Republicans lose patience with Arizona election audit
PHOENIX - A growing chorus of Arizona Republicans is calling on the GOP-controlled state Senate to end an audit into Maricopa County's 2020 election results that is increasingly relying on disproven conspiracy theories to challenge President Biden's victory here.
The audit, ordered by a state Senate majority that has bought into former President Trump's big lie about the results of the election he lost handily, is on hold until Monday. It has already dragged on well past the estimated time auditors said it would take to recount the county's ballots.
But some Republicans say they hope it does not continue after embarrassing revelations that supposedly bombshell allegations by auditors who have perpetuated Trump's lies were in fact errors made by the auditors themselves.
"I think they should maybe just call it quits. I don't think that it's going to serve any purpose. It's not going to change the election," former Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer (R), who has administered elections when she served as secretary of state, said this week on "The Gaydos and Chad Show." "The votes have been certified. Biden is the president. It's not changing. I say move on."
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/republicans-lose-patience-with-arizona-election-audit/ar-AAKflm1
Trump's election "audit" should be treated as a trojan horse, Arizona secretary of state warns
Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs announced on Thursday that the vote-counting machines used in the Maricopa County general election recount are not secure, suggesting that her office might "decertify" whatever results come from the audit.
Last month, the Republican-controlled Arizona state Senate moved to conduct a full-fledged audit of Maricopa County ballots in the 2020 general election, citing baseless concerns that the election fraudulently favored President Joe Biden, who won the county by a margin of about 45,000 votes. The state's GOP-led Board of Supervisors, which noted that prior audits had already been conducted, attempted to impede the recount, but failed.
The audit – which requires a hand count of 2.1 million votes – is being conducted by Florida-based cybersecurity firm Cyber Ninjas, which has no apparent experience in auditing elections and was not formerly known by any members of the Arizona state legislature. Cyber Ninjas' owner, Doug Logan, is a known QAnon conspiracy theorist who erroneously believes the election was systematically "stolen" from former President Donald Trump. Currently, Cyber Ninjas is performing forensic analysis to determine the presence of bamboo fibers in ballots as an apparent indication that China meddled in the election.
In her letter, Hobbs wrote: "I have grave concerns regarding the security and integrity of these machines, given that the chain of custody, a critical security tenet, has been compromised and election officials do not know what was done to the machines while under Cyber Ninjas' control."
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trumps-election-audit-should-be-treated-as-a-trojan-horse-arizona-secretary-of-state-warns/ar-AAKfdVu
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