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Auditors Finish Counting Ballots in Arizona’s Maricopa County

BY ZACHARY STIEBER July 28, 2021 Updated: July 29, 2021

Auditors in Arizona’s largest county on Wednesday finished a third count of ballots and will shift to compiling a draft report on the audit results.

Workers overseen by retired auditor Randy Pullen, a former Arizona Republican Party chair, completed the third count at the Wesley Bolin Building on the Arizona State Fairgrounds in Phoenix, according to Arizona Senate President Karen Fann.

“The physical tabulation of the ballots are complete and are being returned to Maricopa County tomorrow,” Fann told The Epoch Times via email.

The data gathered by the auditors will now be taken to their labs for analysis.

Teams led by Florida-based Cyber Ninjas last month finished an initial hand tally of the nearly 2.1 million ballots cast in the 2020 election.

The third set of numbers was needed because the initial recount and the number Maricopa County reported didn’t match, Fann said earlier this month.

Maricopa County’s Board of Supervisors has repeatedly attacked the auditors and Jack Sellers, the chairman of the board, saying that the methods used were “flawed” and would “produce incorrect results.”

In the third count, workers led by Pullen only tabulated the number of ballots, instead of marking down some or all of the votes like auditors and the county did.

The third count was done on the advice of the Arizona Senate Republicans’ attorney, according to Fann.

The completion of the physical audit work comes after days of tension between Cyber Ninjas and Ken Bennett, a former Republican secretary of state tapped by Fann to serve as the state Senate’s audit liaison.