ARIZONA'S FAKE ELECTION AUDIT HAS RUINED A BUNCH OF THE STATE'S VOTING EQUIPMENT
The partisan 2020 “audit” in Arizona may not only erode public confidence in the election process—it could literally compromise the security of voting systems in the state. Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs warned Maricopa County officials on Thursday that in turning over voting machines to Republican legislators and Cyber Ninjas, the private firm hired to oversee the recount, the integrity of the equipment has been jeopardized and it must be replaced. “Once election officials lose custody and control over voting systems and components, those devices should not be reused in future elections,” Hobbs wrote in a letter. “Rather, decommissioning and replacing those devices is the safest option as no methods exist to adequately ensure those machines are safe to use in future elections.”
“The lack of physical security and transparency means we cannot be certain who accessed the voting equipment and what might have been done to them,” Hobbs continued, citing “troubling security lapses” that have been documented in news reports and the handling of the process by Cyber Ninjas, whose founder, Doug Logan, has championed Donald Trump’s baseless election fraud claims.
The compromised equipment—which taxpayers, already footing the bill for the frivolous recount, would have to pay to replace—further underscores just what a shit show this whole thing is. There’s been precious little transparency, and the glimpses we have gotten into the undertaking have shown it to be brazenly partisan and amateurish; at one point, a GOP state lawmaker who was on the 2020 ballot and who was present at the Capitol Hill riot was observed participating in the recount process. Meanwhile, the ultraviolet light the so-called auditors are using may be damaging ballots. That the whole thing has also rendered the voting machines unsafe to use is the cherry on top of it all. “We will not use any of the returned tabulation equipment unless the county, state and vendor are confident that there is no malicious hardware or software installed on the devices,” a Maricopa County elections department spokesperson told the Washington Post.
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/05/arizona-fake-election-audit-ruined-state-voting-equipment
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