Arizona election audit: Draft report confirms Biden defeated Trump in

On Sep 24, 2021

The state Senate Republicans who seized on former President Donald Trump’s lies about widespread election fraud and ordered up the report and Cyber Ninjas, the inexperienced company hired to conduct it, are set to detail their findings in a public presentation Friday.

The draft report emerged Thursday night, and audit spokesman Randy Pullen confirmed its validity to KJZZ Phoenix. “It’s not the final report, but it’s close,” he said.

The draft report shows that the hand recount found that President Joe Biden received 99 more votes than Maricopa County had reported after November’s election, while former President Donald Trump received 261 fewer votes than the county reported.

Maricopa County’s Republican-led board of supervisors pointed to the draft Thursday night, saying that it underscores the reality that the county ran an accurate election.

“You don’t have to dig deep into the draft copy of the Arizona Senate/Cyber Ninja audit report to confirm what I already knew — the candidates certified by the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, Governor, Secretary of State and Attorney General — did, in fact, win,” board chairman Jack Sellers, a Republican, said in a statement.

“This means the tabulation equipment counted the ballots as they were designed to do, and the results reflect the will of the voters,” he said. “That should be the end of the story. Everything else is just noise.”

Elections experts in both parties, looking at the manner and the methods of the so-called “audit,” have said for months that its results will not be credible. It was conducted by the Florida-based company Cyber Ninjas, which had no experience auditing election results and is led by a man who has repeated wild conspiracy theories about election fraud. The company and its volunteers and subcontractors did not follow standard auditing procedures, and observers from Democratic Secretary of State Katie Hobbs’ office repeatedly noted instances in which those conducting the review broke their own rules.

No matter the outcome of Cyber Ninjas’ examination, the reality that Biden is president and won Arizona’s 11 electoral votes last year will not change.

Still, former President Donald Trump and those who have propped up his lies about widespread election fraud have pointed to the Arizona review as crucial in their continuing effort to challenge the 2020 election results.

Here’s what you need to know ahead of the Senate’s release of the sham report:

How we got here

The Republican push to undo Maricopa County’s election results began as soon as President Joe Biden won the state by 10,457 votes — finishing a narrow 0.4 percentage points ahead of Trump, thanks in part to a more than 45,000-vote advantage in Maricopa, the home of Phoenix and Arizona’s most populous county.

Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, visited Arizona weeks after the election there and made calls to Maricopa County Republicans. He left a voicemail on Christmas Eve for Maricopa County Supervisor Bill Gates,…