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Battleground Maricopa
The Arizona Republic Sunday virtually dedicated the entire first section of the paper to the “audit” of Maricopa’s November election results. There were two major pieces; the first, a thorough doxing of everyone even remotely associated with the audit who may have suggested that the Nov. 6 election results may be in question; of course they are in question! The AZ Senate did not demand a review because they had confidence in the result; quite the opposite.
The second piece was a self-congratulatory piece lauding the media’s coverage of this audit. They obviously are the ones that they are looking for, but despite all the alarm and conjecture, a near constant drumbeat of allegations of incompetence, prejudice, and chaos, there has been little to report at all. The obvious reason for this coordinated chorus is to queer any conclusion or result, to allege that the entire exercise was a clown show of the highest order and to undermine the credibility of anyone who says otherwise.
In fact, there has been very little news coming out of this audit. There have been no announcements, no daily pressers. They are simply moving along, counting, verifying, deflecting criticism, but there have been few leaks. Whatever they are discovering, they are keeping it close.
The media has had quite a lot to report about the auditors, Cyber Ninjas, the lead contractor coordinating the audit effort. They are a cyber-security consulting firm with little in the way of election audit experience. But wait, when was the last time an outside firm was contracted to “audit” any election results? How about, never? Usually recounts are conducted by the same organizations and partisans who conduct elections. That has certainly been the case in AZ and this does not lead one to great confidence in the results of a limited, internally conducted, review.
Cyber Ninjas is independent and skeptical, at the very least. No, they are not Deloitte or Price-Waterhouse Coopers, but they are still independent. By the way, none of the major auditing firms would even consider taking on this engagement; it is far too political, too fraught with risk, for them to consider; too much downside. There is not enough money in the world to coax them to take on this job.
Auditing an election result is not rocket science. If the election was conducted correctly, it is simply a matter of documenting controls and processes, verifying those controls, recounting ballots, verifying chain of custody and batch data, and summarizing results. If the precincts were properly balanced, it should be simple.
But it won’t be simple. It will likely be chaos, especially if procedures were ill-conceived and still not followed, if ballots were not properly stored and secured, if machines were not properly sealed, if precinct vote tallies were not properly balanced with voter rolls, etc. Much of the audit will be conducted digitally, comparing voter rolls with death data for example, and other procedures meant to uncover questionable voters, but these procedures will not alter vote tallies; they will only lead to questions about processes, controls, and vote legitimacy.
In the end, however, I’m afraid that this audit will come to no definitive conclusion. The election, I’m afraid, is unauditable, in part because the processes are flawed and in part because these processes and controls are either not in evidence or were not followed at all. The press, Democrats, and voting officials will blame the auditors. The auditors and Republican supporters will claim that voting officials are at best, incompetent and at worst, criminal and allied with corrupt Democrats.
One thing is sure. The hand counts will not match the final tallies. If this simple recount result disagrees with the final election result…
I have no idea. This is virgin political ground.
Published in General
Get used to it…this is the new SOP for the duration of the Anti-Intellectual Era in America. (Watch carefully as only 50% of the Arizona lawyers here condemn the Arizona Republic for this.)
Would that include one who repeatedly claims to have been “doxxed” but really wasn’t?
Nice piece on the Audit.
But…
There is huge news coming out of this Audit. From Conservative Tree House, May 14th under:
Arizona GOP Chairwoman Kelli Ward gives extensive Interview on Maricopa Ballot Audit Status
Kelli Ward, on the 14th did a 45 minute interview with Ms Debbie Georgatos, host of “Anerican, Can We Talk? discussing the Election Audit in Maricopa County. Go to CTH to see the interview.
In this interview Kelli said:
• Two weeks before the Audit began the County Board of Supervisors or someone in the Maricopa County Elections Official staff deleted the entire 2020 Presidential Election database. Maricopa County is only county in Arizona to use Dominion Voting Systems. The Audit staff has asked for the passwords and access to the database and has a court order to get it. So far the County has refused to provide the passwords or full access to the computer system.
Kelli said that the database was deleted. There was access to the computer system and a Election database file referenced, but when the Auditors went to check the file it had been deleted. There has been some speculation by others that there never was an ” Election Database ” file in the County’s possession, but that the file was hosted offsite and managed solely by Dominion Voter Systems, which btw has been accused of election fraud in Michigan, Georgia, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin as well.
• There are supposed to be paper ballots backing up each vote. Those cast ballots were sealed and stored directly after the election. When the Auditors went to check the ballots, the seals had been already broken and many, many ballots were missing.
Without all the ballots in a secure condition and without the Election Database it may be impossible to fully conduct the audit.
• There will be a hearing on the 18th to discuss the matter.
My first reaction is that it is very clear that the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors have committed very serious election fraud that changed the election outcome in Arizona, for Biden won Arizona by only 40,000 votes. If they cannot or will not comply with Auditors requests for the Database and the Ballots, they all should be prosecuted for election fraud and put away from decades at a minimum. If the State Attorney General cannot or will not prosecute these Supervisors a recall campaign against him should start immediately.
This Audit may expose this entire Election Fraud and may be the impetus for other Fraud investigations in the other key states. This is a very big deal.
Let’s hope.
If the TEA Party was regular voting people asking nicely, and Trump was regular voting people asking not-so-nicely, then fraud investigations, hopefully prison sentences, and getting some more people voted out of office, will be the regular voting people saying:
The dog ate it.
There wasn’t supposed to be any connectivity of the tabulating equipment and anything else on the internet, remember?
Maybe they believed that connecting to Dominion HQ (in Ukraine, maybe?) wasn’t “the internet.”
Anyway this cried out for another meme, so I made it:
I’m one of the Arizona lawyers here, and I’m not going to condemn a newspaper without reading the article in question myself. There is no link, so I’m not in a position to evaluate the issue.
I have a correction to Unsk’s comment. Biden’s margin in Arizona was not 40,000 votes. It was much smaller. 10,457.
Doug, I do not read the AZ papers, so please continue to share anything that is below the national radar.
Unsk, on further thought, you were probably thinking of Biden’s combined margin in AZ, GA, and WI, which was about 40,000 votes. If Trump won these three states, the Electoral Votes would have been a tie.
I have a correction to Unsk’s comment. Biden’s margin in Arizona was not 40,000 votes. It was much smaller. 10,457.
No, Jerry you are right. I thought I read that in one of the articles on the situation, but I will defer to your judgement on this one. Only 10,457. Ouch. There seems to be many missing ballots.
I can’t imagine what happened to them.
Percival: The dog ate it. Has to be it.
If given enough time, I’m sure the dogs can eat all the voting machines, too.
Biden’s margin in Maricopa County was 45,109 votes. Biden’s margin in Arizona was 10,457 votes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_United_States_presidential_election_in_Arizona
They all are.
It was stupid to frame any of this outside of Zuckerberg’s ballot harvesting and the Democrat lawfare. It truly was a bad election and Trump probably won, but that is the actual reason.
I used to have a job that had auditing responsibilities. At least since the Norm Coleman fiasco, I have never understood why any thinking person had anything to do with elections. The lack of controls and the lack of concern about chain of custody is immoral at the very least, and under my logic, it’s personally risky to be involved. I get that nobody thinks that way but that’s my view. The last election was the whole thing on steroids. None of these people give a damn and the Democrat party knows it.
Elections are un-auditable by design. If one could truly audit the election, then one could tie a vote to an individual and that would violate the concept of a secret ballot. This is why ballots don’t have any marking son them that can be tied back to an individual either absentee or in person ballots. There are some controls in place, but they don’t really allow for an audit of an election. Let’s talk about those controls.
The primary control is the issuance of the ballot itself. Let’s talk in-person first. I work elections in Texas (Guadalupe County) so my knowledge is of that single county, and to a lesser extent Texas. Other states should be similar but might vary in the particulars. When a voter enters the polling place they are checked in. This involves them showing us their photo ID (six types to include a free, state-issued, Election ID, also they can make an affirmation of an impediment to getting an ID and not present one, but they do need to present a utility bill or similar). We look up the voter in the database for the election. This database is comprised of all voters in the county that registered 30 days prior to the election. Once we look up the person, verify that their address is the same, that their name substantively matches the voter roll, and they appear to be the person in the IDs picture, then we will have them validate their information and start to check them in. When there is an issue, it is almost always that the person is not on the rolls and that is where I, as the election judge, step in. When they are not on the rolls, it is almost always because they did not register to vote at their current address. People think that they did, but they didn’t. We happen to have a substantial population that works in Bexar county (San Antonio) and going to the nearest DPS office and registering there means that your card went to Bexar country and they often don’t forward them to Guadalupe. So, we make a call to the Elections Clerk office and they check their more up to date database. They have access to the entire state of Texas’ voter DB and often tell me that the person is registered in another county, or they missed the deadline. I offer them the opportunity to vote provisionally in this case and after the election they will prove the provision ballot (about 5-12% get proven and counted).
If they are cleared in the DB (not having to vote provisionally), the clerk checks them in which flags the DB as them having checked in. Our check-in PCs are connected to a VPN so that it updates the county DB when we check someone in which prevents them from going to another Vote Center and trying to vote there. (continued)
Part II
After the check-in the system then prints a blank ballot for the voter. This ballot has an ID imprinted on it, but that ID is not tied to the voter registration ID, it is more of an ordinal. I should point out that while I am an election judge, I do not perform any of the system audits so I am making some assumptions as to how they work. I am in IT as a consultant so while I likely have some solid guesses, I might be incorrect in the particulars. It would be theoretically possible that the check-in laptop keeps a log of who has checked in, and also of the printing of the ballot cards (they are separate programs) and one could link them via an log review.
The voter takes the blank authorized ballot and inserts it into a tabulation machine. This is a touch screen that the voter uses to select who they want to vote for and when they are finished it prints the selections onto the ballot card. This is in a human and machine readable format. The voter can review their selections and then takes it to the actual ballot counting machine. They insert the card and it reads the ballot and lets them know they have cast their ballot. I assume that it reads the machine readable portion, but its certainly possible that it is actually OCRing the human readable portion of the ballot instead. This is one of the areas that concerns me. If it is reading the bar codes, could those tabulate other than what the human readable prints. Malicious software could do that and properly written could hide it even from a post-election audit. The code is supposed to be audited…but I am not part of that process and thus cannot comment. One question that I would want to know is, who is doing that code audit and to what level are they auditing?
The tabulation machine writes it results to a memory card that myself and my alternate judge (from the other party) will manually take to the county seat to hand deliver to the Election Clerk’s office after we close the polls. While we do not look at that stick electronically, it is in place when we open the polls and stays sealed all day. We audit the seals in the morning and at the end of the voting to ensure that they are not tampered with. We also print a report at the beginning and end of the day showing the vote totals. I reiterate that this is another potential point of malicious code hiding results.
Part III
On the memory card, it should store just the results of the election. I have never been given access to these cards (that is a good process control) and when they are had delivered to the county, they go to an air-gapped system for consolidation. Those numbers are then hand carried to another system where they are entered into the Secretary of State’s database to report results. Once again, this code should be audited but I am not part of that process.
I should note that neither the ballot marking touchscreens, nor the tabulation machines have any connections to the internet. I suppose it possible that there are hidden LTE modems in them, but my understanding is that they are air gapped.
Hacking that system for in-person voting would be both difficult and easy depending on one’s access and the audit controls in place. Hacking a specific voting machine or tabulator is really not easy and would flip a very small number of votes. Hacking the software that marks, tabulates, and reports would be more complex, but still trivial for the people that write the software. The controls in place for that, even if the code is a black box, would involve running ballots through the system and then viewing the reports to see if they match. Unfortunately, if the code truly is a black box, it would be possible to write software that makes the test runs look correct with the expectation that a hand count of the ballots will never happen except in small batches. The county is supposed to perform some spot check audits where they pull the physical ballots (these are collected when the voter feeds their ballot into the tabulator and hand carried to the Clerk’s office with the memory cards). I do not know how detailed those audits are, but one would hope that they hand count at least one random Vote Center’s entire set of ballots to see that they are a match, or more likely a close match. In that situation one could expect a hand count error and/or a tabulation error of some amount that, if less than some amount (say less than 1%) would be acceptable.
I do know that I am responsible for reporting the number of people who checked in, the number of ballots cast, and the number of provisional ballots taken every 2 hours all day long and I give those to the Clerk’s office as an official record. Those numbers should match all day long. I’ve seen them be off by a couple of ballots. We had one person who walked out with their printed ballot and didn’t drop it in the tabulator as an example.
Part IV
So, I have a great deal of confidence in my portion of the election. Election day, in person voting in my Vote Center in my county should be very secure with the caveat that I do not audit the software and assume that it is being audited by multiple competent individuals.
Vote by mail is another issue, and, in small amounts, can be reasonably secure with the caveat that we can never know if the individual who the ballot is mailed to actually filled it out. In Texas, one has to request a ballot by mail and one has to have a reason to request one. That includes being out of the county you are living in for the entire voting period, or being confined to your home or a hospital/long term care facility. You provide your name, address, ID number (usually Drivers License), and that has to match the registered voter database. You get your ballot and two envelopes to return your ballot. One is the carrier envelope and one is the security envelope (I might have those names wrong, but the laws are posted on the web). You are directed to mark you ballot with the only assistance being provided being a person who can read you the ballot and mark it as you direct. They have to sign and provide their information if they do and sign that they did that and no more. Then the ballot is placed into the ballot envelope where the voter, and any assistant, signs it and it is then placed in the carrier envelope which is then stamped and mailed back to the Election Clerk. It has to be stamped because otherwise the USPS won’t cancel it with a date. Texas law allows for each county to have one drop box for ballots, usually at the Clerk’s office. The voter, or their designated person who has signed to that effect, has to mail the ballot.
Once the ballot arrived, the outer envelope determines if it arrived in time to be counted. It goes into a suspense bin where the ballot envelope is then removed and the carrier envelope discarded. The original request is then pulled and matched to the ballot envelope to match the signature on the ballot envelope and the application form and that the other details match. If anything does not match the ballot envelope is placed into a reject bin where it will be destroyed unopened after the election. If it is proven, then the ballot envelop is opened, the ballot is removed and placed into a ballot box and the envelope and application are kept for a set retention period (23 months IIRC). The ballots are tabulated just like in-person voting at that point.
Part V
In conclusion, other than the issue with who actually filled out the mail ballot, there are decent controls for vote by mail in Texas, as long as the numbers are small. If the numbers were to grow to large numbers like in CA, WA, OR, CO, or many States in 2020 the process controls can break down. Did the application get properly vetted? Was there an application at all? Was the proving process followed as it was written by the legislature? Once that ballot envelope is opened and the ballot removed, it is impossible to tie to back to the application by design to preserve the secret ballot. The same is true of the in-person ballots, but there is less chance of manipulation of ballots.
In the end the weak link, and this has always been true, are the Election Clerks and their staff. These are civil servants and are hired. They are supposed to be non-partisan, but no one really is that IMO. I would feel better if there was an adversarial system like we have with election judges where there is one official from each party and collusion would be more difficult. I rather like my county’s election admin and her staff. I’ve known them for years and the prior admin as well. I don’t have any complaints about them, but I work with them about 4-5 days every 2 years. Once advantage of our distributed system of elections is that to really compromise an election one would likely have to compromise many people in many states. This is one reason that places like Philadelphia that consolidated counting into a super centers “for efficiency” is a problem. It is more efficient, but it also makes corruption easier.
Being an election admin and their staff is a thankless job with a ton of pressure. People want results immediately and that is one reason that we have moved to touch screens and similar types of machine readable votes. Accurate counting with auditable, or in the case of elections, semi-auditable, results is going to take more time. As cities in every state become bluer and bluer (of the top 10 cities in Texas only Corpus Christi and Plano went for Trump) the ability to manipulate the vote by one election office becomes more possible.
Most people don’t even realize how manipulative Zuckerberg was. He donated millions of dollars to help voting, but only in places that he wanted the results from. That such activity is legal is mind boggling.
I have posted repeatedly about it here. It’s easier to understand if you pay attention to Breitbart and their shows on SiriusXM. Those guys and the Amistad Project.
He expanded the election system by 100% and all they had to do was do what he said and hire Democrat operatives to do all the work. He rented the election system. Boom, they get a bunch of money and they help the Democrats win. All resources skewed towards democrat areas including advertising. Ballot controls out the window.
I don’t fully understand it, but some of what he did in Wisconsin was illegal.
Trump was not “surgically removed” by the voters, he was surgically removed by Zuckerberg.
I haven’t read it yet, but Joe Pollack of Breitbart has some really interesting things to say about the election. He made a pretty strong case that it violated all of the UN standards for elections. He has an e-book for it.
This block quote is just a placeholder to comment on the entire novel in 5 chapters. This was very informative, thanks for taking the time to explicate the process. I think the Texas vote was likely much more accurate and less subject to manipulation than was the case in AZ, MI, WI,GA, and PA.
I’d be more inclined to believe there were no shenanigans in those 5 states if there wasn’t such an outcry and all out effort to shutdown any audits whatsoever. 73 Democrat lawyers to AZ alone, subpoenas ignored, monkey wrenches thrown into every possible process.
If you ask me, this stinks to high heaven, and I believe this was one of the most dishonest elections in history. And the US has a long history of fraudulent elections.
Precisely. Nobody fights this hard against an investigation that would vindicate them.
In the case of Arizona there has always been a huge mail in vote. We moved here four years ago and have always voted by mail after never having done so in Massachusetts, CT, and Florida. It is the reason Arizona showed a different pattern on election night than the other contested states. In Arizona, Biden had a big lead on election night which was slowly whittled down as the mail-in ballots came in.
Four of the five County Supervisors in Maricopa are Republicans. The County Recorder who runs elections, was until November, a Democrat. In this allegedly hacked election the alleged perpetrators were so stupid they allowed a Republican to defeat the incumbent Democrat Recorder. There have already been two audits in Maricopa which did not find discrepancies. The current Recorder, a Republican, has said the Cyber Ninjas don’t know what they are doing and are making false allegations on their twitter account.
If you analyze the Maricopa results by precinct it is consistent with what we saw elsewhere in the country. Trump won Maricopa by 2% in 2016 and lost it by 2% in 2020. The difference is he gained votes in Hispanic areas and but lost more of them in the wealthier white areas of the county.
Cyber Ninjas is a joke. There are many other qualified election experts — and they aren’t one. Ninja CEO Doug Logan is totally biased: Through his now-deleted Twitter account, Logan extensively retweeted and posted false allegations of widespread voter fraud. https://bit.ly/2SSGP05
The Arizona Secretary of State has publicly called the fraudit “a sham” https://bit.ly/2S37Pd7 and suggested that Russia is funding the audit.
Auditing an election IS rocket science. But the Ninjas aren’t following best practices and their results will be impossible to replicate. And we know in advance that the Ninjas will say there was a fraud.
This has made Arizona a laughingstock. Sen. Fann, plus failed politician Ken Bennett (who destroyed his reputation claiming Obama’s birth certificate fake), and the Cyber Numnuts have made Arizona a punchline in a late-night joke.
Speaking of lack of evidence, got any evidence of that?
As most know I am an Arizona voter. Arizona will be redistricted by a Commission and not by the Legislature. I predict that despite the national trends towards the Republican Party, the Democrats will take control of the Arizona Legislature which right now is only 16-14 in the State Senate and 31-29 in the State House, due in great part to a reaction to this “so-called” Audit.
Republican Senate President Karen Fann will go down as the “Democrat’s Majority Maker.”