What Is Going on With the Arizona Audit?
The #AZAudit is Creating a Storm of Controversy and Upending Electoral Best Practices
By Lia Merivaki
Arizona is in the spotlight thanks to the state legislature’s decision to conduct an audit in Maricopa County months after the November 2020 election.
The Arizona state judiciary committee suggests the audit will put to rest concerns that the election was stolen from Donald Trump. But the audit itself has come under fire from election officials and administrators, including Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs and former Maricopa County Recorder Adrian Fontes, as well as voting rights attorneys, scholars, and reporters covering the audit.
The criticisms stem from concerns about the motivation behind the audit — which is being conducted at the request of the Republican-controlled Senate even though earlier audits turned up no significant problems — and from the lack of transparency and professionalism in how the audit is being managed.
As a result, the audit risks further decreasing public trust in elections, both in Arizona and beyond. Let’s take a closer look at the issues involved:
What is a post-election audit?
A post-election audit aims to verify the accuracy of election results — i.e., that the winner really did win — through a variety of methods, such as checking paper ballots or records against the results produced by the voting system. As the U.S. Election Assistance Commission reports, “well-designed and properly performed post-election audits can significantly mitigate the threat of error, and should be integral to any vote counting system.”
Post-election audits are different from recounts, which involve the counting of every ballot cast in a close or disputed election. During post-election audits, local jurisdictions review just a percentage of their tabulation equipment or ballots, expanding to a full recount only if potentially significant problems are found. State election laws regulate both recounts and audits, with at least 34 states mandating manual audits.
Post-election audits are open to the public in at least 21 states, and there is some variation with respect to whether political parties and representatives of political candidates have additional access to the process.
What’s Happening in Arizona?
In Arizona, state law says that “county election officials are required to conduct a hand count of a sample of ballots to test the accuracy of the vote tabulation equipment if there is participation from the county political parties.”
After the November 2020 election, five of 15 counties in Arizona did not perform an audit because the parties did not assign members to the Hand Count Election Board. Maricopa County performed its first audit on Nov. 4 and two additional audits on Nov. 7 and 9 in response to protests challenging the outcome of the election. According to the Arizona Secretary of State, there were “no discrepancies found” in any of the audits, meaning that the absolute difference between the hand count and the voting machine count was zero.
Several months after these audits took place, the Arizona Senate subpoenaed Maricopa County and requested the transfer of over 2 million ballots and about 400 voting machines for an audit to be performed by a Florida-based consulting company called “Cyber Ninjas.” The company has limited experience with post-election audits, which immediately raised red flags among election experts.
Observers of the audit have reported serious issues with the transparency of the process, a lack of knowledge among auditors about state election law and how to manage the ballots (e.g., chain of custody requirements), concerns about violations of voter privacy, and questions about who is funding the audit. The most recent controversies involve a request to scan ballots for bamboo fibers, based on unsubstantiated claims that ballots were forged in Asia, and a request to the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors to provide passwords to access routers and voting machines. As the election officials report, however, passwords are retained by the voting machine vendors, not the county election administrators.
Increasing concerns about the conduct of the audit have led the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division to send a letter to local officials, citing potential violations of federal laws for storing and maintaining voting records. The letter was issued after a review of the contract between the Arizona Senate and Cyber Ninjas, in which the company listed plans to contact voters whose voter registration “did not make sense,” which raises serious concerns about the potential for voter intimidation and violations of privacy. Civil rights attorneys explicitly referenced the potential for intimidation against minority voters, which would violate the Voting Rights Act.
How is What’s Happening in Arizona Different from What’s Happening in New Hampshire?
New Hampshire is also conducting a post-election audit. State legislators from both parties made the decision to do so after a losing Democratic candidate in the town of Windham requested a recount that turned up some discrepancies in the vote tally.
Although the result of the election will not change, the New Hampshire audit is a useful example of why and how post-election audits for specific races should be performed. The margin of victory was miniscule (24 votes), which is why the losing candidate requested a recount, and the recount revealed discrepancies. The losing candidate lost more votes during the recount, which indicated potential issues with the tabulation process.
What Is the Potential Impact of the Arizona Audit?
One likelihood is that it will further erode trust in the electoral process. Already, despite the lack of credible evidence, half of Republicans believe President Joe Biden stole the election. Disgruntled voters have sent death threats to election officials; in fact, Arizona’s secretary of state is now under government protection because of threats made against her.
The conduct of the Arizona audit also could influence the shape of election administration in Arizona and beyond. It is possible that other state legislatures will take a cue from Arizona and try to use audits as a political tactic when the majority party is unhappy with an election outcome. It is probable that more state legislatures will consider taking over the administration of elections, as Georgia has recently done.
Partisan-driven legislative interventions into election administration when there is no credible evidence of fraud risks further undermining public confidence in elections. If audits conducted by election authorities don’t resolve issues, then judicial authorities, not legislatures, are the appropriate vehicle to settle election disputes.
RELATED: Principles for Transparency and Accountability in Post-Election Audits
Lia Merivaki is an assistant professor of American politics at Mississippi State University and a member of the Carter Center’s U.S. Election Expert Study Team.
