plan to Public
The Florida-based firm that’s overseeing the 2020 election audit in Arizona’s largest county on Friday accused a court of releasing its security plan to the public despite knowing it was meant to be shielded from public view.
Cyber Ninjas submitted a slew of documents to the Maricopa County Superior Court in response to a recent ruling by Judge Daniel Martin, who rejected an attempt to file the documents under seal because of their sensitive nature and ordered them filed by 12 p.m. on Thursday.
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.
Cyber Ninjas releases its election audit policies after court order
A volunteer observer (right, dressed in orange) watches as Maricopa County ballots from the 2020 general election are examined and recounted by contractors hired by the Arizona senate at the Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Phoenix, Ariz. on April 27, 2021. Photo by Rob Schumacher | Arizona Republic/pool
Following a judge’s ruling that the Arizona Senate’s election audit team can’t keep its policies and procedures secret, lead audit contractor Cyber Ninjas submitted nearly two hundreds pages to the court detailing its practices.
The collection of policies and procedures covers guidelines for hand counting ballots, handling digital evidence, documenting chain-of-custody for ballots, rules of conduct for observers and other matters from Cyber Ninjas, as well as the subcontractors it’s working with. It also includes manifests for ballots and tabulation machines provided by Maricopa County election officials.
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.