Audit leaders stricken with Covid

The Arizona Senate received only a portion of the report on its review of Maricopa County’s 2020 general election today because Cyber Ninjas CEO Doug Logan and two others on his five-person team tested positive for Covid and are “quite sick,” according to Senate President Karen Fann. 

Fann, R-Prescott, said that one team member, not Logan, was in the hospital with pneumonia. 

She said the Senate legal team would meet Wednesday to review the partial report and that Logan would be present via Zoom at that meeting. When the rest of the draft report is submitted, the Senate team plans to hold another meeting to review it. Then the final report will be shared with the Senate Judiciary Committee and the findings will be released to the public. 

It’s possible some information from the report will be made public sooner than that, perhaps even after the meeting on Wednesday, Fann said. 

“We don’t want to just put out just arbitrarily information, but if there’s something that the team is comfortable with that is hard solid facts — we know that everybody’s anxious to see these reports and would like some information — so I would love to have the ability to share it as soon as we know that it’s confirmed,” Fann said. 

Besides Covid, Fann blamed the county for the delay, saying that the Senate received requested images of ballot envelopes on Aug. 19 and that they still need to be analyzed.  

But the county maintains that it already gave images of the ballot envelopes to the Senate on April 22, according to Megan Gilbertson, Maricopa County Elections Department spokeswoman. The county also said as much in an Aug. 2 letter in response to the Senate’s July 26 subpoena. 

“Maricopa County already provided digital images of ballot envelopes used in the November 3, 2020 General Election,” the Aug. 2 letter stated, directing Cyber Ninjas to where it said the files could be found. “…If Cyber Ninjas are unable to find them there, the County can produce them again.”  

Gilbertson said the county gave the images to the Senate a second time Aug. 19.  

Fann said that wasn’t true and that the auditors received the images for the first time on that day.  

“I had three separate IT experts look, and it was not there,” Fann said. “I think they thought that they had sent it to us, but I don’t know. I’m not the IT tech, but I can guarantee you it was not there.” 

Fann’s plans for the audit release have changed several times over the past few months. In June, the Legislature included language in its budget saying the Senate Government Committee, led by Secretary of State candidate and audit skeptic Michelle Ugenti-Rita, would receive and review the report. Members of the Senate Judiciary Committee later insisted they would have jurisdiction over it instead. And in recent weeks, Fann has instead referred to a “Senate team,” though she has yet to identify the people on that team.