PolitiFact s ruling: False
Here s why: Nearly six months after Joe Biden defeated former President Donald Trump, contractors hired by Arizona Senate Republicans are auditing results in Maricopa County, home to Phoenix and the state Capitol, where some Republicans have made allegations of widespread voter fraud.
These claims have been dismissed in court and refuted by a sampled hand count of ballots. Maricopa also hired two independent firms to conduct a forensic audit of its tabulation equipment. The audit found no abnormalities.
But a new spin on an old conspiracy theory has emerged during the recount. It builds on a debunked narrative that Trump’s administration put secret watermarks on official ballots to trick cheating Democrats. (Pants on Fire!)
May 03 | 2021
Writing for the HuffPost,, reporter Igor Bobic published a fascinating piece finding that Republicans are optimistic that President Joe Biden s generous spending policies will trigger a second wave of the Tea Party that erupted under President Barack Obama. But as of yet, no such movement has emerged, despite the strong parallels between Biden and Obama s first days in office.
So what explains the difference? Bobic picks up on several plausible reasons, but I think he leaves some out.
For many, the most plausible explanation is the fact that Obama s race inspired a bigoted backlash that Biden has avoided:
Another reason why Biden may not face as much resistance as Obama did is the fact that he s a white man in his 70s who has been in the public spotlight for decades. The Tea Party movement was fueled by race as much as economics â a trend that continued into the Trump years. The election of a Black president for the first time in U.S. history galvanized
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.