by Corinne Murdock | Oct 11, 2021 | News
By Corinne Murdock |
Voters are reporting on social media that they’ve received multiple ballots with different names at their address. This is not to say that these issues have been widespread, but that there are instances of voters receiving three to four different ballots addressed to different individuals.
One Maricopa County voter, Anthony Massara, told the Arizona Daily Independent that he’s received mail for multiple different voters since 2017, despite notifying the post office that none of the voters lived there. This year, the multiple misaddressed ballots he received were for a special election in Scottsdale.
State Representative Leo Biasiucci (R-Lake Havasu City) tweeted pictures of those ballots after Massara reached out to him.
“So the Arizona Secretary of State and Dems say our elections are secure,” wrote Biasiucci. “Here are 3 ballots showing up to a home in Scottsdale, Arizona that has had the same single owner for 5 years. None of those names below are his.”
The state legislature recently passed a law further refining process for resolving ballots addressed incorrectly. Voters may now check a box on a flawed ballot to reflect that the addressee doesn’t reside at their address, and then mail it back to the U.S. Postal Service (USPS).
Then, USPS should return the ballot to the recorder’s office of the affiliated county. At that point, the county recorder would notify the voter that the address they’d listed was incorrect, and offer them 35 days to respond.
If the voter doesn’t respond after 35 days, their voter file would be marked “inactive” and no early ballots would be mailed to that voter until they update their registration. If the voter doesn’t update their registration after two federal election cycles, then they are removed from the voter rolls.
A Mohave County voter, Sherrie Row, tweeted that her daughter received two ballots in addition to hers.
“Arizona is just handing out ballets. Only one of these people live here. And mine isn’t one of these. My democratic daughter got hers +2,” wrote Row.
The Arizona Senate’s Cyber Ninjas-led audit discovered over 23,300 ballots that were voted on from a prior address, according to their report last month. Maricopa County explained that these numbers likely included those that may have cast a “federal only ballot,” those who recently moved, or those who requested a temporary address.
“EXPLANATION: 1) Military and overseas voters can cast a ‘federal only ballot’ despite living outside the U.S. The address tied to their ballot would be their prior address in AZ. 2) People are allowed to move from one house to another (or even one state to another) in October and November of an election year (yes, shocking!). If the driver’s license address matches the voter registration address, they are still allowed to vote. 3) For the November General Election Maricopa County had 20,933 one-time temporary address requests. In addition, snowbirds and college students tend to have forwarding addresses when they are out of the county. 4) Mail-in ballots are not forwarded to another address.”
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.
by Corinne Murdock | Oct 8, 2021 | News
By Corinne Murdock |
Maricopa County officials admitted that they deleted election files from equipment after purportedly archiving them prior to fulfilling the Arizona Senate’s subpoena for that equipment. Chairman Jack Sellers and Vice Chairman Bill Gates made this admission during the House Oversight Committee hearing on the Cyber Ninjas-led audit on Thursday. The supervisors’ main defense for deleting the records had to do with freeing space for future election files – but Congressman Andy Biggs (R-AZ-05) pointed out that files from prior elections were on the equipment obtained by the subpoena.
Biggs’ line of questioning prompted the admission from Gates and Sellers. He first asked the Arizona Senate’s liaison to the election audit, Ken Bennett, if it was standard practice to delete files off a server after an election. Bennett said he “hoped not.” Gates initially attempted to characterize the deletion as mere maintenance.
“I would say that it is appropriate to maintain files, and that’s exactly what we did,” said Gates. “The deleted files had been discussed. They were archived.”
https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4981036/user-clip-maricopa-county-admits-deleted-files-archived-subpoena
When Biggs asked Gates to clarify if those “maintain[ed]” files were deleted off servers after the election, Sellers nodded and added that the files were “archived.” Biggs then asked whether the Arizona Senate was given the archives as part of the subpoena.
“When you released these servers and this information to the auditors to begin with, they didn’t have access to those archives at first – is that fair to say?” asked Biggs.
“They did not subpoena those, that’s correct,” responded Gates.
Gates’ response prompted laughter from Biggs.
“Okay, so – you didn’t feel obligated to turn [the archives] over then, to them?” asked Biggs.
“We responded to the subpoena,” repeated Gates.
At that point, Bennett stated that it was “laughable” that the county essentially created a loophole in the subpoena by archiving files from the materials explicitly subpoenaed.
“I find it frankly laughable to suggest that a county in response to a subpoena could say ‘We will delete files from the hard drives and materials that we give to the auditors because we have those files archived on data that we did not give to the auditors when the subpoena said give all those records to the election,’” responded Bennett.
Maricopa County’s Twitter account stated that deleting files that have been archived is a standard practice after all elections. Biggs asked Gates to confirm this. Neither Gates or Sellers said they could confirm immediately.
“I just know that because there is limited space on these servers, when you have to run that election, you have to make room for the additional election data,” said Sellers. “I do think it’s important [to note] that our recorder will be answering every question in a timely fashion.”
“That’s the same recorder that campaigned that [previous county recorder] Adrian Fontes was incompetent and called him a criminal, and he’s the guy that was running the 2020 election – and you actually hired someone to oversee Mr. Fontes. Because you guys didn’t trust Mr. Fontes as well – is that the same Stephen Richer?” asked Biggs.
Sellers said he disagreed with Biggs’ characterization.
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.
by Corinne Murdock | Oct 8, 2021 | News
By Corinne Murdock |
During the House Oversight Committee’s Thursday hearing on the Arizona Senate’s audit, Congressman Andy Biggs (R-AZ-05) criticized Democrats’ rhetoric and conduct. Biggs accused Democrats of hypocrisy for both praising and condemning the audit. He further claimed that Democrats cherry-picked data from the audit report to fit a narrative.
“You know the Democrats can’t really have it both ways, can they?” asked Biggs. “You cannot say that the audit showed the integrity of the election, while at the same time claiming that the mere fact of an audit, in and of itself, is a threat existentially. You can’t do that. It’s a fallacious, logical inconsistency.”
https://twitter.com/RepAndyBiggsAZ/status/1446121832994672646
The committee announced the hearing Wednesday to discuss “how this and similar audits undermine public confidence in elections and threaten our democracy.” Two of Maricopa County’s election officials, Supervisor Bill Gates and Chairman Jack Sellers, testified.
As part of his opening statement, Biggs revealed that Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney (D-NY-12) told him that Democrats were critical of the audit and had an agenda before it even began. Maloney also reportedly shared that her fellow Democrats were opposed to any legislative changes to improve election integrity.
Biggs reminded the committee that one of the major audit focuses, Maricopa County, hasn’t always had a spotless elections reputation.
“In 2018, in Maricopa County, most of you may not know this, there were such problems with the Maricopa County election that the Democrat county recorder – who was the elections official for the county, Adrian Fontes – got to go under scrutiny by this board of supervisors, who took everything back from him that they possibly could legally and statutorily. That’s the history of problems in Maricopa County in our voting.”
Additionally, Biggs reminded the committee that every losing political party since 2001 has cast doubts on the fairness and impartiality of the results.
“You cannot argue that questions regarding election integrity from the right is an attack on our democracy, our constitutional republic – especially after four years of the Democrats claiming that the 2016 presidential election was stolen because of Russian interference,” said Biggs. “I advocated for a full forensic audit because I felt election integrity should be restored.”
According to the congressman, Maricopa County’s own audit efforts were dwarfed in comparison to their efforts to stop the Senate audit.
“[They] spent $18,000 for those two audits, but spent literally hundreds of thousands of dollars [and engaged in] multiple lawsuits to prevent the audit that we’re discussing today,” observed Biggs.
Watch the full audit here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xN9iEz6T4nw
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.
by Corinne Murdock | Sep 22, 2021 | News
By Corinne Murdock |
Maricopa County Supervisor Steve Chucri resigned after admitting in a leaked audio recording that Maricopa County election officials privately shared their constituents’ concerns over the 2020 election. Specifically, Chucri said he and the other election officials doubted the validity of their hand-count audit, as well as the security of Dominion Voting Machines.
According to Chucri, other board members reportedly knew the county audit wasn’t sufficient, but didn’t want to conduct a full-scale audit because they feared they’d actually lost their races. Instead, the county went ahead with an audit of only two percent of the vote. This totaled around 47,000 ballots out of nearly 2.1 million. With that, the board claimed that the sampling was sufficient to prove election integrity.
In another recording, Chucri questioned whether Dominion’s software had serious security issues. He said it was a “screw up” for Arizona to use Dominion after Texas rejected them due to critical security concerns.
According to Chucri, County Recorder Stephen Richer agreed with those concerns. However, Richer has asserted publicly that he’s never doubted the validity of Dominion’s election equipment.
Richer fired shots at Dominion doubters as recently as Tuesday afternoon. He remarked on a topic trending on Twitter at the time, “Dominion.”
“The world is learning it was all a lie done at the expense of a few private, job-producing, for-profit companies (something I thought we celebrated) and individuals who did nothing wrong,” wrote Richer. “Fortunately, @dominionvoting is going to bankrupt some liars as a result.”
After the audio recordings were leaked that depicted Richer as privately sharing county concerns over the Dominion software, he deleted the tweet.
In a letter explaining his resignation, Chucri chalked his remarks up to “turbulent times” and emphasized that they weren’t indicative of any wrongdoing or cover-up by the county regarding the 2020 election. His resignation will be effective November 5.
Unfortunately, the political landscape changed for the worse this year. The environment is wrought with toxicity – and all civility and decorum no longer seem to have a place. The fixation with the 2020 election results and aftermath have gotten out of control. In recent days it has come to light that I was secretly recorded in conversations regarding differences with some of my colleagues about an audit of the 2020 election. The comments I made were during a very turbulent time. My colleagues have every right to be both angry and disappointed with me. I should not have made such statements and offer my colleagues heartfelt apologies.
I do not want to perpetuate the very problem I ran to eliminate several years ago. While I have had my differences with my colleagues, I have known them to be good, honorable and ethical men. The picture some individuals are trying to paint about a cover-up, scam and other nonsense about my colleagues and myself is simply false. There was no cover-up, the election was not stolen. Biden won.
The leaked audio came from a March conversation between Chucri and We the People AZ Alliance, an activist election integrity group. Gateway Pundit obtained the audio recording. In it, Chucri admitted that those too concerned for their races to speak out against the audit were fellow supervisors Jack Sellers and Clint Hickman.
“[Hickman] wanted to have a conversation about an audit,” explained Chucri. “He just didn’t have the guts to do that at the end of last year, after I’d been asking for something.”
The woman asked if Hickman had his feelings hurt. Chucri said yes. He said it’s “just politics,” and agreed with the woman that Hickman needed to “suck it up.” Chucri said he regretted believing other supervisors when they claimed they were only capable of auditing two percent of the votes.
“This is a blood sport. [He said] I’m not going to kiss your a**, I’m not going to suck up for your vote – I want to earn your vote,” said Chucri. “Whereas those guys want to suck up and kiss up for your vote, and my biggest mistake […] was that I should’ve never believed what I was being told about ‘We couldn’t do more than two percent of an audit before we certified the election.’”
The election results for Chucri’s fellow board members support his remarks.
Sellers barely won his election – he received .08 percent more of the vote than his Democratic opponent, Deedra Abboud.
Chucri won comfortably, earning nearly 19 percent more of the vote than his opponent, Democrat Jevin Hodges. As did Hickman – he won by over 16 percent.
Although Supervisor Bill Gates’ win wasn’t as close as either Sellers’, his opponent only lost by less than two percent of the vote.
Chucri went on to say that he should’ve listened to Congressman Andy Biggs (R-AZ-05) about that matter. Chucri admitted the county knew that they could’ve audited any percentage of the vote they desired.
“My biggest mistake was listening to that. I should’ve listened to Andy Biggs and I think even Brnovich said you could do 30 percent, you could do 60 percent,” said Chucri. “They went and screwed up there because I didn’t know about it until it was too late.”
Neither Hickman or Sellers responded to inquiries from AZ Free News by press time.
Maricopa County asserted in May that their audits were extensive enough to be considered accurate. They included a thread of 23 tweets with evidence that the Senate audit wasn’t being conducted with the protocols or professionalism of a true audit. Cyber Ninjas is the company contracted by the Senate to conduct the audit.
“Our elections were run w/ integrity, the results certified by the county & state were accurate, & the 2 independent audits conducted by the County are the true final word on the subject,” stated the county. “We know auditing. The Senate Cyber Ninja audit is not a real audit. #azsenateaudit[.]”
https://twitter.com/maricopacounty/status/1393273947513266177
Secretary of State Katie Hobbs retweeted the statement in agreement.
“Important thread from @maricopacounty,” wrote Hobbs.
https://twitter.com/katiehobbs/status/1393301623229882371
The Senate confirmed that their audit report of the Maricopa County elections will be published on Friday.
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.
by Corinne Murdock | Sep 20, 2021 | News
By Corinne Murdock |
Last Friday, Maricopa County settled with the State Senate on both side’s election demands, with the Senate apparently compromising on nothing per the agreement. The county will hand over the remaining election materials subpoenaed by the Senate: routers, splunk logs, and digital images of ballot envelopes. They will also drop their demand that the legislature pay $2.8 million to replace the voting machines. Secretary of State Katie Hobbs – who told the county that she would likely decertify any election results that come from the audited machines – has yet to issue a statement on the settlement.
The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors convened on Friday to discuss this settlement. They ultimately decided that the election routers, splunk logs, and ballot envelopes weren’t worth $700 million in lost funds. In fact, the board decided securing those funds was worth an additional expenditure. The county will pay for a “Special Master”: an official to oversee acquisition of the routers and splunk logs. Former Republican Congressman John Shadegg will serve that role.
Senate Republicans tweeted the news in a statement from President Karen Fann (R-Prescott). Fann clarified that experts were sure that the audited election equipment wasn’t compromised, as the county had claimed.
“The Senate will finally get the answers to questions asked for in the subpoenas issued to the County months ago,” stated Fann. “I look forward to getting our final questions answered and wrapping up the review of the election in Maricopa County.”
https://twitter.com/AZSenateGOP/status/1439035033428185089
Shortly after, Fann released a more personalized statement of her own. She responded to critics and skeptics with clarification that the Senate hadn’t lost out on anything they were desiring.
“HUGE win for the Az Senate today! Maricopa settlement gives us all the data needed to complete the review of the routers & splunk log to the most comprehensive election audit in history,” stated Fann. “We got everything we need and more. Maricopa County goes home with its tail between its legs.”
Maricopa County officials spun a different narrative in their announcement of the settlement. The county neglected to clarify that they were still turning over the subpoenaed election materials to the Senate for inspection. Instead, they emphasized that the auditing company, Cyber Ninjas, wouldn’t be given access to those materials.
“NEW: Board votes to approve an agreement with the AZ Senate that keeps county routers & other sensitive materials out of the hands of Cyber Ninjas. The agreement also protects taxpayers and ends a legal dispute over the Senate’s ongoing election review,” stated the county. “Per Chairman @jacksellers: ‘The Cyber Ninjas will never be able to touch the routers or access our data. An independent third party can confirm what we’ve always said: the election equipment was not connected to the internet and no vote switching occurred. And our residents, law enforcement, and courts can all rest assured that their data and equipment are protected.’ The agreement with the Senate comes with a provision that the Senate President write a letter to the Attorney General stating the County has now fully complied with the Senate’s outstanding subpoenas and that further action is not warranted.”
Cyber Ninjas’s report on Maricopa County’s 2020 election will be released on Friday. Since Cyber Ninjas isn’t privy to the election materials obtained from the Maricopa County-Senate settlement, information from those materials won’t be included.
Last month, Hobbs published a full report of the audit, asserting that Cyber Ninjas’ work was more of a partisan review than a credible audit.
Read the settlement here.
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.
