An Arizona judge recently ruled that the state senate can have access to 2.1 million ballots and voting equipment from Maricopa County to audit results of the 2020 election.
Maricopa County was one of several counties in swing states across the nation where Democrat Joe Biden did a remarkable (and questioned) come-from-behind to win the presidency.
The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors had objected to a state senate subpoenas for the ballots, saying they are secret and the legislature has no right to see them.
The Board of Supervisors recently released results of what it said are two independent audits of the voting equipment showing no irregularities.
But Arizona state senators want to conduct their own forensic audit.
Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Timothy Thomason agreed with Senate lawyers that the Constitution gives the legislature the role of maintaining the purity of elections and making sure voter integrity is protected. He ruled the subpoenas are "legal and enforceable".
Absent a higher court ruling, the county is required to provide the ballots to the senate for inspection within the time frame provided in the subpoenas (typically 20 days).
Hopefully It'll put an important issue to rest. Read Slanted. It's nice to see a handful of independent journalists still out there.
Sharyl's latest book "slanted" is a fantastic read. I have read all of them and get a new one as soon as it comes out.
If there was no corruption and those two "independent" audits were so trustworthy, then why did did Maricopa County Board fight to the death to prevent a true audit? The answer is quite obvious.
Az, and others, need a full forensic audit, including all mail in and absentee counts and sig verification. It might be moot, but it must be shown and known. No doubts or else all the deplorables and Qrards are going to stay home. We might be okay with one group boycotting, but the other is a HUGE chunk of voting block, who will be disenfranchised yet AGAIN.
TO LITTLE TO LATE . THEY HAVE A LONG TIME TO COVER THERE TRACKS .AND WONT DO ANY THING TO BRING ANY OF THE TRUST THAT HAS BEEN LOST FOR THE COURTS IN THIS NATION . AND YES THAT INCLUDS THE SO CALLED TOP COURTS IN THE LAND . ONCE BOUGHT ALWAYS OWNED AND (NEVER) TRUSTED AGAIN
Not true.. Forensics are powerful and although some data may be missing this audit will uncover enough to prove this is not a conspiracy theory. If nothing’s found then no harm no foul.
Agreed. Even if they cant catch them in the act, the muddy footprints will be enough to show that a thief was in the house and what they were doing.
Exactly what I was thinking too !!
Build a case, that's fine. Then what? This has been deliberately 'slow-walked' to create a sense of inevitability.
The 46th Administration is illegitimate and needs to be revoked.
totally agree from what im seeing trump won Arizona i think every swing state needs to be audited just like this one. and if trump won Biden needs to be taken out of the Whitehouse and the true president installed. with the evidence they had after the election and when every court turned their backs this would of been straightened out months ago. the damage to this country wouldn't of happened. everyone involved in this should go to jail. Michigan if that sec state and governor and election officials wiped the evidence trump should automatically get the state they are suppose to keep images and ballots for no less than 22 months and if they deleted the information they were covering up. i think every county in all the states needs to be audited and every machine period for actual count. so far just the illegal votes in Arizona is 36 to 39000 trump only lost by 10 to 11000. Wisconsin Pennsylvania, Georgia , Nevada and Michigan needs to be forensically audited..
Only amateur fraudsters would leave evidence behind on Microsoft Windows based machines such as Dominion uses. Not pros such as Dominion employs.
sure, now that they've had a couple months to clean the computers and ballots
“Maricopa County was one of several counties in swing states across the nation where Democrat Joe Biden did a remarkable (and questioned) come-from-behind to win the presidency”
While I understand the almost pathological need to keep the election fraud story alive, this comment is simply not true. In both Maricopa County and the state of Arizona, early returns gave Biden a sizeable lead (his statewide lead early on November 4 was about 130,000 votes) which gradually eroded over the next few days to the final margin of about 11,000. In Maricopa County, Biden held about a 60,000-vote lead on November 5 which dwindled to about 54,000 votes on November 6. The final margin for Biden in Maricopa County was about 45,000.
The likely reason for this is that Arizona allowed processing of mail-in ballots to begin weeks before the election so the early results contained a high percentage of the mail-in votes (similar to Florida and unlike Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin).
Remember that Fox called Arizona for Biden on election night. I hardly think that they would have done that if a “remarkable” comeback from Biden would have been required.
So, no, Biden did not have a “remarkable come-from-behind” win in Maricopa County and the smallest amount of checking would have revealed that. But that would have interfered with the subliminal message of the story, I guess.
It’s true that Biden did come from behind in several counties outside Arizona, but I don’t understand the use of the term “remarkable”. We were told for months before the election that in states that refused to allow early processing of mail-in ballots that the initial ballot totals would be heavily weighted to in-person voting results which would heavily favor Trump and that Trump’s lead would likely erode as the mail-in votes were processed. Lo and behold, that’s exactly what happened. Is it “remarkable” because actual events followed the predicted ones?
Of course, we were also told that Trump would use his early lead in some battleground states because of the early returns favoring in-person votes to claim victory and to make fraud claims when his lead shrank. Since we were told that exact scenario was going to happen, I naively believed that no one would be so gullible as to believe him. I was certainly wrong on that.
And, again, it’s simply disingenuous to use the term “questioned” when describing the election results given that all of the “questions” are coming from one side without any evidence being presented thus far to back up that questioning . It gives the claim a patina of legitimacy that is clearly not warranted.
Another comment…
“Board of Supervisors recently released results of WHAT IT SAID are two independent audits of the voting equipment showing no irregularities”
What exactly is meant by “what it said”? That implies that the Board of Supervisors didn’t really do an audit but just claimed it as such. Why not just add a parenthetical “wink, wink”? What’s wrong with just saying they “recently released results of two independent audits of the voting equipment showing no irregularities”? Oh, right – the subliminal thing.
In the interest of telling a more complete, accurate story, it could also have been mentioned that Maricopa County did three partial hand recounts of ballots shortly after the election as well as an audit of signature matching and found nothing of substance.
And it could also have been mentioned that Republicans are the majority on the Board of Supervisors.
And it could also have been mentioned that every Arizona election official has said that the election was free and fair.
And it could have been mentioned that the Board of Supervisors believed that state law requires them to secure the ballots for 24 months after the election absent a court order. That’s why the matter ended up in court in the first place, not because they were trying to hide anything.
And it could have been mentioned that the Arizona Senate originally planned to hire an auditing firm that had represented Trump in other states until the obvious conflict of interest made them back down.
In the end, there’s really no reason to resort to sleight-of-hand wording and partial facts to paint the desired picture. After all, telling a more complete, honest story won’t dampen the enthusiasm of those crying fraud in the slightest.
Stadiums were filled by one, while a few cars gathered to honk their horns for the other. But, your wordy reply holds merit...
Please, crawl back under your enlightened bridge.
What you say is true. Trump had many, many more enthusiastic supporters at his rallies. And I've always said that if there were some way to multiply each vote by some factor of the enthusiasm of the voter, Trump would indeed have won in a landslide. But that's not the way it works. Each vote counts the same (at least in each state). What's always amazed me is that when Trump supporters use the argument that Biden barely campaigned so he couldn't have won, they are really just pointing out the extremely high level of disgust that the clear majority of voters had for Trump. Biden didn't need to campaign. All he had to do was to remind voters that he wasn't Trump. That was enough.
Dick you stated that Florida had a high percentage of mail in votes. no so it was as usual . All our votes were counted the day of the election. When I lived in RI we went to the town hall presented a picture ID received a ballet and voted handed it in . It was easy We had no Vote harvesting. You requested an absentee ballet with an ID. and Filled it in then sent it back. It had to be received election day. We had no lag time no stop in counting. We knew who we elected. There was no controversies. No Dominion vote machines , Bad machines. What happened in AZ. Why in Gods name did you mass mail out Ballets using old voting lists even kids were on the lists. What happened in AZ was a voting on a disorganized scale. You. had no controls from the start, disgracefull / disorganized. Where did your ID law go? Even RI has an ID law
All I said about Florida was that their process of counting mail-in ballots was similar to Arizona's in that it allowed processing to begin weeks before election day so the early results included lots of mail-in ballots. I said nothing about it being unusual or not. It's true that mail-in voting rules have changed, but there has been little documented evidence of voter fraud that I'm aware of so I am not sure what your point is. And for the umpteenth time, the voting machines were tested and retested (including a complete hand recount in Georgia). I am not aware of any evidence that there were kids on the Arizona voting lists. So some evidence of that would be nice. You may believe that the election in Arizona was fraudulent, but zero of the Arizona election officials do. So I think that I will stick with them.
If you did everything correct, let them waste their time and money, you shouldn't care. I would welcome any audits to correct any mistakes or improve voting and procedures for the 2022 elections.
If I were in charge of a states election, I would make damn sure there could be no questions of election irregularities for the 2022 election cycle.
I was originally of the mindset that we should humor those alleging election fraud because once all of the audits had been conducted and nothing was found, that would be the end of it. Another bit of naivete on my part. In this case, Arizona election officials not only conducted the normal audits after an election, they also did another audit demanded by the Arizona Republican Party. Then they had to do another audit when the ARP declared that the second audit didn't include enough ballots. So they did the "enhanced" audit and found nothing. Then they did an audit of the voting machines and found nothing. That's why every Arizona election official from the Governor on down have publicly stated that the election was free and fair. I strongly believe that Arizona election officials do believe that they have made damn sure that there were no irregularities and nothing needs to be changed for 2022. And I strongly believe that any reasonable person would be satisfied by now. But the Arizona Senate is not. And they have presented no evidence to support that belief. So the argument that all they want to do is one more audit and then they will be happy is simply disingenuous. It just will never end.
And it's not just Arizona, of course. This disingenuous argument of "just one more check and we'll be happy" has played out in every battleground state.
You're right that I shouldn't care if they want to waste their time and money. The problem is that presupposes some honesty and clarity of purpose by those running the audit. I really don't think that's what we have here.
Don't they need the envelopes the ballots came in? I was under the impression that once the ballot is separated from the envelope, the envelope is discarded. Therefore, leaving no way to track who the ballot belonged to since there is no identifying information on the actual ballot.