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Another electoral review in Arizona reconfirms Biden's victory. Experts warn of the effect of these partisan audits

2021-09-27T00:37:31.759Z


Similar initiatives are spreading across the country, in Texas, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, and experts warn that they "give oxygen to things that are not true" and in the long run erode public confidence in the elections.


By Jane C. Timm -

NBC News

Arizona Republicans on Friday defended the results of their extraordinary, partisan election review - which once again reaffirmed President Joe Biden's victory in Maricopa County - and demanded similar reviews across the country.

"We need to do more audits in every election, just to make sure everyone is following the rules," argued the Speaker of the State Senate, Republican Karen Fann, bragging about how many legislators from other states had visited the place where the ballots were reviewed. .

Fann and State Sen. Warren Petersen, also a Republican, listened for hours to testimony from third-party contractors, including Doug Logan, CEO of the main contractor, Cyber ​​Ninjas, as they cast doubt and suggested that their work had encountered irregularities, such as alleged illegal votes and Election files deleted.

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But experts and critics say the so-called findings confirm what they already knew: that

the hired contractors lacked experience and did not use industry best practices,

while misunderstanding and misinterpreting electoral fundamentals and Arizona's electoral code.

And with the proliferation of Arizona-inspired efforts sweeping across the country, experts believe public confidence in the election is being undermined.

“They are redoubling some of the things that have already been disproved.

And they keep giving oxygen to things that are false, ”lamented Tammy Patrick, a former Maricopa County election official who is now a senior adviser to the Democracy Fund, a nonpartisan foundation whose goal is to improve American elections.

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"They're taking routine election processes and trying to

make out what they don't understand as suspect,"

said Liz Howard, senior counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law.

Howard was appointed by Arizona Secretary of State Democrat Katie Hobbs to oversee the review and spent weeks in Phoenix watching Cyber ​​Ninjas staff do their jobs.

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"It is not reasonable to assume that this is not involuntary," he added.

Both Howard and Patrick said the auditors' findings - which were circulated in draft Thursday night, before being presented at a live event on Friday -

made it clear that they did not understand how basic election issues work.

For example, contractors reported that there were possibly thousands of out-of-state and county voters, as well as hundreds of dead voters who cast their ballots in November, figures they calculated by comparing voter lists with commercial data lists.

Patrick pointed out that such data was poorly researched, and that political groups that had used commercial mailing lists had sometimes ended up emailing people's pets, because someone, for example, had signed their cat up for a subscription to the Cat Fancy magazine.

Howard agreed that the business data was unreliable for this purpose, adding that there are also valid reasons for a voter to be associated with another address but remain an eligible voter in Maricopa County, like students.

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The contractors also alleged that election files had been erased, something Maricopa County tweeted it "flatly" denied, noting that they have additional records but that the state Senate had never requested them.

However, experts and critics say that the repercussions of the review are just beginning.

Arizona Republican State Senator Paul Boyer, who initially backed the review but withdrew his support in February out of concern about how it was progressing, believes it will make it more difficult to legislate on the elections.

"I think now we are going to see 100 or 200 electoral bills next year and no one is going to listen to the experts," he told NBC News, the sister network of Noticias Telemundo, on Friday.

The politician added that he has spoken with voters who have left the Republican Party or stopped voting altogether because they have no faith in the elections.

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Across the country, experts point to a trend for Arizona-style ballot reviews.

Texas launched a "forensic audit" of four counties Thursday night, just hours after former President Donald Trump requested it.

Similar reviews are underway in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.

Speaking of those legislators from other states who visited the audit, Patrick noted, "They are using it as justification and rationale to promote this type of activity in states across the country."

When asked how he would advise lawmakers to begin a ballot review in their states now, Boyer said he would urge them to do bipartisan reviews, informed by experts.

Trust the professionals.

They've been doing it for decades and they know what they're doing.

Make sure anyone you hire doesn't already have an opinion.

We cannot call this an audit.

It's a partisan investigation, ”he said of the Arizona review.

"Ironically, it is going to sow even more mistrust when the pretense, if it can be believed, is that they are trying to create more trust," he concluded.

Source: telemundo

All news articles on 2021-09-27

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