Reviewing thousands of the voters listed in the dataset from the Cyber Ninjas, the county found five of the ballots may have been cast illegally./Photo by Courtney Pedroza | Getty Images/pool photo
By Jen Fifield | Arizona Republic
Every claim made by Cyber Ninjas and other Arizona Senate contractors who reviewed Maricopa County’s 2020 presidential election was either misleading, inaccurate or false, according to a point-by-point response by county officials issued on Wednesday.
The 93-page report, months in the making, studied every question the contractors raised about the election and analyzed thousands of individual voter records. It explained that the contractors made faulty assumptions and false accusations, in part because of mistakes they made during their analysis but also because they were inexperienced and misunderstood how the county and state’s elections work.
“At the heart of these inaccuracies is a basic misunderstanding or ignorance of election laws and procedures,” county officials wrote in the report.
While Cyber Ninjas raised questions about more than 50,000 ballots cast in the election, a wider margin than Biden won in the state, the county’s analysis of those claims found fewer than 100 instances of potential voter fraud or double-counted ballots. That’s far fewer than it would have taken to impact the outcome of any race, and within the expectations of an election with nearly 2.1 million voters.
After analyzing each claim, the county is referring 37 cases of potential voter fraud to the Arizona attorney general, including 26 potential deceased voters, six voters who may have voted twice, and five voters who may have voted in more than one county.
The county’s report, obtained early by The Arizona Republic, was to be presented at a 1:30 p.m. public meeting on Wednesday presided by the county’s Board of Supervisors and including County Recorder Stephen Richer and several of the county’s top election staff.
