by Margot Cleveland
On Friday, the Arizona State Senate released the final reports on the results of the Maricopa County Forensic Election Audit. While the reports made several significant findings supporting former President Trump’s complaints about the 2020 election, the corporate media ignored those aspects of the audit to focus instead only on the results of the hand recount.
As broadly reported, the audit established “there were no substantial differences between the hand count of the ballots provided and the official canvass results for the County.” Maricopa County, which represents Arizona’s most populous county thanks to its county seat of Phoenix, had provided Biden a 45,000-vote advantage in the state, propelling Biden to a victory by 10,457 votes. So the media presented the recount as confirming Biden’s victory in the state.
Left unmentioned, however, were the numerous findings of problems with the election and, most significantly, evidence indicating tens of thousands of ballots were illegally cast or counted. A report entitled “Compliance with Election Laws and Procedures,” issued by Senate Audit Liaison Ken Bennett, highlighted several issues, of which two were particularly significant because of the number of votes involved.
First, Bennett excerpted the Arizona statutory provisions governing early ballots. Those provisions require early ballots to be accompanied by a signed affidavit in which the voter declares he is registered in the appropriate county and has not already voted. The statute further mandates that a voter “make and sign the affidavit,” and directs the early election board to check the voter’s affidavit.
Significantly, “if the affidavit is insufficient, the vote shall not be allowed.” The secretary of state’s Election Procedures Manual reinforces this point, stating: “If the early ballot affidavit is not signed, the County Recorder shall not count the ballot.”
In his report, Bennett noted that “while the Audit scope of work did not include comparing signatures with voter registration records for each voter, it did identify a number of missing signatures on ballot envelop affidavits, which to the extent the ballots in such envelopes were tallied, would violate the above statutes and procedures.”
Although Bennett did not elaborate on the issues related to affidavit signatures or the numbers of affected ballots, in a 99-page report, Massachusetts Institute of Technology engineer Dr. Shiva Ayyadurai detailed numerous anomalies.
First, Ayyadurai analyzed the early voting ballot return envelopes, on which voters were required to sign an affidavit within a signature block. That review revealed more than 17,000 duplicate images of the return envelopes. When the duplicates were eliminated from the review, Ayyadurai’s company, EchoMail, concluded that Maricopa County had recorded more than 6,545 early voting return envelopes than EchoMail determined existed. EchoMail also concluded that another approximately 500 of the envelopes’ affidavits were left blank.
Ayyadurai also highlighted several implausible statistics, such as that while there was a 52.6 percent increase from 2016 to 2020 in the number of early voting ballots, Maricopa County reported a decrease in signature mismatches of 59.7 percent. “This inverse relationship requires explanation,” the report noted, and then recommended a full audit of the signatures.
Bennett’s report on election law compliance highlighted several additional issues, but of particular note, in light of the audit report, was his reference to Arizona’s statutory requirements for individuals to be considered eligible voters, as delineated in Articles 1, 1.1, and 2 of the Arizona election code.
“The Audit identified numerous questions regarding possible ineligible voters,” Bennett noted, while adding that because “these determinations were made from comparisons between the County’s final voted information and private data sources,” the cooperation of Maricopa County and further investigation would be necessary to “determine whether ineligible persons actually were allowed to vote in the 2020 election.”
The referenced articles of the election code discuss voter registration requirements and the requirement for individuals to be registered to vote at their address of residence, although individuals moving within 29 days of the election remain properly registered to vote in the county in which they previously resided. However, students, members of the military, and others temporarily living at another address remain properly registered at their permanent home address.
Also of significance is the Arizona secretary of state’s Election Procedures Manual, which according to the audit provides that “ballot-by-mail must be mailed to voters by first-class, nonforwardable mail.”