Thread by @maricopacounty

NEW: After a preliminary review of the draft #azaudit report, we can provide a #FactCheck on several of the claims Cyber Ninjas identified as the most serious in their report:
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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.

EXPLANATION:
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.

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.

EXPLANATION: 10,000+ votes in multiple counties is unlikely.

More likely: different people, same name. Example: if you search for Maria Garcia born in 1980, you’ll get 7 active voters in Maricopa County and 12 statewide. And that’s just one name.

If Cyber Ninjas understood data analysis, they would have performed standard processes to rule out situations that lead to faulty conclusions.

CLAIM: 9,041 more ballots returned by voters than received

BOTTOM LINE: This suggests a lack of understanding about how EV 33 files work. It’s not unusual for more ballots to be returned by voters than received.

EXPLANATION: The majority of these involve cases where voters returned a ballot without a signature or with a signature discrepancy. In those cases, election staff contact the voter to ensure their vote counts.

The most common reasons for a single voter having multiple entries in the EV 33 file are:
• a voter sent back an envelope unsigned
• there’s a signature discrepancy

A record for the original ballot is entered into the EV 33 file (where we track returned ballots). A second entry is recorded when a ballot envelope is signed or the signature discrepancy is resolved.

The appropriate conclusion to draw from this finding is that the early voting team was performing their statutory-required responsibility by reviewing signatures on all returned mail-in ballots.

Back with additional fact-checking in one hour.