On Wednesday, March 31, the Arizona Senate officially announced that it has hired four firms to conduct a full audit and recount of the 2.1 million votes cast in Maricopa County for the 2020 presidential election to ensure the legitimacy of the election results.
The Arizona Senate said in a statement that the audit will be conducted independently by four out-of-state audit firms and that the Senate will not be directly involved in order to maintain fairness and transparency. A detailed report of the audit results is expected to be released in about 60 days.
The State Senate also emphasized that “this audit will validate all steps of the voting process. The scope of the audit will include, but is not limited to, scanning of all ballots, a full manual recount, audit of registration and voting, vote counting and electronic voting systems.”
The four out-of-state firms hired to conduct this comprehensive audit include Wake Technology Services Inc.,CyFIR LLC, Digital Discovery and Cyber Ninjas Inc.
The fairness of elections in Maricopa County, Arizona has been under scrutiny for the past several months. Last December, the state Senate Judiciary Committee issued a subpoena for a forensic audit of the county’s Dominion voting machine software and ballots after questioning election fraud in Maricopa County.
But Maricopa County commissioners refused the Senate Judiciary Committee’s subpoena and failed to turn over the voting machines, and were sued by both the state Senate and the Republican Electoral College.
During the court case, the Maricopa County Board of County Commissioners, under pressure, said they could conduct an audit, but only if the audit firm was hired by the county itself, which was rejected by the state Senate.
It wasn’t until Feb. 26 that a judge formally ruled that the Arizona Senate had oversight authority and that Maricopa County must provide the state Senate with approximately 2.1 million ballots for the Nov. 3 presidential election and allow access to its election equipment for the audit.
Following the ruling, Arizona Senate President Karen Fann said the state Senate’s efforts were simply to ensure the integrity of the state’s election system and “were never intended to overturn the election.
Earlier, Arizona Sen. Warren Petersen, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, also said the audit process must be an in-depth forensic audit. Not just a basic check of the machines, but also a check of the ballots and ballot scans for anomalies, whether the machines were rigged, and whether someone changed the election results by way of remote or local access.
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