Fact-checking the audit Once the bad information gets out there, people have got to hear the truth and they’ve got to hear it from a credible source.
– Gowri Ramachandran, Brennan Center for Justice
Damage done: Audit leader’s testimony sets off nationwide wave of misinformation
From the state Capitol in Phoenix to Mar-A-Lago in Florida, people are falsely claiming that the Arizona Senate’s election review showed that tens of thousands of illegitimate votes were counted in Maricopa County.
Lawmakers are saying it. Prominent statewide candidates are saying it. Former President Donald Trump is saying it.
Who’s not saying it? The audit team leader who started it all.
Doug Logan, the leader of Senate President Karen Fann’s audit team and the CEO of the Florida-based cyber security company Cyber Ninjas, testified at a briefing in the Arizona Senate last week that his analysis found 74,243 early ballots were counted despite no evidence that they were ever mailed to voters. He also claimed to have found more than 11,000 ballots cast by people who weren’t listed as being registered to vote at the time of the election, and nearly 4,000 ballots cast by people who registered after the deadline to vote in the November election.
Logan never said the 74,000 votes were illegally cast or improperly counted. He said he didn’t know for sure. Numerous media outlets, including the Arizona Mirror, investigated the claim in the days after the hearing and found that there was nothing suspicious about the ballots at all. . .
Misinformation abounds
Trump, who is scheduled to attend a rally in Phoenix on Saturday, quickly latched onto the debunked claim, issuing several press releases after the Senate briefing in which he inaccurately described the 74,000 “magically appearing ballots” as illegitimate and falsely claiming that the hearing exposed evidence of fraud.
“The irregularities revealed at the hearing today amount to hundreds of thousands of votes or, many times what is necessary for us to have won,” said Trump, whom President Joe Biden defeated in Arizona by 10,457 votes.
Other prominent national GOP figures touted the same discredited claims.
“In Arizona, 74,000 ballots were counted with no record of being sent in,” tweeted U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colorado. “That’s not normal. That’s not right. That’s not safe nor is it secure.”
Closer to home, a number of Republican political figures in Arizona also falsely described Logan’s claim as evidence of as many as 100,000 fraudulent ballots.
Some state lawmakers even went so far as to demand that Arizona recall its 11 electoral votes for Biden, something that is not permitted by the United States Constitution. Rogers, the state senator, called for Arizona to hold a new presidential election on account of “tens of thousands of ballots mailed without being requested, the over ten thousand people who voted after registering after November 3rd,” and other dubious claims from the audit hearing.
State Rep. Mark Finchem, a Republican candidate for secretary of state, called the disproven claim “probably one of the most stunning revelations” to come out of the briefing.
Several major candidates for statewide office also ran with the bogus claims. Kari Lake, a former Fox 10 anchor who is now seeking the GOP nomination for governor, tweeted, “How do Arizonans know if their votes really counted on November 3rd? Tens of thousands of ballots are in question according to auditors — what a debacle!”
Former U.S. Rep. Matt Salmon, another Republican contender for governor, also misstated Logan’s testimony, claiming that the audit found “real problems” with the 2020 election. “Arizonans have legitimate concerns about how the #election was handled and they deserve answers,” Salmon wrote on Twitter.
Some conservative media outlets promoted the dubious claims as well. The overtly pro-Trump One America News Network, for example, which has a history of repeating false claims about Arizona’s 2020 election and which is actively raising money to pay for the audit, called Logan’s mistaken revelation a “bombshell.”and more . . .
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