Auditors officially finished recounting the roughly 2.1 million Maricopa County ballots for the third time on Wednesday as part of an independent probe commissioned by the Arizona state Senate.
“The physical tabulation of the ballots are complete and are being returned to Maricopa County tomorrow,” state Senate President Karen Fann told the Epoch Times.
The third recount was done under the supervision of former Arizona GOP chair Randy Pullen and only counted the number of ballots rather than examining the actual votes.
Fann said this was necessary because the tabulation of total ballots from the initial state audit did not match the number reported previously in a county audit.
The auditors now plan to take the data to a laboratory for analysis and begin drafting their final report.
However, one of the lead cybersecurity experts overseeing the audit, Cyber Ninjas head Doug Logan, warned during a briefing earlier this month that there still was much work to be done in order to ensure that the conclusions were “beyond reproach” and irrefutable.
“We totally understand how much focus is on us right now and how important this is to our country,” Logan said at the July 15 hearing.
Democrats have pressed hard to invalidate the entire process, sending—by some accounts—roughly a thousand lawyers to clog the system with appeals in a last-ditch effort to thwart it.
The Biden administration’s Justice Department also issued new “guidance” this week that doubled-down on an earlier threat to target the auditors with civil-rights and intimidation charges for undermining Democrats’ narrow victory.
Democrat Joe Biden formally won the entire state by just over 10,000 votes. However, the auditors hinted that as many as 16 times that many might have been impacted by procedural flaws—whether due to incompetence or malfeasance—such as the use of Sharpies and non-regulation paper.
Logan also noted that more than 70,000 absentee ballots that were returned had no record of ever having been sent, and he recommended that the auditors conduct door-to-door canvassing to verify residency, intent and other irregularities.
The US Supreme Court recently upheld the state’s ban on ballot-harvesting, meaning that voters who did not provide their proper place of residence might be deemed ineligible.
But at least one Los Angeles-based labor union boasted that its door-to-door efforts using paid activists to compel voters in Maricopa County, as well as helping hundreds to “cure” their ballots after the fact, might have helped swing the outcome.
As a result of the questions and irregularities identified by the auditors, the state Senate issued new subpoenas this week to compel the county, as well as Dominion Voting Systems, to supply several pieces of missing information.
However, it remained unclear whether they would comply with the legal mandates. George Soros-funded Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs and Maricopa County Sheriff Paul Penzone have both encouraged resistance.
The missing information could leave holes in the final conclusions, perhaps giving leftists the plausible deniability they need to dismiss the findings. It might also provide Fann with the justification needed to invalidate ballots that could not be verified by the physical paper trail, although Hobbs ultimately is the official responsible for certifying the results.
“We sincerely hope Maricopa County will produce the missing documents and information we have requested for the audit to be complete and finalized,” Fann said. “The voters deserve to know their votes are safe, secure, and legally counted.”
