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Msg ID: 2704819 Old Guy, you are wrong once again - Sham Review in AZ shows Biden Won +3/-1     
Author:bladeslap
9/24/2021 5:55:02 AM

How are you going to respond to this one? 

You put all your eggs in this one..

The partisan review of Maricopa County's 2.1 million ballots cast in the 2020 election found a vote count nearly identical to what the county had previously reported, a draft report detailing its findings shows.

The state Senate Republicans who seized on former President Donald Trump's lies about widespread election fraud and ordered up the report and Cyber Ninjas, the inexperienced company hired to conduct it, are set to detail their findings in a public presentation Friday.
The draft report emerged Thursday night, and audit spokesman Randy Pullen confirmed its validity to KJZZ Phoenix. "It's not the final report, but it's close," he said.
The draft report shows that the hand recount found that President Joe Biden received 99 more votes than Maricopa County had reported after November's election, while former President Donald Trump received 261 fewer votes than the county reported.
Maricopa County's Republican-led board of supervisors pointed to the draft Thursday night, saying that it underscores the reality that the county ran an accurate election.
"You don't have to dig deep into the draft copy of the Arizona Senate/Cyber Ninja audit report to confirm what I already knew -- the candidates certified by the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, Governor, Secretary of State and Attorney General -- did, in fact, win," board chairman Jack Sellers, a Republican, said in a statement.

"This means the tabulation equipment counted the ballots as they were designed to do, and the results reflect the will of the voters," he said. "That should be the end of the story. Everything else is just noise."
Elections experts in both parties, looking at the manner and the methods of the so-called "audit," have said for months that its results will not be credible. It was conducted by the Florida-based company Cyber Ninjas, which had no experience auditing election results and is led by a man who has repeated wild conspiracy theories about election fraud. The company and its volunteers and subcontractors did not follow standard auditing procedures, and observers from Democratic Secretary of State Katie Hobbs' office repeatedly noted instances in which those conducting the review broke their own rules.
No matter the outcome of Cyber Ninjas' examination, the reality that Biden is president and won Arizona's 11 electoral votes last year will not change.
Still, former President Donald Trump and those who have propped up his lies about widespread election fraud have pointed to the Arizona review as crucial in their continuing effort to challenge the 2020 election results.
Here's what you need to know ahead of the Senate's release of the sham report:

How we got here

The Republican push to undo Maricopa County's election results began as soon as President Joe Biden won the state by 10,457 votes -- finishing a narrow 0.4 percentage points ahead of Trump, thanks in part to a more than 45,000-vote advantage in Maricopa, the home of Phoenix and Arizona's most populous county.
Trump's personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, visited Arizona weeks after the election there and made calls to Maricopa County Republicans. He left a voicemail on Christmas Eve for Maricopa County Supervisor Bill Gates, a Republican, saying that "maybe we can get this thing fixed up."
In early 2021, the county's board of supervisors had hired two firms certified by the US Elections Assistance Commission to audit its elections equipment and software. Those audits found no problems.
But it wasn't enough for Arizona state Senate Republicans, who were under pressure from conservatives in the state to undo the 2020 election's outcome, no matter the facts. Senate President Karen Fann, in a December email to a constituent obtained through an open records request by the watchdog group American Oversight, said she'd been communicating with Giuliani and had spoken on the phone with Trump.
Senate Republicans issued subpoenas for Maricopa County's ballots and other materials. After a judge ruled that Maricopa County must comply with the subpoenas in February, the Senate hired Cyber Ninjas, a firm with no experience auditing elections, to conduct a "forensic audit" on March 31, paying the firm $150,000 while controversially allowing it to raise outside money.
Fann signed a lease for the Arizona State Fairgrounds' Veterans Coliseum beginning on April 19, giving Cyber Ninjas a place to conduct what would become a bizarre, months-long review of Maricopa County's ballots.

What auditors did

On April 23, ballot counting at the coliseum began, with volunteers streaming in to participate in a process many hoped would show Trump had won Arizona last year. Crazy Times Carnival opened in the parking lot outside of where the review was taking place.
The process was haphazard from the outset. Observers from the Democratic secretary of state's office documented a host of cybersecurity and data-entry concerns, as well as ballots themselves being mishandled and auditors failing to follow their own security protocols.
At one point, workers were using UV lights — which a spokesman for the review said was to check for fake ballots and bamboo fibers in ballots, part of a conspiracy theory that Chinese ballots had been injected into Arizona's election.
Behind schedule, the ballot review had to be halted on May 14 because the coliseum had been reserved for high school graduations. Ballots were moved by tractor trailer into the Wesley Bolin Building, which the State Fair had rated as not recommended for use between May and September because of heat.
The review resumed on May 24 and concluded, with ballots going back into the Bolin building for storage, on July 9. Fann, meanwhile, ordered a separate machine count to take place in that building.
Throughout the audit, Trump-aligned legislators from other states visited and toured the coliseum. Several have sought to launch Arizona-style "audits" in their own states.
On July 29, the ballots were returned to the Maricopa County treasurer's office, and they are now locked inside a permanent vault there, where federal law requires that they be preserved for two years. The results of the Cyber Ninjas' process haven't yet been detailed — and at one point in August, the completion of the firm's report on its so-called audit was delayed because several people involved, including Cyber Ninjas CEO Doug Logan, had Covid-19.

What they're presenting

The Arizona Senate will receive a report detailing the results of the "audit" at a 1 p.m. PT presentation Friday on the Senate floor.
Fann has said it will cover Cyber Ninjas' hand count of the 2020 results for president and one US Senate seat in Maricopa County, as well as a machine count that Fann ordered to check the Cyber Ninjas' count's accuracy in July, and a review of mail-in ballot envelopes for missing signatures.
The speakers at Friday's presentation include Fann, Senate Judiciary Chairman Warren Petersen, Logan, his tech subcontractor Ben Cotton, conspiracy theorist and anti-vaccine activist Shiva Ayyadurai, who reviewed mail-in ballot envelopes, as well as Ken Bennett and Randy Pullen, who the Senate tapped as liaisons for the process.
In past meetings, the same roster of participants has made unfounded claims that were quickly debunked by Maricopa County officials and others.
One critical example that illustrates how the sham audit has given birth to conspiracy theories that have taken hold on the right: In an earlier meeting, Logan, the Cyber Ninjas CEO, said that Maricopa County had received and counted more than 74,000 mail-in ballots "where there is no clear record of them being sent" to voters, and said the discrepancy merited a massive door-knocking campaign to check the veracity of the votes.
That claim was false. In fact, those 74,000 ballots were early votes cast in-person. Election experts explained that Logan had failed to understand the purpose of the early voting data Maricopa County had collected -- a mistake an experienced auditor would have been unlikely to make. Still, Logan had provided fodder for Trump, who publicly repeated the claim about 74,000 ballots at his Phoenix rally just 10 days later, even though it had already been immediately and widely proven as false.

More allegations of discrepancies coming

The draft report shows that Cyber Ninjas and their subcontractors are still seeking ways to cast doubt on the election.
It points to tens of thousands of ballots that Cyber Ninjas says it could not fully vet, saying there were inconsistencies when Maricopa County's voter registrations were compared to a commercial data company's records. It includes heavy caveats around those doubts, noting that they do not necessarily mean votes were improperly cast, and says the Arizona attorney general should follow up with Maricopa County officials -- who stopped cooperating with the Cyber Ninjas' review -- to get answers. Throughout the months-long review, county officials repeatedly batted down similar claims from Cyber Ninjas and its subcontractors.
"While many areas of concern were specifically identified, our full audit results validating the 2020 General Election are necessarily inconclusive," the draft report's executive summary says.
Maricopa County officials, who had seen the draft report, responded Thursday night by pointing to the results -- which weren't substantially different than the county's final tally -- and dismissing the areas where Cyber Ninjas raises concerns in the draft report.
"The #azaudit draft report from Cyber Ninjas confirms the county's canvass of the 2020 General Election was accurate and the candidates certified as the winners did, in fact, win," the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors said on its Twitter feed.
"Unfortunately, the report is also littered with errors & faulty conclusions about how Maricopa County conducted the 2020 General Election," the board said. "Board members & election officials will pay close attention to what is said at Friday's scheduled Senate hearing & share facts as needed."

Why experts say the results won't be credible

The way Cyber Ninjas and its volunteers and subcontractors conducted the partisan review has led Republican and Democratic elections officials in Arizona, including GOP officials in Maricopa County, to warn that it should not be taken seriously.
Hobbs, the Arizona secretary of state and a 2022 Democratic candidate for governor, issued a 46-page report pre-butting the audit's results. The report calls the Senate-run recount "secretive and disorganized." It reiterates most of the issues Hobbs has cited for months; lack of security, shifting processes for screening and counting ballots, chain of custody and transparency problems. Over and over, the report notes there were no consistent procedures in reading ballots, tallying ballots and storing the ballots. One person working to examine the paper in the ballots complained that the process changed "every day, every day!"
"It is clear that any 'outcomes' or 'conclusions' that are reported from the Senate's review, by the Cyber Ninjas or any of their subcontractors or partners, are unreliable," Hobbs' report says.
Stephen Richer, the Maricopa County recorder -- a Republican whose 2020 victory was one of the GOP's few gains in the state, as they lost the presidential race and a Senate seat -- released a 38-page letter titled "Dear Arizona Republicans" in August. In the letter, he said he would still be willing to conduct a review of the 2020 election to ease Republicans' worries, and would do so with Fann and GOP lawmakers -- if they ditched Cyber Ninjas.
"What I'm not willing to do is further indulge the biased, inexperienced, incompetent, conspiracy-theory-driven, unscrupulous, partisan Cyber Ninjas," Richer said.
Jennifer Morrell, a national expert on election audits who observed the Arizona process, wrote in The Washington Post: "In more than a decade working on elections, audits and recounts across the country, I've never seen one this mismanaged."
Then there's the reality that the review has proven profitable for those conducting and broadcasting it, raising the potential for serious conflicts of interest: Cyber Ninjas has privately raised at least $5.7 million for the ballot review. The pro-Trump, far-right propaganda network OAN was granted extensive access -- and its correspondent was simultaneously fundraising during its broadcasts for election audits.

What about the routers?

A part of the process Cyber Ninjas and its subcontractors attempted to conduct might not yet have concluded.
Maricopa County turned over ballots, voting machines and more after Senate subpoenas, but repeatedly denied the Cyber Ninjas' request for access to the county's network routers -- which Maricopa County officials said would be a security risk.
The Senate and Maricopa County officials reached a settlement last week in which former US Rep. John Shadegg and tech experts he hires will have access to the routers and logs showing internet activity and will answer any questions the Senate has.
The county has said its voting machines were not connected to the internet during the election. Trump and his supporters have still placed the routers at the center of conspiracy theories about his Arizona loss, though. At a July rally in Arizona, Trump said: "They don't want to give them. They are fighting like hell. Why are these commissioners fighting not to give the routers?"

What's next in Arizona?

Republicans who control the state legislature will likely seek to turn their findings into legislation to address anything they spotlight -- rightly or wrongly -- as a problem with how elections are conducted in the state.
The results Friday are also likely to provoke a strong reaction from the base of ardent Trump supporters who have bought into his lies about election fraud. Some, such as Republican state Sen. Wendy Rogers and state Rep. Mark Finchem, who is running for secretary of state, have said the state should decertify its 2020 election results, even though there is no process in place to do so.

Exporting Arizona's "audit" to other states

Ultimately, the risk to democracy posed by the partisan theatre that Arizona Senate Republicans have conducted in recent months is that Trump and his supporters are seizing on the misinformation it has produced and attempting to use it to influence future elections.
Trump's allies have already tried to export Arizona's sham "audit" to other states. In Wisconsin, the GOP state Assembly speaker has tapped a former state Supreme Court justice to investigate the 2020 election. In Pennsylvania, Senate Republicans are launching an Arizona-style review that they are calling a "forensic investigation" of the 2020 election.
And several Republican-led states, including Texas, Florida and Georgia, this year enacted restrictive new voting laws targeting processes such as mail-in voting in the wake of Trump's lies about fraudulent ballots.


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Msg ID: 2704821 A recount never proves anything +1/-3     
Author:observer II
9/24/2021 7:42:13 AM

Reply to: 2704819

It must be an audit. They must verify the people even exist.

Recounting the same mistake is a waste of time



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Msg ID: 2704865 Oh is that right?? +2/-0     
Author:bladeslap
9/24/2021 12:57:11 PM

Reply to: 2704821

So they are now going to go through every single vote, knock on their door, call them, have them sign an affidavidt. 

please, share your pipe dream somwhere else.

Your own paristan, paid for by Trump supporters, "AUDIT" proves not only did he lose, but he lost be even more than they originally thought.

Welcome back to the fray !



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Msg ID: 2705243 No, that's not what I meant. But you knew that +1/-3     
Author:observer II
9/28/2021 8:36:07 AM

Reply to: 2704865

A recount is nothing more than garbage in...garbage out.

 

And no. of course you don't knock on every door t overify votes.

 

But you must do random verifications to ensure the integrity of the system.

 

It's very apparent that fraud is happening. There are far too many accounts. Even you have to admit that. Just think for one minute if this was happening in Trump's favor. You wouldn't be posting here claiming everything was on the up and up.

 

Everyone knows the election was rigged. All the swing states stop counting at the same time sending republican oversight home while the "counting" continued, and the truck loads of votes were unloaded.

 

Trump was winning PA by over 600,000 votes when the counting stopped. Biden made a miraculous come back..................NOT!!

 

And let's not forget Trump recieved over 14 million more votes (?) and supposedly lost. Aint gonna happen. Especially from an opponent who spent his campaigning in the basement.

 

SOme things to think about



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Msg ID: 2705252 Wrong, Only you trumplicans believe that nonsense, Not the rest of us! +3/-1     
Author:Jett
9/28/2021 10:41:00 AM

Reply to: 2705243

You the Old Dude and Flipper are always saying "Everyone Knows", Bull Shit! I do not believe that there was any fraud to amount to anything in the election, it's just part of the "Big Lie" donnie started two years ago. You are stupid enough to believe what he says, you simply don't recognize that you're in a Cult Obsy...  



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Msg ID: 2705501 Says the mindless sheep (NT) +0/-2     
Author:observer II
9/30/2021 10:41:51 AM

Reply to: 2705252


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Msg ID: 2704842 Bull shit, Bladeslap  +2/-2     
Author:Old Guy
9/24/2021 11:13:52 AM

Reply to: 2704819

What it proved was that the left was not going to allow any kind of real investigation into the election.

You are aware that signatures were not allowed to be investigated.  Election fraud comes from ballots cast by ineligible votes, if the eligibility of the voters is not allowed to be checked how can you clan it proved Biden won!  In one case there was over 200,000 mailed in ballots that got counted but NO reacord of being mailed.  

Most of us realize one thing now, our type of government does not work when corruption exists.  The government does not have ways to inforce efforts from both sides of the political spectrum to insure corruption does not exist.  I can give you some real examples:

In Arizona the County refused legal subpoena requested by the Senate for the audi.  How does that happen?  They violated law and nothing happened.  How can you audit if information is withhel?  Just how corrupt is the government when a legal request can be blown off as it did not exist?

useful idiot 

 

 

 

 



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Msg ID: 2704845 That's Not What Donnie Said... +3/-0     
Author:Jett
9/24/2021 11:22:47 AM

Reply to: 2704842


 

You were all so high on this ridiculous waste of 6 million dollars, just wait you said, this will support the Big Lie. This sham recount was done by Red People, your own hand picked people and you still couldn't get the result you wanted!

Biden Won, Donnie Lost, Get Over It Morons...     



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Msg ID: 2704862 You are such a fool +0/-3     
Author:Old Guy
9/24/2021 12:54:31 PM

Reply to: 2704845

Let's say that Biden won, he didn't but let's say it.  Now after just a short time in office he is a complete failure. We told you!  In every measure of this country's success Biden has been on the wrong side of ever issue.  There is NO area that we now can claim as getting better, from the economy not meeting expectations, inflation eating away at our income, now we are not energy dependent,  our border with Mexico debacle, how we withdrew from Afghanistan, and our allies distrust now of the US.  He has failed the people, he has failed the soldiers and failed America!

you should apologize for giving him your vote!  Biden has NO business being the commander in chief, he stole the election and should resign.

useful idiot 



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Msg ID: 2704866 You are such a fool +3/-0     
Author:bladeslap
9/24/2021 1:02:22 PM

Reply to: 2704862

Let me translate what you wrote, Old guy:

>> Now after just a short time in office he is a complete failure

What is Old Guy are really trying to say?

"I don't care what Biden does, I'll just call him a failure. I won't look at the facts, but i'll cherry pick anything possible. In his first 6 months, I'll call him a failure, no matter what."

Old guy, Trump was the worst president this country has ever had. Historians ranked him 2nd from last, his public opinion polls over 4 years were the worst of any president for as long as we have been keeping records.

He single handedly lowered our standing throughout the world, eroded our reputation, killed more than 500,000 because he downplayed Coronavirus...

He was impeached twice, was caught lying under oath multiple times, and blackmailed a foriegn government for his own personal political gain.

He lied more than all the last 10 presidents combined, just in the 1st year in office, and has been diagnosed by mutliple mental health professionals as Narcisistic Peronality Disorder. 

His own Niece, a psychologist, calls him a sick human being. His own sister, a federal judge, not knowing she was being recorded, mocked people like YOU for supporting him.

So, that just simply makes you a pawn being manipulated by him. You're not bright enough to understand the level that he owns you. That's okay, we still love you

 

 



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Msg ID: 2704878 Bladeslap you have it all wrong +0/-3     
Author:Old Guy
9/24/2021 2:00:17 PM

Reply to: 2704866

Not one word you posted had any truth to it.  All fake news!

The people are getting wise to the lefts bull shit.  You post as though Trump is not liked or his policies are not wanted by the people.  I have news for you, Trump is loved by a large percentage of the population and supported.  Last year Trump recommended 122 people to be elected for office, guess what 120 of them won!  This year he has recommended 20 so far and all have won.  Trump has the left running scarEd, thatis why they can't quit posting fake news about him.  

Face the facts, now that Biden is in office we lost our good standing in the world.  No one trust us as an ally.  Crap, the French even called home the ambassador.  We have become the joke of the world.  Pay attention you fool, even the British Prime Minister was rolling his eyes over Biden!

posting that he killed 500,00 over the virus is possibly the most foolish and biased lie you can make.  Get a grip on reality.  

He was impeached twice by an kangaroo court, impeachments that we're so misguided they have NO value.

You lied again, he has never been caught lying under oath, NOT ONCE!

Biden blackmailed and did a quid pro quo, there is video to prove it, NOT TRUMP!

He has NOT lied more than the last 10 presidents, Biden has been much worse!  Besides, name just one other president that fact checks ever checked on, they fact checked everything from Trum, ignore others.

 



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Msg ID: 2704879 Republicans Worried Blind Worship Of Trump Overriding Traditional Values Li +3/-0     
Author:TheCrow
9/24/2021 2:04:46 PM

Reply to: 2704878
 
WASHINGTON—Unsettled by the direction in which their party appeared to be headed, a small group of Republicans expressed concern Monday that blind worship of former President Donald Trump had begun to erode more traditional GOP values, such as the blind worship of former President Ronald Reagan. “It’s deeply troubling to me that the Republican Party has devolved into little more than a cult of personality fixated on someone other than Ronald Reagan,” said Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL), who observed that the lionization of a man who over the past four years made life worse for millions of Americans was a dangerous distraction from the lionization of a man who did the same thing but in the 1980s. “It’s disconcerting, with Trump, to see a charismatic entertainer hailed as the ultimate Republican despite a very troubling legacy. That’s supposed to be Reagan’s role. When it comes to the unquestioning acceptance of a man who demonized minorities and made rich people richer at the expense of working families, we must always direct our abject fealty toward the 40th president, not the 45th.” Later in the day, after meeting with GOP congressional leaders and receiving numerous calls from top donors, Kinzinger acknowledged Trump was indeed one of the greatest leaders our country had ever had.


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Msg ID: 2704903 I enjoy you lying to yourself, Old guy +2/-0     
Author:bladeslap
9/24/2021 5:36:47 PM

Reply to: 2704878

please disprove every point I made

1) Worst public opinion poll ratings of any president ever

https://www.usnews.com/news/special-reports/the-worst-presidents/articles/ranking-americas-worst-presidents

https://www.usnews.com/news/special-reports/the-worst-presidents/slideshows/the-10-worst-presidents

Gallup tracking - https://news.gallup.com/poll/116677/presidential-approval-ratings-gallup-historical-statistics-trends.aspx

Trump the worst president in recorded history


Trump lied about Ukraine and blackmailed a country - His own national security advisor spilled the beans:

https://www.justsecurity.org/70937/bolton-book-confirms-most-serious-allegations-in-trump-impeachment-on-ukraine-quid-pro-quo/

I read the book - Oh, he also stated that Trump committed other similar thing - That's just the icing on the cake, but the White house blocked him from publishing more

I could go on and on. You're either blind or just ignorant; you tell me which one



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Msg ID: 2704863 More Excuses again? The ego is a powerful thing +2/-0     
Author:bladeslap
9/24/2021 12:55:48 PM

Reply to: 2704842

Your ego just cannot let this go. I get it. Egos are very hard to reason with. They like to paint a rosier picture than reality.

https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/elections/2021/09/23/arizona-audit-draft-report-confirms-biden-beat-trump-2020/5835521001/

The report shows that Trump lost even worse than originally counted

A monthslong hand recount of Maricopa County’s 2020 vote confirmed that President Joe Biden won and the election was not “stolen” from former President Donald Trump, according to early versions of a report prepared for the Arizona Senate.

The three-volume report by the Cyber Ninjas, the Senate’s lead contractor, includes results that show Trump lost by a wider margin than the county’s official election results. The data in the report also confirms that U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly won in the county.

The official results are set to be presented to the Senate at 1 p.m. Friday. Several versions of the draft report, titled “Maricopa County Forensic Audit” by Cyber Ninjas, circulated prematurely on Wednesday and Thursday. Multiple versions were obtained by The Arizona Republic.

Election analysts say those findings are misleading and built on faulty data.

The draft report shows there was less than a 1,000-vote difference between the county's certified ballot count and the Cyber Ninjas' hand count. 

The hand count shows Trump received 45,469 fewer votes than Biden. The county results showed he lost by 45,109. 

The draft audit report says, however, the election results are inconclusive.

Maricopa County Board Chairman Jack Sellers said the overall results in the draft report confirm “the tabulation equipment counted the ballots as they were designed to do, and the results reflect the will of the voters.”


The Cyber Ninjas' draft report of Maricopa County 2020 election results details a hand count showing President Donald Trump losing votes and challenger Joe Biden gaining votes, confirming Biden won the race.

 

“That should be the end of the story,” he said. “Everything else is just noise.”

Logan declined to comment through his spokesperson Rod Thomson.

The draft report comes in three parts adding up to about 110 pages. It includes recommended changes to state elections law and suggestions for how the county should correct certain election processes, including how to keep voter information updated, ballot handling and voting machine security.



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Msg ID: 2704864 Fact check: No evidence 'lost votes' or 'ghost votes' affected Arizona's el +2/-0     
Author:TheCrow
9/24/2021 12:56:09 PM

Reply to: 2704842

Fact of the matter is that Trump made a false political assertion. Trump is a serial liar and had nothing to lose with various specious statements (lies) while it intensified his anti-establishment credibility with his base.

Trump has made statements in the past that he does not believe in elections, democracy or the American system of government. He wants power, pure and simple and he would be dictator/president for life if he could figure a way to take the office, legally or illegally.

Say Hail to your Dear Leader/Fuhrer.

Fact check: No evidence 'lost votes' or 'ghost votes' affected Arizona's election outcome

Daniel Funke
USA TODAY
 
 
 

The claim: Thousands of 'lost votes' and 'ghost votes' in Arizona indicate the 2020 election was stolen

The votes have been counted, recounted and audited. Federal, state and local elections officials have confirmed the result: Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election.

But online, some conspiracy theorists are still claiming voter fraud helped put Biden in the White House.

"BREAKING – HUGE: Results of Canvassing in Arizona Released – ELECTION STEAL IS NOW CONFIRMED," reads the headline on a Sept. 8 article from the Gateway Pundit, a conservative website that has previously published misinformation about election fraud.

The article accumulated nearly 7,000 shares on Facebook within two days, according to CrowdTangle, a social media insights tool. Similar articles and posts have racked up tens of thousands of interactions. 

 

The Gateway Pundit article is based on an 11-page canvassing report from Liz Harris, an Arizona real estate broker and Republican who unsuccessfully ran for office in 2020. Among its claims: There were more than 173,000 "lost votes" and 96,000 "ghost votes" in Maricopa County, home of Phoenix.

 

"Two primary categories of ineligible ballots and election mishandling, encompassing hundreds of thousands of votes, render the 2020 General Election in Maricopa County uncertifiable," reads the beginning of the report.

They don't.

Arizona and Congress have both certified Biden's win. Local elections officials, media outlets, independent fact-checking organizations and legitimate election experts have refuted Harris' report. There is no evidence widespread voter fraud affected the election outcome in Arizona.

"It reminds me of Mark Twain's quote regarding lies, damn lies and statistics," Kenneth Fernandez, a political science professor at the College of Southern Nevada, said in an email.

USA TODAY reached out to the Gateway Pundit and Harris for comment.

The audit of Maricopa County's ballots from the 2020 general election continues on July 24, 2021, in the Wesley Bolin Building at the Arizona State Fairgrounds in Phoenix, Ariz.
 

Report doesn't prove 'lost votes' claim

Arizona elections officials and survey experts have debunked the report's claim about "lost votes" in Maricopa County.

“The allegations presented in this so-called report are baseless and were quickly disproven by local media," Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, said in a statement emailed to USA TODAY. "It’s yet another attempt to undermine the integrity of our elections."

 

The canvassing report is based on data from 4,570 registered voters in Maricopa County. The claim of "lost votes" stems from 964 interviews with people whom the county indicated did not cast a ballot in the election.

Volunteers working with Harris found that, of that group, about 34% said they had actually voted.

Fact check:No evidence of 8 million 'excess' Biden votes from 2020 election

"Overall, there were 505,709 people in the county registered to vote who did not have a vote recorded in the election," reads the report. "Extrapolating these results to the entire county, which can be done at a scientifically correlated confidence level of 95%, it is estimated that 173,104 voters had their votes stolen."

Experts told USA TODAY there are a couple of things wrong with that conclusion.

Since there was a "full" canvass in one part of Maricopa County and partial canvasses with different sampling rates in other areas, "not every registered voter was equally likely to be surveyed," said Philip Stark, a statistics professor at the University of California-Berkeley. 

"Unless the sample was appropriately random and nonresponse was low and taken into account appropriately, there's no basis for extrapolation from the sample to the county as a whole," he said in an email. "A 'partial canvass' is not a random sample."

Fact check:Arizona audit hasn't found 275,000 fraudulent votes

Stark, who has helped develop methods for auditing elections, also said the response rate in the report is "so low that nothing useful could be said about the county as a whole even if the sample had been truly random."

"Only 4,570 of 11,708 attempted contacts gave data. That's a 61% nonresponse rate," he said. "That makes the estimates and confidence intervals meaningless."

Then there are problems with the general approach of Harris and her volunteers.

Research indicates post-election surveys regularly overestimate voter turnout because people tend to exaggerate their voting behavior. Fernandez said panel studies have found voters "even change their story in who they voted for, sometimes switching their story and recalling that they voted for the winner of the election."

"The bottom line is that what Ms. Harris has found in Arizona is simply another example of turnout over-reporting that we see in pretty much every single election survey," Brian Schaffner, a professor of civic studies at Tufts University, said in an email. "This is not evidence of lost votes, but rather just another example of how people tell little white lies to make themselves look better when answering surveys."

Audit spokesperson Randy Pullen (center) looks through paperwork, July 19, 2021, in the Wesley Bolin Building at the Arizona State Fairgrounds, Phoenix.
 

Claim of 'ghost votes' also debunked

Local media outlets and elections officials have also refuted the report's claim that there were more than 96,000 "ghost votes" in Maricopa County.

The claim is based on data from 3,606 registered voters whom Maricopa County indicated had voted in the election, 2,897 of them by mail. Of that group, Harris and her volunteers found 164 mail-in voters who were "unknown to the resident or known but having moved prior to the election registration deadline."

"This represents 5.66% of all mail-in voters on which data was gathered," reads the report. "Overall, there were 1,702,981 mail-in votes tallied by the in (sic) the election. Extrapolating these results to the entire county, which can be done at a scientifically correlated confidence level of 95%, it is estimated that 96,389 mail-in ballots should not have been cast due to this issue."

 

More:Voter fraud claims create 'circus-like atmosphere,' stir California recall of Gov. Gavin Newsom

Data collection issues aside, the only examples Harris gave in the report didn't check out.

The original cover photo of the report claimed to show a "vacant lot ... that cast two mail-in ballots." But both Stephen Richer, the Republican recorder of Maricopa County, and Garrett Archer, a data analyst for KNXV-TV, found a home that had been on that site since 2005, according to records from the Maricopa County Assessor's Office.

Harris later changed the cover photo to show another vacant lot that purportedly cast a mail-in vote in 2020. But that example was quickly debunked, too.

"There is a valid registered voter at that address and a mobile home park in December of 2019," Archer tweeted Sept. 8

After reaching out to the Maricopa County Elections Department, Archer wrote in a follow-up tweet that the lot was "a mobile home park in 2020 before it was demolished" and the voter in question "requested the ballot be sent to a temporary address."

 
 

Election data reported by KNXV-TV indicates 2,089,756 voters were checked in and 2,089,563 ballots were counted in Maricopa County during the election. The discrepancy is due to rare occurrences like mail-in votes not containing ballots, elections officials told the TV station.

"It is irresponsible and silly to claim 100,000+ errors and offer only 2 alleged inaccuracies, both of which are easily debunked," Richer tweeted Sept. 8.

USA TODAY reached out to Maricopa County for comment, but it did not provide one on the record.

No evidence of fraud in Arizona election

Claims that thousands of fraudulent votes affected the 2020 election outcome in Arizona haven't panned out.

Multiple hand counts have confirmed the election results in Maricopa County, which went for Biden by more than 45,000 votes. A forensic audit of voting machines found no malfeasance. Lawsuits challenging Arizona's election outcome have been dismissed and rejected.

More:Twitter blocked and labeled Donald Trump's tweets on election fraud. They spread anyway.

The Associated Press reported in mid-July that, of the more than 3 million ballots cast in Arizona, elections officials have found fewer than 200 cases of potential voter fraud.

"Maricopa County stands by the results reported by its elections professionals, confirmed by hand counts, two independent audits, and several court challenges, and certified by the Secretary of State, Governor, and Congress," Jason Berry, a spokesperson for Maricopa County, previously told USA TODAY.

Our rating: False

Based on our research, we rate FALSE the claim that thousands of "lost votes" and "ghost votes" in Arizona indicate the 2020 election was stolen. State elections officials from both political parties have refuted the findings in Harris' report, as have local media outlets. Political science and statistics experts told USA TODAY the report's methodology is flawed and cannot be used to make conclusions about Arizona's election outcome. There is no evidence widespread voter fraud affected the state's results in 2020.

 


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Msg ID: 2704869 When logic failes, Old guy And Obsy just make chit up +2/-0     
Author:bladeslap
9/24/2021 1:13:11 PM

Reply to: 2704864

Old guy had his heart set on The ninjas overturning it. Now that they have not overtunred it, in fact tipping it further in Bidens' favor, now they come up with other stories. THey can't prove any fraud, but they believe it happened so they're simply stomping their feet.

Remind you of a certain type of person? 

"Children"

 



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Msg ID: 2704874 Not "children'- toddlers. Bang their head on the floor. Hold their breath.  +2/-0     
Author:TheCrow
9/24/2021 1:31:10 PM

Reply to: 2704869

Not "children'- toddlers. Bang their head on the floor. Hold their breath. Threatening self harm unless you concede to their wishes.

America voters or at least 46.1% of American voters amongst strategic electoral college states elected Trump. That's the way the system is set up, so that's the way it had to go.

Trump was the fifth president who took office with an electoral college vote but without popular votes. Four of those 5 were not re-elected. The only incumbent minority president who was re-elected was Bush 43 who was a wartime president. His Gallup favorability jumped from 55% (a number Trump never approached, peaking at 49%) to 90% after the 9/11.

Trump is a disruptor not a creater. Trump is not a team player, he never built an administrative team in office. the novel coronavirus is an exact distillation of Trump's weaknesses.



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