Trio of election experts offers Arizona Senate another chance to check Cyber Ninjas audit work – The Arizona Republic

Call them the anti-ninjas.

Since June,three men with years of election experience have tried to get the attention of the Arizona Senate bysaying they have a way to check the work done by the Cyber Ninjas, the contractor hired to lead the review of Maricopa County's 2020 election results.

But they can't do it without help from the Senate. They would need some of the detailed data produced by the Ninjas as part of the audit andso far, Republican leaders have rebuffed the group's overtures.

On Thursday, the trio, who call themselves "the Audit Guys," renewed their challenge.

Using a method they had developed by obtaining the county's "cast vote" record through a public records request, they released the number of ballots contained in each of 24 boxes of returns without touching a single ballot.

They matched it up against the tally of those 24 boxesdone by high-speed paper-counting machines the Senate had commissioned.Senate audit liaison Ken Bennett shared those results with them in July. It was almost a perfect match:99.9%.

Then, they posted the number of votes on the ballots in those boxes won by Libertarian presidential candidate Jo Jorgenson last fall, again using the records they had compiled from the cast-vote file. In a post on their website, real-audits.org, the trio challenged the Senate to provide the Ninjas' findingsto see how the counts compare.

The goal, said Larry Moore, one of the three Audit Guys, is to get the Senate to release the Ninjas' count of the votes for not just Jorgenson, but also Joe Biden and Donald Trump. Moore is betting the numbers won't be anywhere near close.

They can use that to test out their methodologies," Moore said of the data the three menposted on Jorgenson's votes (a total of 342 votes from the 24 boxes of ballots for which they had data). "Were withholding the Biden and Trump votes because we want them (the Ninjas)to show their totals first.

Hours after the Audit Guys issued their latest challenge, the Senate announced it will release the audit report Sept. 24. Moore said he is skeptical the report will have the detail he needs to check the Ninjas'work.

Instead, he said he and his colleagues are relying on a public-records request they filed last month to obtain that data. Those details include the numbers Maricopa County used to identify each of the 1,691 boxes of ballots that were handed over to the Ninjas under a court subpoena, as well as the totals of ballot counts and vote counts that were recorded for each box.

Moore is the retired founder of the Clear Ballot Group, which created a method to independently audit voting systems. Theother "audit guys" are Benny White, a Tucson Republican who has done elections and voter-registration analysis for the Republican Party and TimHalvorsen, Clear Ballot's retired chief technology officer.

Senate President Karen Fann, R-Prescott, said Thursday that the Senate has received various offers to check the ballot count, but wouldn't consider opening up any of the Ninja's data until their report is finished.

Reach the reporter atmaryjo.pitzl@arizonarepublic.comand follow her on Twitter@maryjpitzl.

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Trio of election experts offers Arizona Senate another chance to check Cyber Ninjas audit work - The Arizona Republic