Republican review of Maricopa County votes in Nov 2020 election shows it wasn't stolen.

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The much criticized review showed much the same results as in November, with 99 more Biden votes and 261 fewer Trump ones.
After months of delays and blistering criticism, a review of the 2020 election in Arizona’s largest county, ordered up and financed by Republicans, has failed to produce any evidence that former President Donald J. Trump was cheated of victory, according to a draft version of the report.

In fact, the draft report from the company Cyber Ninjas found just the opposite: It tallied 99 additional votes for President Biden and 261 fewer votes for Mr. Trump in Maricopa County, the fast-growing region that includes Phoenix.

The full review is set to be released on Friday, but a draft version circulating through Arizona political circles was obtained by The New York Times from a Republican and a Democrat.

Late on Thursday night, the Twitter account for Maricopa County, whose Republican leaders have derided the review, got a jump on the official release by tweeting out its conclusions.

“The county’s canvass of the 2020 General Election was accurate and the candidates certified as the winners did, in fact, win,” the county said on Twitter. It then criticized the review as “littered with errors and faulty conclusions.”


Mr. Biden won Arizona by roughly 10,500 votes, making Maricopa County crucial to his win. Under intense pressure from Trump loyalists, the Republican majority in the State Senate had ordered an autopsy of the county’s votes for president.

The draft report implicitly acknowledged Mr. Biden’s victory, noting that there were “no substantial differences” between its tally of votes and the official count by Maricopa County election officials. But it also claimed that other factors — most if not all contested by reputable election experts — left the results “very close to the margin of error for the election.”

Among other alleged discrepancies, the report claimed that some ballots were cast by people who had moved before the election, that election-related computer files were missing and that some computer images of ballots were missing. One expert and critic of the review who had seen a draft report of the findings called those red herrings.

“The whole report just reflects on the Ninjas’ lack of understanding of Arizona election law and election administration procedures,” said Benny White, a Republican in Tucson who is an adviser on election law and procedures. “And instead of sorting them out with election officials, they made claims that election officials don’t do things properly.”
It was not possible to determine whether the conclusions in the final version of the report being released on Friday would differ from those in the draft. Mr. White said he had been told that some Republican Senate officials were unhappy with its findings.

But if those findings stand, they would amount to a devastating disappointment for pro-Trump Republicans nationwide who have looked to the Arizona review to vindicate their belief that the presidency was stolen from him. For many loyalists, the investigation has been seen as the first in a string of state inquiries that would, domino-like, topple claims that Mr. Biden was legitimately in the White House.

State Senator Wendy Rogers, a Republican who is among Arizona’s most ardent advocates of the stolen-election canard, underscored that faith in a single sentence posted Thursday on Twitter: “Tomorrow we make history.”

Instead, election experts said, an inquiry run by Trump partisans that was granted unrestricted access to 2.1 million ballots and election equipment failed to make even a basic case that the November vote was badly flawed, much less rigged.

Critics said that would raise the bar for Republican politicians in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania who, under pressure from Mr. Trump and his supporters, have mounted their own Arizona-style investigations.

“If Trump and his supporters can’t prove it here, with a process they designed, they can’t prove it anywhere,” David Becker, the executive director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research, said at a briefing on Thursday.

In fact, the Republican inquiry may not be completely over. Senate investigators still want to examine Maricopa County computer servers for evidence of tampering, even though county officials insist they have had no connection to election machinery.

In general, however, the report was a cap-gun ending to an inquiry whose backers hinted would turn up a cannonade of fraud.

Republicans in the State Senate pushed for the inquiry in December, spurred in part by a daylong meeting with Mr. Trump’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani.

The Republican president of the State Senate, Karen Fann, insisted that the review was a nonpartisan effort to reassure voters that the election had been well run, but faith in that pledge ebbed after she chose Cyber Ninjas, a firm with no prior experience in elections, to oversee the inquiry.
Some elections officials said the draft review offered an unlikely vindication of what they have been insisting for months: that Arizona ran a transparent, credible election in November.

“The numbers match up,” said Adrian Fontes, who as county recorder oversaw the election in Maricopa County and is now a Democratic candidate for secretary of state.

Mr. Fontes said some critiques and concerns raised in the report, such as the potential for duplicate votes, reflected a lack of knowledge about how the county conducts elections. Mr. Fontes said his office had put systems into place that reconciled in real time voter lists with records of who has voted.

“They don’t understand the system,” Mr. Fontes said. “The report reveals to me their purposeful ignorance. They decided to go forward with all of this never familiarizing themselves with how the system works.”

While the top-line results are far from what many conservatives had hoped for, Republicans in the Arizona Legislature could in the next session seize on a host of recommendations in the report — based on the same faulty data and methodology — as both justification and a road map to enact more laws that restrict voting.
Their analysis of the choices on each ballot cast showed that Mr. Trump lost Arizona because 74,822 Republicans, including 59,800 in Maricopa County, were unhappy enough with the former president’s performance in office that they decided not to vote for him. Roughly two-thirds of those voters cast ballots for Mr. Biden, the analysis stated, and the remaining third either voted for another candidate, such as the Libertarian Party nominee, or did not vote for president.

That analysis further showed that the record of ballots cast matched perfectly with the record of people who voted, down to individual precincts. The records also matched perfectly when broken down by the method of voting, whether on Election Day, during the early voting period or by mail.

“The charts and tables demonstrate that Joe Biden was never behind Donald Trump during the entire election period in Maricopa County,” the analysis stated. More Republican voters turned out on Election Day than did Democrats — a common pattern in elections — but while increased turnout of Trump supporters cut into Mr. Biden’s lead, “there were not enough of them to win,” the analysis concluded.

The Republican who is now Maricopa County’s chief election officer, Stephen Richer, published a 38-page broadside last month in which he rebutted fraud claims and excoriated Republican politicians who have remained silent in the face of efforts to undermine the November results.

“More than any moral code, philosophical agenda, interest group, or even team red vs. team blue, many politicians will simply do whatever it takes to stay in office,” he wrote. “Right now, a lot of Republican politicians have their fingers in the wind and think that conforming to Stop the Steal, or at least staying quiet about it, is necessary for re-election in their ruby red districts or a statewide Republican primary. So that’s what they’ll do.”

“It’s disgusting,” he added.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/24/us/a ... biden.html
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Re: Republican review of Maricopa County votes in Nov 2020 election shows it wasn't stolen.

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Their analysis of the choices on each ballot cast showed that Mr. Trump lost Arizona because 74,822 Republicans, including 59,800 in Maricopa County, were unhappy enough with the former president’s performance in office that they decided not to vote for him.
There's the winning formula: "Why did he lose?"

"Because he was terrible and got fewer votes."

CDFingers
Crazy cat peekin' through a lace bandana
like a one-eyed Cheshire, like a diamond-eyed Jack

Re: Republican review of Maricopa County votes in Nov 2020 election shows it wasn't stolen.

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CDFingers wrote: Fri Sep 24, 2021 7:39 am
Their analysis of the choices on each ballot cast showed that Mr. Trump lost Arizona because 74,822 Republicans, including 59,800 in Maricopa County, were unhappy enough with the former president’s performance in office that they decided not to vote for him.
There's the winning formula: "Why did he lose?"

"Because he was terrible and got fewer votes."

CDFingers

Yes and that number of votes in Maricopa County which holds 60% of the votes in AZ was enough to help swing the election. AZ is conservative and Republican, but not all Trumpers. Karen Fann and Kelli Ward aren't happy campers.
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Re: Republican review of Maricopa County votes in Nov 2020 election shows it wasn't stolen.

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The leader of Arizona's Republican party has called for a new "full signature audit" after the results of a controversial GOP-backed audit of the 2020 president election confirmed that President Joe Biden won the state.

Results of the audit, which was led by a group called "Cyber Ninjas," were released on Friday and found that Biden defeated former President Donald Trump by slightly more votes than the official count. Although the review was the third audit of Arizona results, none of which cast any reasonable doubt on Biden's win, Arizona GOP Chair Dr. Kelli Ward took to Twitter to call for another audit while insisting that Friday's results indicated "possible malfeasance."

"Amazing report from Dr. Shiva," Ward tweeted. "Many questions for Maricopa County as well as exposure of incompetence & possible malfeasance. A FULL SIGNATURE AUDIT IS ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY! #AmericasAudit"

The "Dr. Shiva" that Ward is referring to is Shiva Ayyadurai, an election fraud and COVID-19 conspiracy theorist that the Republican-controlled state Senate hired as an "expert" for the audit. Ayyadurai also claims that he invented email in the late 1970s, although the service was already active as part of the U.S. government's ARPANET in the early 1970s.

Ayyadurai argued that the audit showed thousands of mail-in ballot envelopes were missing legible signatures and that thousands of duplicate ballots could have been included in the results. Maricopa County officials quickly dismissed the claim in a tweet, explaining that "only one ballot is counted" and voters are contacted to "cure" ballots where signatures or envelopes have been questioned.

The county also debunked several findings of the audit that some have falsely claimed are evidence of fraud. One finding that Cyber Ninjas said was "critical" indicated that over 23,000 ballots were voted from a voter's previous address.

County officials said that the claim did not indicate anything illegal and noted that the voters cited, representing about 1 percent of those who cast ballots, may have simply moved at around the time of the election.

"Cyber Ninjas still don't understand this is legal under federal election law," the county tweeted. "To label it a 'critical' concern is either intentionally misleading or staggeringly ignorant. AZ senators should know this too."

Regardless of the audit confirming Biden's win and revealing no evidence to validate claims of massive fraud, some have made assertions to the contrary. Trump himself released a statement maintaining that "Massive fraud was found in the Arizona Forensic Audit" and the "numbers are Election Changing!"

Although Trump and his staunchest allies have attempted to spin the audit results as a positive, other Republicans admitted that the outcome was anything but favorable for the former president and his repeated evidence-free claims that massive fraud cost him the election.

"This was Donald Trump's best chance to prove his cases of elections being rigged and fraudulent and they failed," Republican election lawyer Ben Ginsberg said during a call with members of the media, according to Reuters. "It's a huge defeat for Donald Trump."

Republican Arizona state Sen. Paul Boyer, who initially supported the audit but later concluded that it made the GOP "look like idiots," told The Hill that the audit "wasted nearly $6 million to tell us what we already knew, meanwhile exacerbating an already unhealthy political environment."

Newsweek reached out to the Arizona Republican Party for comment.
https://www.newsweek.com/arizona-gop-ch ... in-1632669
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Re: Republican review of Maricopa County votes in Nov 2020 election shows it wasn't stolen.

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Was this story hugely under-reported in far-right media? After the California recall results came in, Newsmax, et al, couldn't even bring themselves to report the vote clearly, and spent all night talking as if Larry Elder was still campaigning or something. Suddenly, they'll forget Cyber Ninjas ever existed, too.
IMR4227: Zero to 900 in 0.001 seconds

I'm only killing paper and my self-esteem.

Image
Image

Re: Republican review of Maricopa County votes in Nov 2020 election shows it wasn't stolen.

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tonguengroover wrote: Sat Sep 25, 2021 9:20 am These people are bat shit crazy. Maybe it's a side effect of ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine.
They were already that way. It was the Orange Turd that brought out the best in them.
As has been posted before. They totally fit Einstein's definition of insanity. Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.-Huxley
"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." ~ Louis Brandeis,

Re: Republican review of Maricopa County votes in Nov 2020 election shows it wasn't stolen.

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TrueTexan wrote: Sat Sep 25, 2021 10:33 am
tonguengroover wrote: Sat Sep 25, 2021 9:20 am These people are bat shit crazy. Maybe it's a side effect of ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine.
They were already that way. It was the Orange Turd that brought out the best in them.
As has been posted before. They totally fit Einstein's definition of insanity. Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
Not really.

They expect to create doubt in the minds of the cult followers and they achieve exactly that. Note that the actual result from Arizona is really irrelevant and the Trump repeatedly said that extreme amounts of questionable votes were found.

If you can't believe Il Donaldo who can you believe?
To be vintage it must be older than me!
The next gun I buy will be the next to last gun I ever buy. PROMISE!
jim

Re: Republican review of Maricopa County votes in Nov 2020 election shows it wasn't stolen.

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Here we go again, INSANITY Rinse and repeat.
Arizona Republican demands a new audit after the Cyber Ninjas audit crashed and burned

The Republican-backed "audit" of ballots in Maricopa County that Trump supporters were hoping to confirm widespread election fraud in Arizona has ended — and not only did it fail to find any substantial fraud, it actually slightly revised down the number of Trump ballots and up the number of Biden ballots.

But Arizona GOP chairwoman Kelli Ward had a different conclusion. On Friday, she called for a do-over of the whole thing.

"Dr. Shiva" is a reference to Shiva Ayyadurai, an election conspiracist and anti-vaccine truther who has claimed he was the inventor of email and that Dr. Anthony Fauci is a "Deep State" agent. He was hired by the Arizona State Senate to take part in the audit.

The audit swiftly grew controversial due to giving selective access to right-wing news organizations and for pursuing conspiracy theories, including hunting for bamboo fibers in ballots to prove they were forgeries from Asia. Even some Trump supporters, like right-wing talk radio host Mike Broomhead, ultimately turned on the effort.
https://www.rawstory.com/kelli-ward-audit/

The Zombie Election Recount, It will never die and it has eaten the Grumpy Old People's Brains.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.-Huxley
"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." ~ Louis Brandeis,

Re: Republican review of Maricopa County votes in Nov 2020 election shows it wasn't stolen.

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Ballots and other election materials were contaminated, they'd be meaningless in a "Full Audit". Kelli Ward, Karen Fann and the other wackos are still looking to raise more money so keep "Stop the Steal" going.
“The leaked report conclusively shows there were enough fraudulent votes, mystery votes, and fake votes to change the outcome of the election 4 or 5 times over,” Mr. Trump said in a statement early Friday evening, one of seven he had issued about Arizona since late Thursday. “There is fraud and cheating in Arizona and it must be criminally investigated!”
“Now that the audit of Maricopa is wrapping up, we need to Audit Pima County [Tucson] — the 2nd largest county in AZ,” Mark Finchem, a Republican candidate for secretary of state in Arizona who supported the effort in Maricopa, wrote on Twitter. “There are 35k votes in question from multiple sources & I want answers.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/24/us/p ... lysis.html
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Re: Republican review of Maricopa County votes in Nov 2020 election shows it wasn't stolen.

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“The leaked report conclusively shows there were enough fraudulent votes, mystery votes, and fake votes to change the outcome of the election 4 or 5 times over,” Mr. Trump said in a statement early Friday evening, one of seven he had issued about Arizona since late Thursday. “There is fraud and cheating in Arizona and it must be criminally investigated!”
See, there is conclusive evidence!

The US is truly split into two demographics; those who acknowledge reality and those like Trump and all of Trump's followers who simply deny reality.
To be vintage it must be older than me!
The next gun I buy will be the next to last gun I ever buy. PROMISE!
jim

Re: Republican review of Maricopa County votes in Nov 2020 election shows it wasn't stolen.

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sig230 wrote: Sat Sep 25, 2021 11:21 am
“The leaked report conclusively shows there were enough fraudulent votes, mystery votes, and fake votes to change the outcome of the election 4 or 5 times over,” Mr. Trump said in a statement early Friday evening, one of seven he had issued about Arizona since late Thursday. “There is fraud and cheating in Arizona and it must be criminally investigated!”
See, there is conclusive evidence!

The US is truly split into two demographics; those who acknowledge reality and those like Trump and all of Trump's followers who simply deny reality.
Just remember the Grumpy Old Party has been playing by these rules of Reality ever since G.W.Bush was president and Karl Rove uttered this statement.
People like you are still living in what we call the reality-based community. You believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality. That's not the way the world really works anymore. We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you are studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors, and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.
https://www.newsweek.com/national-sleep ... ove-662307

It has become worse since the Orange Turd ran for office with a steep increase after being elected.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.-Huxley
"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." ~ Louis Brandeis,

Re: Republican review of Maricopa County votes in Nov 2020 election shows it wasn't stolen.

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Former President Donald Trump falsely claimed during a rally in Georgia on Saturday night that the results of the Arizona election "forensic audit" concluded that President Joe Biden lost in Maricopa County, despite the report stating that Biden won with 1,040,873 votes—99 more votes than shown in the certified ballots.

"We won at the Arizona forensic audit yesterday at a level that you wouldn't believe," Trump told the crowd in Perry, Georgia. "They had headlines that Biden wins in Arizona, when they know it's not true. He didn't win in Arizona. He lost in Arizona based on the forensic audit."

The review of results by Trump's GOP allies was in line with the 2020 presidential election results and three previous audits, affirming Biden's win in Arizona's most populous county.

"Truth is truth, numbers are numbers," said Arizona Senate President Karen Fann, the Republican who pushed for the review of more than two million ballots, adding that the "numbers were very close, within a few hundred."

Still, Trump is continuing his campaign of pressuring states to investigate his baseless voter fraud claims. He slammed Georgia Governor Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger during the rally for refusing his requests to advance a review of the election results.

"I'm telling you, I think there's something wrong with them ... your RINO Governor Brian Kemp has been a disaster on election integrity," Trump said, adding that Democrat Stacey Abrams "might be better than having your existing governor."

After mounting pressure from Trump, Texas became the latest state to launch an effort to review the election results, joining Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Texas election officials said Thursday they had started auditing the presidential election results in four counties.
https://www.newsweek.com/trump-falsely- ... ve-1632756
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Re: Republican review of Maricopa County votes in Nov 2020 election shows it wasn't stolen.

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The audience at the latest Trump rally know that he speaks the truth.

They are both TRUE BELIEVERS and FELLOW TRAVELERS.

The evidence so far shows that in state after state such people can make sure that government does not work even when they are a small minority of the population.

Billy was like that. It didn't matter what game we all wanted to play, Billy would find a way to ruin it.

And if we didn't let Billy play his parents called our parents and our parents said we had to think kindly of poor Billy because everyone was against him and we always cheated him and never let him win.
To be vintage it must be older than me!
The next gun I buy will be the next to last gun I ever buy. PROMISE!
jim

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