The Arizona state senate which is Republican-controlled has asked for the votes to be recounted and a complete review of the ballot machines in Maricopa County, the state's most populated region, even though it won't change the result of the presidential race.
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The senate also reached a unanimous decision to send a strong reply to claims made a week ago by Arizona's Republican Senate President Karen Fann, who last week wrote to the board of supervisors stating that the district was not following a legislative subpoena.
"It's time to end this. For the good of the Senate, for the good of the Country and for the good of the Democratic institutions that define us as Americans," the supervisors and other elected officials said in a letter to Fann.
Fann's letter was noticed by previous President Trump, who shot it out through his Save America PAC and called Fann's cases "devastating."
On Tuesday, Fann held a public gathering with a few of the audit's supervisors to reply to the board's account. They acknowledged some of the replies, like how secured the votes were in the containers. However, they kept on bringing up questions about issues like chain of custody, ballot monitoring and right to specific materials.
In spite of earlier numerous state reviews that discovered no problems in the 2020 political race, the GOP-controlled Arizona Senate requested another audit, claiming Maricopa County's almost 2.1 million votes and nearly 400 election machines by subpoena recently. The review is being controlled by organizations including one whose CEO supported debunked election fraud theories.
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Since 1996, no democrats have won Arizona till President Biden, winning over previous President Trump by 10,457 votes. The review's outcomes won't topple Mr. Biden's triumph.
Stephen Richer, Maricopa County recorder, a Republican who was chosen in 2020 and now heads the election division, reacted to Fann's cases at a Board of Supervisors' important meeting on Monday. He said there are some "good people" taking care of the review, but mostly blamed Cyber Ninjas, the firm in charge of the ballot audit.
"They are led by the Cyber Ninjas, a company nobody has ever heard of with a CEO who has indulged even the craziest election conspiracy theories," Richer said. "Cyber Ninjas has zero election experience prior to this year, and they are joined by other companies with zero election experience prior to this year."
Richer disagreed with Fann's case that Maricopa County has "refused to provide passwords." He said that the region has given all passwords in its care. Richer also emphasized that the district would not be giving over extra routers since it would cost $6 million and cause a security hazard for policemen.
"All of this risk seems grossly disproportionate to a benefit that has yet to be defined by the Cyber Ninjas," Richer said. "The county will not give over the routers."
Richer affirmed that Maricopa County set up a chain of custody for the ballots. He referred to a letter endorsed by Ken Bennett, the Senate's audit contact, which supported the chain of custody and said the polling forms were securely moved. During the meeting on Tuesday, Bennett said that he didn't know where the ballots were kept from November to April. Maricopa County tweeted that polling forms were secured in a vault. Fann's letter said that bags of ballots were not secured, however Richer noted that the boxes that contained those bags were secure.
Richer in a tweet also denied some claims that election data were deleted.
"Every file the Senate has asked for is there," he tweeted. "No files from the 2020 election have been deleted. We deleted zero - zero election files."
Ben Cotton, who created the organisation working on the review with Cyber Ninjas, mentioned to Fann and another senator that the data had been retrieved.
Fann's letter from a week ago alleged that there were a "significant number of instances" where the amount of ballots in a set was different from the number stated on the slip accompanying that set. The reply from Maricopa County on Monday said "it is obvious that your contractors have no understanding" of how this interaction works. It said a portion of the "discrepancies" recognized by Fann were not errors, "but rather accurately reflected" the process through which ballots can be duplicated.