2021 Maricopa County presidential ballot audit
The 2021 Maricopa County presidential ballot audit, commonly referred to as the Arizona audit, was an examination of ballots cast in Maricopa County during the 2020 United States presidential election in Arizona initiated by Republicans in the Arizona State Senate and executed by private firms. Begun in April 2021, the audit stirred controversy due to extensive previous efforts by former president Donald Trump and his allies to overturn the election, and due to assertions of rule violations and irregularities in the conduct of the recount, leading to claims that the audit was essentially a disinformation campaign. In June 2021, Maggie Haberman of The New York Times and Charles Cooke of National Review reported that Trump had told associates that based on the results of the audit, he would be reinstated as president in August 2021.
From the beginning of the audit, several concerns surfaced, including how the audit was being conducted, its legality, the conduct of auditors, and security issues at the site. The audit spawned interest in pursuing similar efforts in other states, causing the United States Department of Justice to warn Republican legislatures of potential violations of federal law. Conspiracy theory issues also arose as many commentators across the political spectrum characterized the effort as a sham or "fraudit" that was an element of the false claim that the presidential election had been stolen from Trump.
The auditors released a report in September 2021, finding no proof of fraud and that their ballot recount increased Biden's margin of victory by 360 votes.
Background
After the 2020 presidential election was called for Biden, Trump and his allies made many allegations of election fraud that were dismissed by numerous state and federal judges, election officials, governors, and government agencies as completely baseless. Multiple congressional Republicans, as well as governors and other elected officials, refused to acknowledge Biden's victory. The Trump campaign and its allies filed at least 63 lawsuits, including to the Supreme Court, all of which were rejected. Trump pressured Republican officials in key states to block the certification of votes. Trump also pressured the Justice Department to challenge the election results. The Justice Department and Department of Homeland Security found no evidence of significant election fraud. Trump's failed efforts preceded the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.Trump was only the second Republican presidential nominee to lose Arizona since 1948, losing the state by 10,400 votes. This was due almost entirely to Biden carrying Maricopa County, by far the state's largest county by 45,000 votes, the first time a Republican had lost the county in 72 years. After the Associated Press and Fox News declared Biden the winner in Arizona as ballot counting continued, Trump and Arizona Republican Party chair Kelli Ward sought to intervene, with Ward sending a text message to a Republican election official to say she had spoken with Trump and "We need you to stop the counting." She also asked the official to contact Trump attorney Sidney Powell, adding, "I know you don't want to be remembered as the guy who led the charge to certify a fraudulent election."
In Maricopa County, no discrepancies had been found in either a hand count audit on November 4, 2020, nor in an additional physical hand recount of 47,000 ballots conducted from November 7 through November 9, 2020. On February 23, 2021, Maricopa County announced that forensic audits of their vote tabulation equipment by two independent auditors accredited by the federal Election Assistance Commission had found no irregularities. At the State Senate Judiciary Committee's hearing on December 14, 2020, the Republican Chairman of Maricopa County's Board of Supervisors testified with the County's Elections Director and state officials from the Attorney General's Election Integrity Unit. They all testified there was no evidence that Joe Biden's win was achieved by fraud, manipulation or tampering. The County's Elections Director further noted that the vote-counting machines aced every test.
On March 31, 2021, the Arizona Senate Republican caucus, led by Senate President Karen Fann, hired four firms to examine the ballots in Maricopa County in the races for President and for the United States Senate, with Florida-based company Cyber Ninjas being the lead firm. Cyber Ninjas' owner, Doug Logan, is a Trump supporter and a proponent of Trump's claims of voter fraud. The process involved an audit to search for evidence of fraud, and a hand recount of the 2.1 million ballots cast in Maricopa County. The hand recount was managed by Wake Technology Services, which reportedly had been hired for a previous audit in a rural Pennsylvania county by Trump attorney Sidney Powell, who has promoted numerous conspiracy theories about the election. The firm works primarily in the healthcare sector with little to no experience with elections.
The Arizona Republicans provided $150,000 of funding from the State Senate operating budget, while nearly $5.7 million was provided by five groups spearheaded by Trump supporters seeking to delegitimize the 2020 election results, including lawyer Sidney Powell, and the following other persons. Patrick Byrne, the former CEO of Overstock.com and promoter of 2020 election conspiracy theories, donated one million dollars to the effort and created a website to raise further funds, which was promoted by former Trump national security advisor Michael Flynn. The fundraising was conducted through a 501 organization, a tax code provision intended primarily for the promotion of social welfare. One America News Network personalities also created a dark money organization to raise funds, while providing extensive coverage of the audit that drew praise from Trump. Senator Wendy Rogers, who supported the claims that Trump had won the election in Arizona as well as nationally, extensively promoted the audit on social media.
Conduct and concerns
former House Elections Committee chair who had a long history in Arizona platforming claims of rigged voting machines dating back over a decade to 2010 when she led the Suprise Arizona Tea Party meeting, publicly pushed for a forensic audit on her social media beginning in 2017 and Townsend played a substantial role in spreading conspiracies surrounding Sharpies and a conspiracy that counterfeit ballots were flown in on planes which Townsend promoted widely on her various social media in late 2020 leading to the audit.Townsend led a Stop the Steal rally promoting Sidney Powell outside the Arizona Capitol on November 14, 2020, and was a named witness in Powell's legal filings which a judge cited as being filled with unfounded claims. In 2020, before and even following the audit, Townsend continued promoting and espousing various conspiracy theories that Townsend spread widely before being named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the criminal case surrounding the alternate electors brought by Attorney General Kris Mayes in 2023.
The audit began on April 22, 2021, and was expected to last 60 days. That day, Arizona Senate Democrats filed a lawsuit to stop the audit. The next day Judge Christopher Coury agreed to suspend the audit for three days until the contractors presented documentation on how they would conduct the audit. The suspension was conditioned on the Arizona Senate Democrats posting a $1 million bond to cover the cost that the delay could cost the Arizona State Senate Republicans. But because the Arizona State Senate Democrats refused to post the bond, the suspension did not go into effect. By May 5, Arizona Senate Democrats reached a settlement with the Arizona Senate Republicans to allow independent elections experts to observe the audit. The agreement authorized Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs to file suit against Cyber Ninjas for breach of contract if the company did not live up to the agreement.
Former Arizona Secretary of State Ken Bennett, a Republican, had been designated as the State Senate's liaison to the audit. On May 5, 2021, Hobbs sent a letter to Bennett, detailing additional concerns with the way the audit was being conducted. Her letter cited the audit's disclosed procedures and the reports of the observers sent from the Secretary of State's office. A response from the audit's official Twitter account asserted that Hobbs's allegations were "baseless claimes ."
Also on May 5, the United States Department of Justice sent Karen Fann, president of the Arizona State Senate, a letter expressing concerns that the audit might violate federal laws. One concern was that the law requires election officials to maintain custody of all voting records for up to 22 months. Another concern was that the statement of work for Cyber Ninjas authorized Cyber Ninjas to knock on voters' doors to ask them if they had voted in the 2020 elections, which might amount to voter intimidation and constitute a violation of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. After the Department of Justice threatened to sue over this plan, Cyber Ninjas agreed not to do it.
The Arizona Republic reported in May that because Arizona Senate Republicans had given private companies and individuals unfettered and unmonitored access to voting machines, the county might need to expend significant funds and time to ensure the equipment would meet federal, state and local requirements for certifying and protecting election equipment. Hobbs, the Secretary of State, later informed the Board of Supervisors that election technology and security experts, including at the federal Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, unanimously advised her that the machines should not be reused in future elections because no methods exist to adequately secure them. The auditors also requested the county provide network routers, though election security experts said this presented a security threat and there was no evident reason the auditors needed them. Bennett said auditors needed the routers to see if the election management system was connected to the internet during the election, though a county official said the auditors already had other means to perform that check. Independent forensic audits before and after the election found the system was not connected to the Internet, and county officials said it never had been. Sellers said it might cost as much as $6 million if the county had to replace the routers because their integrity could no be longer assured after they were given to the auditors. The County Board of Supervisors voted on July 14 to spend $2.8 million to replace voting equipment that the auditors had accessed.