Senate mulls next step in auditing 2.1M ballots These are the 2.1 million ballots cast in November in Maricopa County, loaded onto a truck and ready for delivery to the Senate — which may not be able to handle them. PHOTO COURTESY MARICOPA COUNTY Pallets of ballots sit on trucks in Phoenix as senators figure out what to do next, three months after they declared they wanted their own audit of the presidential election. The 28 tons of paper packed in hundreds of neatly stacked boxes with nowhere to go serve as a visual representation of the Senate’s audit attempt, which has been full of setbacks and false starts since it began. Republican senators have alternately plunged ahead — drafting a resolution to arrest the Maricopa County supervisors who blocked their way and announcing they hired an auditor — and fallen back, losing a vote on their contempt resolution and denying they ever selected an auditor after public pressure.