Republican Arizona state senators shared the findings of the Maricopa County presidential election audit during a hearing Thursday.
Following the 2020 presidential election, amid then-President Donald Trump’s claims the election was “stolen” due to “voter fraud,” the state senators decided to conduct the audit in order to validate the integrity of the county’s election results.
Among the findings revealed during Thursday’s hearing was the fact there was no record of 74,000 ballots received and included in 2020’s election results ever being mailed out.
In the presidential election, Joe Biden won Arizona by a margin of 10,457 votes, according to NBC News.
NOW I get why Maricopa County and Biden admin fought tooth and nail to prevent an independent audit. 74,000 absentee ballot mail-in records missing, 25K duplicates, voter rolls a mess, bleed throughs, tens of thousands of ballots on demand, admin passwords issues. A disaster.
— Kyle Becker (@kylenabecker) July 15, 2021
“NOW I get why Maricopa County and Biden admin fought tooth and nail to prevent an independent audit,” journalist Kyle Becker tweeted following the revelations.
“74,000 absentee ballot mail-in records missing, 25K duplicates, voter rolls a mess, bleed throughs, tens of thousands of ballots on demand, admin passwords issues. A disaster.”
Canvassing is necessary. It is the one way to know if the problems are real problems or just clerical mistakes. There are ~ 74,000 ballots that came back but there is no indication that they were ever sent out by the county! From #FOIA shows logs don’t match!
— Dr. Kelli Ward 🇺🇸 (@kelliwardaz) July 15, 2021
“Canvassing is necessary. It is the one way to know if the problems are real problems or just clerical mistakes,” Arizona GOP Chairwoman Kelli Ward tweeted.
“There are ~ 74,000 ballots that came back but there is no indication that they were ever sent out by the county! From #FOIA shows logs don’t match!”
A number of additional inconsistencies regarding ballots and documents related to ballots were found during the audit as well.
For example, former Arizona Secretary of State and Arizona Senate liaison Ken Bennett claimed the audit’s examination of “duplicate ballots” — ballots typically produced when a ballot becomes damaged or is improperly marked — found some troubling irregularities.
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“It has created great difficulty to try to match up a duplicated ballot to its duplicate,” Bennett said, noting some serial numbers were completely missing from duplicated ballots.
Other serial numbers were printed over “black square alignment marks,” making them difficult to read.
A number of additional inconsistencies were found, reportedly including ink bleeds in incorrect places, ballots marked and filed incorrectly and irregularities regarding voter rolls.
Given House Democrats announced on Wednesday they had launched an investigation into the audit, as reported by CNBC, Democrats are likely to fully examine these new findings.
