Logan and other members of his team were often seen during the maskless counting process. It is unclear whether those who tested positive had been vaccinated. CNN contacted Cyber Ninjas to ask for feedback.
Election experts on both sides have said for months that the results of the “audit” driven by Republican lawmakers and led by the Florida-based company, which had no experience in auditing election results and whose chief executive , Logan, has repeated a savage conspiracy theories about election fraud – will not be credible.
Fann said senators receive “part of the draft report” on Monday, but did not detail which part and what will be left out. Fann also said senators want the envelopes containing ballots sent last year to be included in the final report, but that images of those envelopes from Maricopa County came too late.
“In addition to the illnesses, it was not until Thursday that the Senate received the images of the Maricopa County ballot envelopes and hopes that they will be analyzed as soon as possible to incorporate these results into the final report,” he said. They make a statement. “The Senate legal team will meet on Wednesday to begin reviewing the draft report, and when the rest of the draft is presented, the Senate team will hold another meeting to continue verifying the accuracy, the clarity and proof of documentation of the results. completed, the final report will be presented to the Senate Judiciary Committee and the findings will be made public. “
Last week, Maricopa County officials said they had already sent the images to the Cyber Ninjas review team in the past and simply forwarded them. Randy Pullen, a spokesman for the Senate-sponsored audit, told CNN that the images on the ballot would not be handled by Cyber Ninjas.
The report was to be delivered to the Senate, but it could be weeks or months before its results are revealed to the public. Fann and a team selected by Senate Republicans planned to review the report.
Ken Bennett, the Senate liaison with the audit team, said last week that a group will spend the next “days or weeks” checking the report and “checking the accuracy.”
Bennett said he wanted to “spread the facts, not the rumors,” that it would only be a draft report and would not be made public. The Senate team could ask Cyber Ninjas for more clarification on their findings.
“The Senate team will review the accuracy and clarity of the final report that will be released publicly,” tweeted Fann, a Republican, last week.
Bennett told CNN Monday that he expects there to be an “adjustment to how the meeting will be held Wednesday,” when the Senate legal team will review the partial draft of the report. He didn’t even know the details if Logan can report to the Senate legal team by video conference or by phone instead of in person.
Once the audit team delivers the full draft of the report, Bennett expects the review process to take a few weeks to be made public.
Audit full of problems
“Does everyone here understand that the 2020 election was a total disgrace?” Trump said.
Trump’s allies have tried to export Arizona’s audit to other states, including Pennsylvania, where a state senator has tried to do his own review of each county’s results, but has been rejected by those counties and Wisconsin. where Republican lawmakers are studying various approaches, but they have their heads on which paths to follow.
Warnings about “unreliable” conclusions
The completion of the audit and the potential for the report detailing its results to be made public soon, has led Republican and Democratic election officials in Arizona, including GOP officials in Maricopa County, to warn that no it should be taken seriously.
Hobbs, the Arizona secretary of state and 2022 Democratic candidate for governor, also issued a 46-page report that pre-established the results of the audit.
“Clearly, the‘ results ’or‘ conclusions ’that the Cyber Ninjas or any of their subcontractors or partners report on the Senate review are unreliable,” Hobbs ’report says.
The report says the Senate’s account is “secret and disorganized.” He reiterates most of the issues Hobbs has cited for months: lack of security, alternative ballot selection and counting processes, chain of custody, and transparency issues.
Time and time again in the report notes there were no procedures consisting of reading, counting and storing the ballots. One person working to examine the role of the ballot boxes complained that the process changed “every day, every day!”
In one example, a Senate contractor told observers that after a week, the ballot scanning “had been abandoned because the contractors performed a software update that resulted in the loss of all images from the ballot “.
Stephen Richer, the engraver of Maricopa County, a Republican victory in 2020 was one of the few Republican Party gains in the state as they lost the presidential race and a seat in the Senate, published a 38-page letter titled “Dear Arizona Republicans” week.
In the letter, Richer, who has become a staunch critic of the Cyber Ninjas audit, details his own political history as a loyal Republican who voted for Trump and explains the wrong steps auditors have taken. and Senate Republicans who hired them led him to respond bluntly, including rejected allegations of criminal offenses posted on a Twitter account managed by the audit team.
Richer notes that three partial post-election audits of Maricopa County results were found to be accurate.
He also said he would still be willing to do a review of the 2020 election to alleviate Republican concerns, and he would do so with Fann and GOP lawmakers, should they abandon cyber ninjas.
“What I’m not willing to do is please even more skewed, inexperienced, incompetent, conspiracy theory-based, unscrupulous and partisan Cyber Ninjas,” Richer said.
He wrote that the audit “is an abomination that has so far eroded electoral confidence and slandered good people.”