'Intentionally misleading or staggeringly ignorant': Maricopa County destroys Cyber Ninjas after 'laughable' audit
Maricopa County officials Friday afternoon responded in detail to claims made by Cyber Ninjas in the $6 million six month "audit" of the Arizona county's ballots from the 2020 presidential election. Late Thursday night multiple news organizations reported that Cyber Ninjas' audit, officially released Friday afternoon, found Joe Biden did win the election in Arizona, as originally reported nearly one year ago, and actually walked away with even more votes that first reported, while Donald Trump, the company concluded, got even less.
But the devil is in the details and after six frustrating months of dealing with a company that reportedly has zero expertise in auditing elections, Maricopa County officials blasted some of the "critical concerns" Cyber Ninjas claimed in their report.
Via a lengthy series of tweets Maricopa County officials destroyed Cyber Ninja's audit, which is being called a "fraudit" and a sham.
For example, calling it "intentionally misleading or staggeringly ignorant," Maricopa County blasted Cyber Ninjas and GOP state senators over the claim and "concern" that 23,344 mail-in ballots voted from a prior address:
CLAIM: 23,344 mail-in ballots voted from a prior address.
BOTTOM LINE: Cyber Ninjas still don't understand this is legal under federal election law. To label it a “critical" concern is either intentionally misleading or staggeringly ignorant. AZ senators should know this too. — Maricopa County (@maricopacounty) September 24, 2021
County officials went even further, writing:
1) Military and overseas voters can cast a “federal only ballot" despite living outside the U.S. The address tied to their ballot would be their prior address in AZ. 2) People are allowed to move from one house to another (or even one state to another) in October and November of an election year (yes, shocking!). If the driver's license address matches the voter registration address, they are still allowed to vote. 3) For the November General Election Maricopa County had 20,933 one-time temporary address requests. In addition, snowbirds and college students tend to have forwarding addresses when they are out of the county. 4) Mail-in ballots are not forwarded to another address.
In another they called it "laughable" that Cyber Ninjas were concerned that in a state of "more than 7 million people" ... "yes, some of them share names & birth years."
CLAIM: 10,342 potential voters that voted in multiple counties BOTTOM LINE: There are more than 7 million people in Arizona and, yes, some of them share names & birth years. To identify this as a critical issue is laughable.
— Maricopa County (@maricopacounty) September 24, 2021
"If Cyber Ninjas understood data analysis, they would have performed standard processes to rule out situations that lead to faulty conclusions," county officials added.
And even more criticisms:
"Anomaly" seems to be another way of saying the Senate's contractors don't understand election processes. Sadly, this is par for the course for the #azaudit.
— Maricopa County (@maricopacounty) September 24, 2021
BACKGROUND: These claims of “deleting" and “purging" are reminiscent of the false claim Cyber Ninjas made in May, accusing Maricopa County of deleting an election server. The truth was, the Ninjas looked in the wrong place for the info. It was there all along.
— Maricopa County (@maricopacounty) September 24, 2021
You can read them all here.
