A widely criticized partisan audit of the 2020 election results in Arizona's Maricopa County cost around $6 million—which, according to a draft report detailing its findings, works out to almost $60,000 for every extra vote it found for President Biden. The Arizona Republic reports that rather than finding the election was "stolen" from Donald Trump, as the former president and his supporters claimed, the hand count confirmed Biden's win in the county and extended his narrow lead. It found that Biden received 99 more votes than the county reported and Trump received 261 fewer votes than the official tally, per CNN.
The findings are due to be presented to the GOP-led Arizona Senate Friday. Randy Pullen, a spokesman for the election review, tells KJZZ that the leaked copy of the findings is "not the final report, but it's close." "Was there massive fraud or anything? It doesn’t look like it," Pullen says. He adds, however, that other reports to be presented Friday will show evidence of worrying "anomalies" in voting records. The report describes the audit results as "necessarily inconclusive." The audit was mainly funded by pro-Trump groups.
Maricopa County Board of Supervisors chairman Jack Sellers, a Republican, says the draft report shows the county ran an accurate election. "This means the tabulation equipment counted the ballots as they were designed to do, and the results reflect the will of the voters," he says. "That should be the end of the story. Everything else is just noise." The audit was conducted by Florida-based cybersecurity company Cyber Ninjas, which has no previous election experience. Its CEO, Doug Logan, has expressed support for Trump's claims the election was "rigged" against him. (More Arizona stories.)
,
uBlock 
,
and
Ghostery 
)
