Courtesy Larry Moore
By Mary Jo Pitzl | Arizona Republic
The audit of the Maricopa County ballots from the 2020 general election continues on July 14, 2021, in the Wesley Bolin Building at the Arizona State Fairgrounds in Phoenix.
Call them the anti-ninjas.
Since June, three men with years of election experience have tried to get the attention of the Arizona Senate by saying they have a way to check the work done by the Cyber Ninjas, the contractor hired to lead the review of Maricopa County’s 2020 election results.
But they can’t do it without help from the Senate. They would need some of the detailed data produced by the Ninjas as part of the audit and so far, Republican leaders have rebuffed the group’s overtures.
On Thursday, the trio, who call themselves “the Audit Guys,” renewed their challenge.
Using a method they had developed by obtaining the county’s “cast vote” record through a public records request, they released the number of ballots contained in each of 24 boxes of returns without touching a single ballot.
They matched it up against the tally of those 24 boxes done by high-speed paper-counting machines the Senate had commissioned. Senate audit liaison Ken Bennett shared those results with them in July. It was almost a perfect match: 99.9%.
