Another step has just been completed in an audit of the 2020 election results out of Arizona’s Maricopa County.
According to the Washington Examiner, auditors announced in a tweet Friday that they’ve wrapped up “paper examination and counting” of ballots in Arizona’s largest county, where Republicans in the state Senate had ordered a review of votes that were cast last November.
The Examiner said more than 2 million ballots were set to be reviewed by the cybersecurity firm that Arizona Republicans tasked with the job. As part of their review, the auditors were said to have examined ballots on a physical level, apparently to look for folds and other discrepancies.
The review even involved “workers holding ballots up to UV lights,” according to the Examiner.
“Audit update”
Now, it seems auditors in Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix, have wrapped up their physical examinations of the paper ballots. But while they can check off another box on their to-do list, the results of their review likely won’t be available for weeks, even as late as Labor Day, the Examiner notes.
Audit Update: Paper examination and counting are finished today. Thank you to all the amazing Arizona volunteers who made this audit possible!
— Maricopa Arizona Audit (@ArizonaAudit) June 26, 2021
In the meantime, it’s likely that detractors will continue to cry foul over the audit, which they say has little basis in the first place. According to a report from the Associated Press, experts also “say the auditors are inexperienced, biased, and using unreliable procedures, and their findings will be suspect.”
Notably, the firm, known as Cyber Ninjas, has not previously overseen any audits, according to the AP.
Lingering doubts?
But supporters of the audit, including former Arizona Secretary of State Ken Bennett (R), say there’s much more to the review than just what has been seen by journalists thus far.
“I think too much emphasis has been put on the tasks that are happening here at the Coliseum, but these are not the only two tasks of the audit,” Bennett told the AP.
Former President Donald Trump, for his part, had long claimed that alleged fraud tainted the results of the 2020 White House race, though lawsuits attempting to prove such fell flat.
In any case, the review in Maricopa County wouldn’t reverse Joe Biden’s victory last fall, which has already been certified by all 50 states and U.S. territories as well as Congress. But for voters with lingering doubts, it should provide some long-awaited answers.
The post Auditors wrap up ballot ‘examination and counting’ in Arizona’s Maricopa County first appeared on Conservative Institute.
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