The Arizona Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Phoenix.
A controversial review of the 2020 general election returns in Maricopa County will go on a one-week hiatus.
The long-anticipated pause was set in stone on Wednesday, when Senate President Karen Fann (R-Prescott) signed an agreement to extend the Senate’s lease at the Arizona State Fairgrounds through the end of June.
Private firms hired by Fann and Senate Republicans will move nearly 2.1 million ballots and voting equipment out of Veterans Memorial Coliseum and into the Wesley Bolin Building on the fairgrounds, making way for high school graduation ceremonies next week. The Phoenix Union High School District has the coliseum booked the entire week of May 17, an arrangement well known prior to the Senate’s agreement.
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The Arizona Senate-ordered audit of Maricopa County s general election will take a one-week hiatus at the end of the week to make way for high school graduations at Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Phoenix.
The plan is to move the ballots and equipment to another area of the Arizona State Fairgrounds on Friday and move back in May 23 to pick back up on May 24.
“We’ll stand aside and secure all the ballots and equipment here on the property and be ready to go when they’re finished,” said the state Senate s audit liaison Ken Bennett.
Jen Yee, assistant executive director at the Arizona State Fair and Exposition, confirmed the plan, but said nothing had been signed as of Monday.
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A review of the 2020 election in Maricopa County, ordered by the Republican-led Arizona Senate, is far behind schedule and won’t be finished in the time frame officials previously promised.
That puts completion of the audit and recount of nearly 2.1 million ballots cast in November in doubt.
Firms hired by Senate President Karen Fann (R-Prescott) have been conducting the review inside Veterans Memorial Coliseum at the Arizona State Fairgrounds since April 23. In late April, Fann’s liaison, former Secretary of State Ken Bennett, told reporters they’d pick up the pace after getting off to a slow start.
As of Wednesday morning, though, Bennett estimated that roughly 200,000 ballots had been recounted so far. The recount effort, led by the Florida-based cybersecurity company Cyber Ninjas, has increased its capacity by adding more tables at which groups of three workers count votes for president and U.S. Senate on ballots. The firms have struggled to fill those tables, however
Maricopa County Election Audit Could Last Longer Than Expected: Official
The audit of 2020 election ballots and machines in Arizona’s largest county could go beyond mid-May, an official said on May 3.
State Senate President Karen Fann, a Republican, booked the Arizona Veterans Memorial Coliseum through May 14 to conduct the audit, which is reviewing more than 2 million ballots cast in Maricopa County in the presidential election, along with 385 tabulators and other machines used last year.
Former Arizona Secretary of State Ken Bennett, a Republican tapped by Fann as the audit’s liaison, had expressed confidence that the process would be finished by May 14. But he told The Epoch Times on May 3 that it could run longer.