Controversial Maricopa "Audit" Concludes that Biden Won by More Votes Than Previously Reported
What is believed to be a draft report of the controversial "audit" indicates that President Biden actually gained nearly 100 more votes in the recount than previously counted, and Trump lost 261.
It appears that a highly anticipated election “audit” report slated to be released tomorrow in Arizona concluded that President Joe Biden actually won the 2020 presidential election by more votes than previously determined in the certified election results.
Bloggers obtained what is believed to be a draft of the report that will be released tomorrow in Maricopa County. The report indicates that Biden actually gained 99 votes in the recount of 2.1 million ballots cast in the presidential race, and former President Donald Trump actually lost 261 votes, giving Biden a slightly larger margin of victory than previously believed.
In the Arizona senate race between Republican Martha McSally and Democrat Mark Kelly, both candidates lost votes in the recount, though former astronaut Kelly still came out as the winner in the race, according to the draft document. Kelly lost 60 votes in the recount; McSally lost 541 votes.
The three-volume draft report was published by Arizona Agenda late Thursday and was also reported on by radio host and journalist Brad Friedman.
According to Arizona Agenda, multiple draft versions have been circulating Thursday, but they all reveal the same conclusion — that Biden won the election. Arizona Agenda notes that the circulating reports could be different from the final report and could be an attempt to discredit media outlets that report on it. But the local ABC news station in Arizona says it obtained a draft copy of the report through a public records request filed with the Secretary of State, and that version also indicates that Biden won.
The report, produced by the Florida-based company CyberNinjas, likely won’t assuage Trump supporters who believe that Biden stole the election and that there was widespread voter fraud. While the results show that Biden won, the report doesn’t actually say this directly and also continues to espouse claims that the election was nefarious. The authors of the report complain that they were never given access to all of the election server data they sought.
The Republican-led state legislator in Arizona initiated the private and controversial “audit", but it was paid for by wealthy private donors, including Patrick Byrne, former head of Overstock.com, who donated at least $1 million.
When it became clear that President Trump lost Arizona last year, his campaign sued Arizona election officials and accused election workers in Maricopa County of incorrectly rejecting ballots. The suit was dismissed, but Trump, who won Arizona in 2016 but lost in 2020 by just 10,457 votes, believed an audit would uncover “thousands and thousands and thousands” of votes for him that went uncounted.
In Maricopa County, the largest in the state, President Joe Biden won with just 50.3 percent of the vote. After the election, the county’s Republican-dominated board of supervisors hired two accredited voting-system testing labs — Pro V&V and SLI Compliance — to conduct a forensic audit of the voting equipment; they determined that the machines had not been hacked and had tallied the votes accurately. A hand recount of a statistically significant sample of ballots supported this.
But the Republican-controlled state Senate wasn’t convinced and issued a subpoena for the ballots to conduct its own recount. They claimed their aim wasn’t to prove the election was stolen, but to uncover election problems that need to be fixed.
I’m currently going through the report and will add more if there are relevant findings.
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