PHOENIX (AP) — Arizona Attorney General Mark Burnovich said Monday that his investigators found only one dead voter after they thoroughly reviewed findings from a partisan audit of the 2020 election that found 282 ballots cast in the name of someone who has died.
The finding by the Republican attorney general, who is running for the U.S. Senate in Tuesday’s primary, further discredits the review, which was conducted last year. The review was led by an inexperienced firm, Cyber Ninjas, and conducted primarily by Donald Trump supporters who mistakenly believe the election was stolen from him.
“Our agents investigated all individuals reported dead by Cyber Ninjas, and many were very surprised to learn that they were dead,” Burnovich wrote in a letter to state Senate President Karen Phan, who used the right was subpoenaed to obtain ballots, tabulators and election data and hired Cyber Ninjas for what she called a “forensic audit.”
Of the one proven incident, “the facts of the case do not support prosecution,” said Ryan Anderson, a spokesman for Burnovich. He said the dead man’s ballot was not counted. None of the three criminal cases the attorney general has filed against dead voters are related to the Cyber Ninjas investigation, he said.
Burnovich did not say whether charges had been filed in connection with the single documented incident, and his spokesman, Ryan Anderson, did not return a phone call and text message. All other people listed by Cyber Ninjas as deceased “were found to be current voters,” Burnovich wrote.
Combined with other dead voter reports, Bernovich’s Election Integrity Unit investigated a total of 409 names and turned up “only a few potential cases.”
Bernovich guaranteed the legitimacy of the election immediately after President Joe Biden’s victory, but later published his investigation into the Cyber Ninjas allegations while seeking Trump’s support for his Senate campaign. In the end, Trump released a scathing statement saying Bernovich was not doing enough to expand on his fraud allegations and supported businessman Blake Masters.
Federal and state election officials and Trump’s attorney general said there was no credible evidence the election was rigged. The former president’s claims of fraud have also been roundly rejected by the courts, including Trump-appointed judges.
The Cyber Ninjas review examines data, machines and bulletins from Maricopa County, the state’s largest. He produced a report that experts described as riddled with errors, biases and flawed methodology. Yet even this partisan review resulted in a recount that would not have changed the result, finding that Biden had won by 360 more votes than the official results.
Add Comment