Ten Takeaways From the Maricopa Audit Report

1

The report given to the Arizona Senate by auditors is not complete. The examination of kinematic artifact on ballots is not finished. In addition, splunk logs, routers and other items have yet to be examined. An agreement between the County and the Senate will make those items available. When the examination is complete, additional reports will be given to the Senate.

Source (Pg. 56)

As mentioned in the July 15, 2021, Arizona Senate hearing, ballot calibration was off by an average of 1000% leading to bleed-through, which can cause over-votes or inaccurate vote attribution. The County has stated that they use thick VoteSecure paper, which should limit bleed-through. However, the Cyber Ninjas team said in July they had found a large number of ballots printed on very thin paper stock. The ballots printed on-demand at the voting centers on election day had the worst calibrations issues. At that time, it was reported that more than 168K ballots were affected.

The issue with thin ballot paper and bleed through is that it often causes ballots to be rejected by tabulation machines. When a ballot is rejected, it's sent to adjudication.

When a ballot is sent to adjudication, a human must decide the intent of the voter. The one performing adjudication has an opportunity to negate the voter's intended selections.

In Maricopa County, approximately 200,000 ballots (11%) were sent to adjudication in the 2020 election.

2

Many of the Maricopa County ballots were printed by Runbeck. The company's CEO initially agreed to answer questions about ballot printing discrepancies, but later, he said he was instructed by Maricopa County not to talk to auditors. 

Source (Pg. 48)

3

According to the audit report, 255,326 early vote ballots were received from Maricopa County voters who were not found in the EV33 file. 

The importance of this finding is that it's a violation of state law to send out an early vote ballot to a voter who has not requested one. Once a voter has requested an early ballot, their name should appear in the EV33 file.

Why were more than 255,000 early vote ballots sent to people who (apparently) did not request them?
Source (Pg. 51)

4

Ten different types of paper were used to print ballots in Maricopa County for the 2020 election including 20 and 30 lb paper. The recommended weight of paper is 80 lb. It is unknown what effect this may have had since logic and accuracy tests are not performed with paper of this type.

Source (Pg. 54)

5

The Arizona Senate subpoena required Maricopa County to turn over to auditors all provisional ballots that were not used and those that were cast by voters but rejected for some reason. These ballots were never turned over for inspection. 

Auditors do not know if any unused provisional ballots were diverted.

There is no way to know how many provisional ballots (cast in person by same-day voters) were rejected, or why they were rejected. 

(A large percentage of same-day in-person voters were Trump supporters.)

Ballots returned to the County as undeliverable were supposed to be turned over to auditors. They were never received, which makes one wonder if any of those ballots were illegally diverted. 

Source (Pg. 56)

6

To prevent a voter from voting twice, any voter who shows up at a voting center on the day of the election to vote in person who has received a ballot by mail must be issued a provisional ballot. 

More than 58,000 voters who should have received provisional ballots received standard ballots instead. There is no statutory authority that allows this. 

Source (Pg. 59)

7

The Senate subpoena required Maricopa County to allow auditors access to the voter registration system. The County refused access to auditors.

In December 2020, a hack of the database was investigated by the FBI. Auditors requested access to the database to learn more about the intrusion but the County claimed the intruder only accessed publicly available data.

Source (Pg. 60)

8

On February 2nd, 2021, the night before Maricopa County's auditors (Pro V&V and SLI) were to begin their audit, the entire election database was purged. 
Source (Pg. 63)

9

Pro V&V and SLI didn't mention in their audit reports the deletion of ballot images, election database files, results files, or log files.

Source (Pg. 65)

10

More than 263,000 ballot images that were provided to auditors were too corrupted to be read.

Of the 1.3 million images of ballots scanned prior to November 1st, no images were corrupted. After November 1st, approximately half the scanned images were corrupted.

No explanation has been given as to why or how the images were corrupted. Replacement images were requested but Maricopa County has not provided them.

Source (Pg. 70)