Maricopa County ballots from the 2020 general election are examined for signs they are counterfeited by contractors hired by the Arizona senate at the Veterans Memorial Coliseum on May 28, 2021. Photo by Thomas Hawthorne | The Arizona Republic/pool photo
BY: JEROD MACDONALD-EVOY AND DILLON ROSENBLATT | Arizona Mirror
Maricopa County ballots from the 2020 general election are examined for signs they are counterfeited by contractors hired by the Arizona senate at the Veterans Memorial Coliseum on May 28, 2021. Photo by Thomas Hawthorne | The Arizona Republic/pool photo
A researcher the Arizona Senate hired to double-check an analysis of ballots by election conspiracy theorist Jovan Pulitzer said his claims that there were upwards of 12,000 counterfeit ballots were “utter rubbish.”
A trove of newly released documents related to the Arizona Senate’s partisan review of the 2020 presidential election shows that EchoMail CEO Shiva Ayyadurai was hired to review Pulitzer’s work. Pulitzer, an election conspiracy theorist known best for an “invention” dubbed “kinematic artifact detection,” has built a rabid following in the election fraud conspiracy world even though he has no background in election work.
“Per your request, I spent time reviewing the nonsense,” Ayyadurai wrote in an email to Senate President Karen Fann and Randy Pullen, one of Fann’s liaisons to the so-called “audit.” “It was painful to read this utter rubbish.”
Pulitzer was hired by the Florida-based firm Cyber Ninjas to work on the Senate’s partisan election review. Cyber Ninjas, which had no experience in analyzing elections and was run by a man who spread baseless claims of election fraud and tried to overturn the election, was empowered to hire whomever it wanted without Senate approval.
Ayyadurai slammed Pulitzer’s work, saying that Pulitzer should face criminal investigation for “fraud” and recommending that the Senate not publish the report.
