Sec State drops bombshell: Audit could force Arizona to replace voting machines given to Cyber Ninjas

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The controversial audit of the 2020 presidential election by Arizona Republicans could end up costing the state millions.

Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs sent a letter to Maricopa County saying that all of the voting machines turned over to the GOP audit may need to be replaced.

"I am writing to express my concerns about Maricopa County's election equipment that was turned over to Senate President Karen Fann and Senator Warren Petersen and their agent, Cyber Ninjas, pursuant to the January 12, 2021 subpoena, including components of the certified Dominion Democracy Suite 5.5B voting system," Hobbs wrote.

"I have grave concerns regarding the security and integrity of these machines, given the chair of custody, a critical security tenet, has been compromised and election officials do not know what was done to the machines while under Cyber Ninjas' control," she explained.

Hobbs says she consulted with experts and the Department of Homeland Security's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and "each unanimously advised that once election officials lose custody and control over voting systems and components, those devices should not be used in future elections."

Reporter Ben Giles of Arizona public radio station KJCC noted that the state of Arizona may be on the hook for replacing the machines after indemnifying Maricopa County.
https://www.rawstory.com/arizona-audit- ... -machines/

Maybe they can bill the Trump campaign or the Republican party, since Trump doesn't pay bills.
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: Sec State drops bombshell: Audit could force Arizona to replace voting machines given to Cyber Ninjas

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FBI wrote:Federal Election Offenses
Fraud by an Elections/Campaign Official or Other Individual:
Changing a ballot tally or engaging in other corrupt behavior as an elections official
https://www.fbi.gov/scams-and-safety/co ... d-security

Interesting. Arizona state law does not prohibit tampering with electronic voting systems. 33 other states do. It's a felony in GA and WI, but only a misdemeanor in PA. NV, depends. There's a map through AZ, MI and PA that could get a guy to 279 electoral votes if his rabid fans were willing to face no more than 2 years in the Keystone pen. The map is written in crayon, though.
https://www.ncsl.org/research/elections ... stems.aspx

Re: Sec State drops bombshell: Audit could force Arizona to replace voting machines given to Cyber Ninjas

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The AZ SOS is a Democrat, so Senate Republicans will say she's just being partisan. Shame the SOS didn't present that evidence to the Maricopa County Superior Court judge who approved it, still not to late to get a court ruling stating that since the machines were tampered with by non-election officials they must be destroyed.
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Re: Sec State drops bombshell: Audit could force Arizona to replace voting machines given to Cyber Ninjas

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tonguengroover wrote: Fri May 21, 2021 10:19 am They will have to go to court. The shithead governor won't do a thing.

Maybe this will make other states wary about letting this nonsense go on in their state.
Reports are some Trumpers are pushing for GA to start their own "audit" starting with Fulton County.
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Re: Sec State drops bombshell: Audit could force Arizona to replace voting machines given to Cyber Ninjas

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The election was certified by AZ, it passed the Safe Harbor date, Congress accepted the results, plus none of the court challenges were successful, so it's over. The ballots are now contaminated plus the chain of custody was lost, but this "audit" was all for show. They'll peddle the story that they found fraud and encourage other states to "audit" their ballots - it's all to raise money for the next elections.
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Re: Sec State drops bombshell: Audit could force Arizona to replace voting machines given to Cyber Ninjas

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CDFingers wrote: Sat Jun 05, 2021 10:58 am Yeah, I think that bill eventually will get forwarded to someone who will refuse to pay it.

CDFingers
Just like his security bills from his campaign. The County should have made them put up a surety bond to cover all cost of the recount including any unexpected cost such as replacing the voting machines.
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: Sec State drops bombshell: Audit could force Arizona to replace voting machines given to Cyber Ninjas

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Now we find out who is behind all of this audit mess.
Top ALEC Official Is Behind Conspiracy Theory-Fueled Arizona Ballot Audit

The public face of the preposterous Maricopa County ballot audit is Republican Arizona State Senate President Karen Fann — who also serves as the second-highest ranking board member of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the country’s pre-eminent pay-to-play corporate lobbying group.

The audit, which has now earned the nickname “The Mess in Maricopa,” is the most conspicuous ongoing attempt by Republicans to bolster the “Big Lie” conspiracy theory that Donald Trump didn’t really lose the presidential election in November.

In her role as ALEC board treasurer, Fann oversees the group’s agenda and is likely next in line to become its national chair, as ALEC does not currently have a vice chair. Unlike other ideologically conservative lobbying groups, ALEC’s business model is specifically to pursue corporate agendas at the state level.

So while American corporations are trying to distance themselves from extremist Republican challenges to democracy at the state level, Fann’s prominent and unapologetic role in the Arizona farce adds to the already ample evidence that at least some American corporations are aggressively supporting state-level actions that, as over 100 democracy scholars explained on Tuesday, “are transforming several states into political systems that no longer meet the minimum conditions for free and fair elections.”

In 2012, ALEC was forced to publicly disband its “Public Safety and Elections” task force after scores of major corporations started dropping their membership due to its pursuit of “Stand Your Ground” and Voter ID model legislation.

But in the summer of 2019, ALEC secretly launched a “Process Working Group” that is tasked with elections and redistricting. Fann is part of that group, which is chaired by fellow Arizona State Rep. Shawnna Bolick (R) as well as disgraced attorney and Trump advisor Cleta Mitchell.

As Senate president, Fann approved the initial state payment of $150,000 for the audit. The audit is now also receiving funds through a dark money vehicle run by staffers with the ultra-right-wing broadcasting company One America News (OAN), which traffics in election conspiracies.

“We are paying for some of the security and the cost of the Coliseum [where the audit is held],” Fann told CNN last week, adding that “anything over and above is being covered by others” and that she does “not know who they are.”

The private funding of the audit comes shortly after Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey (R) signed a bill in April banning the private funding of elections going forward, and “pledged to partner with the Legislature to provide elections officials with adequate resources.”

Fann Questioned Vote Count Within a Week After the Election

Six days after the election, on November 9, 2020, Fann wrote a letter to Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs (D) urging her to “make available all data and the logic and accuracy tests to independent expert evaluation.”

Fann argued that claims of voter fraud in the state “will linger indefinitely and may cause substantial damage to the credibility of our democratic processes if something isn’t done to alleviate claims that the election was conducted unfairly, if not fraudulently.”

But no evidence of voter fraud emerged in Arizona.

A number of legal challenges to the election results were filed in the state, but all were dismissed. One was filed by Arizona GOP Chairwoman Kelli Ward, a former ALEC-tied lawmaker, who has faced allegations within her own party that her election to the party’s top post in the state was fraudulent.

Ward tweeted on the day of the Capitol insurrection: “Congress is adjourned. Send the elector choice back to the legislatures.”

Ward told Newsmax she hoped the Maricopa audit would set a national precedent: “Arizona is the first domino that will fall and then other states will look into irregularities, abnormalities, mistakes and potentially outright fraud that happened in their states as well.”

To conduct the audit, Fann in March chose a fellow Stop the Steal advocate, Doug Logan, owner of an untested Florida-based company called Cyber Ninjas. This is Cyber Ninjas’ first election audit.

The Arizona Mirror reported that in December, Logan had reposted a tweet from “Ron Watkins — a conspiracy theorist and former administrator of 8chan who has promoted QAnon and is believed by some to have run the Q account — that claimed an audit of the election might show that ‘Trump got 200k more votes than previously reported in Arizona.'”

The Center for Media and Democracy filed a public records request with Arizona state senators for records related to the Cyber Ninjas selection, but has not yet received a response. American Oversight has sued the Arizona Senate for failing to produce records related to the audit.

An official with Dominion Voting Systems, whose vote-counting machines are being examined as part of the audit, told reporters: “The firms selected to conduct this audit are beyond biased. Publicly available information shows they are led by conspiracy theorists and QAnon supporters who have helped spread the Big Lie.”

Arizona Democrats and others concerned with the security and motives of the audit sued the Arizona Senate in an attempt to stop the audit, but settled on May 5 when guarantees were put in place for ballot security and voter privacy, as well as spaces for the press and others to observe.

On May 20, Hobbs, the secretary of state, announced that the voting machines turned over to Cyber Ninjas and other companies would need to be replaced because of uncertainty over what is being done to them.

In an apparent act of retaliation, Republicans in the Arizona House then stripped Hobbs of her ability “to defend election lawsuits,” and transferred that ability to Republican Attorney General Mark Brnovich. Brnovich is a member of the Republican Attorneys General Association, a group that recently doubled down on Trump’s Big Lie, leading to an exodus of staff and leadership.

Maricopa County Board of Supervisors Chairman Jack Sellers (R), called the ongoing recount a “grift disguised as an audit” at a news conference earlier in the month, after Fann was forced to backtrack a claim that the county deleted a database and that ballots were missing.

Maricopa County internal and external reviews of the November 2020 election found zero evidence of fraud.

Fann told CNN last week that Arizona’s audit will be “a lesson in democracy” and “the basis of a gold standard.” History will almost assuredly prove her correct about that first part.
https://truthout.org/articles/top-alec- ... lot-audit/
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: Sec State drops bombshell: Audit could force Arizona to replace voting machines given to Cyber Ninjas

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Mike Broomhead talks for a living, but for a moment last week, all he could do was sigh.

With that flash of wordless exasperation behind him, he continued with his work: delivering the latest update on the Maricopa County election recount to listeners of his eponymous morning talk radio show. That day’s news was of a forthcoming conspiracy-theory-riddled documentary on what organizers call an audit — but Broomhead soon turned his attention to the officials overseeing this unfolding spectacle.

“You’re turning this into the clown show that you’ve been accused of. ... You’re turning this into the sideshow at the state fair,” he said.

This is the type of criticism one might expect from Democrats, who opposed the recount effort from the beginning, or from one of the many election experts who raised alarms at the stark departure from established audit practices, or from a Never-Trump Republican trying to wrest the party from the former president’s grip.

As the recount of 2.1 million ballots cast seven months ago drags on, Broomhead and others are contemplating just how this saga will end. The recount’s most ardent supporters believe former President Trump will be reinstated in the White House (despite there being no legal mechanism for that to occur). Its fiercest critics predict a damaging precedent that will embolden others to baselessly challenge results of elections they don’t like.

An increasingly vocal share of Arizona Republicans see the recount as an act of self-sabotage, creating an albatross for statewide candidates in the run-up to a pivotal election year. Broomhead is in this camp, with another lingering concern.

“No matter where you stand, the one thing we can all agree on is it has put a great big wedge in this community,” he told listeners earlier in the week. “That to me is the worst part of this. It’s one more reason for us to stand on opposite sides of the streets and complain about each other.”
“Here’s where we stand. It is June,” he said. “It is June. We have less than a year and a half before another election.”

Proponents of the recount, however, are keeping their eyes firmly fixed on the last election.
The review has no authority to change the 2020 results — and Trump, who frequently praises the recount, would have come up short of the presidency even if he had won Arizona’s 11 electoral votes. Nevertheless, at least some supporters, and the former president himself, see the recount as a step in restoring Trump to power, according to reporting in the New York Times and Washington Post.
Broomhead is not shy about his opinions — that’s the whole point of being a talk radio host. But anytime he starts to talk about the recount’s backers, his tread becomes notably lighter.

“I don’t want to make the people that believe this angry,” he explained during a commercial break. “I don’t think they are crazy. I think that these are people that genuinely believe the election was stolen.”

Every time he talks about those involved, be it officials like Fann or Ken Bennett, a former GOP secretary of state who has largely been the recount’s public face, or the volunteer ballot inspectors at the coliseum, he takes pains to praise their intentions. Nevertheless, he catches heat from some listeners who accuse him of being biased against the effort.
Bitter GOP infighting is hardly new in the state; party activists constantly clashed with the late Republican Sen. John McCain for not being sufficiently conservative. To Broomhead, this rift is resurfacing at the worst time, right before the 2022 election, when Arizonans will vote in six statewide races, including for governor and U.S. senator.

“That division is coming to a head right now,” he told his audience, warning that the state party’s all-in support for the audit is leaving moderate Republicans and independents out of the fold. “And if you don’t get everybody on board ... we are going to watch the Democrats win the majority of those six important races.”
As the recount drags on, some Arizona Republicans are losing patience. The Maricopa County Board, which had long opposed the recount, has ratcheted up its pushback with uncommon vehemence. Former GOP Gov. Jan Brewer said auditors should “call it quits,” speaking in an interview on “The Gaydos and Chad Show,” Broomhead’s afternoon counterparts on KTAR 92.3 FM. Two GOP state senators have signaled varying degrees of discomfort with the proceedings.

In the best-case scenario, said Rebecca Rios, the state Senate Democratic leader, those legislators would “come to their senses and work with Democrats to shut the audit down.”
And the question of the total price tag remains unknown, particularly after Hobbs told the county it should obtain new voting machines because those turned over to the state Senate may have been compromised.

This is what Broomhead fears — months more of preposterous headlines. It may make for great radio, but it might not be great for his party, or his state. And so he keeps talking about the recount, bemoaning the debacle it has become and hoping its officials will listen.
https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/ ... dit-stance
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Re: Sec State drops bombshell: Audit could force Arizona to replace voting machines given to Cyber Ninjas

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just set them to only count reptile votes like you want to, and be done with it. think how much money you'll save. in fact, why bother with elections at all? strictly speaking, iirc, a "republic" does not actually require democracy or elections.
Last edited by lurker on Wed Nov 03, 2021 7:22 pm, edited 1 time in total.
i'm retired. what's your excuse?

Re: Sec State drops bombshell: Audit could force Arizona to replace voting machines given to Cyber Ninjas

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Katie Hobbs said just that a month or more ago. She is running for Governor. Get the hell out and vote. Better yet send her money. The GOP in AZ is not particular happy with the ice cream salesman we have for governor.
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/06/0 ... run-491591
“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing,”

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