Thread by @jennycohn1

Great piece by @JenAFifield about the potential upcoming ballot image audit in Maricopa County by Ray Lutz’s nonprofit, Citizens Oversight. 1/ azcentral.com/story/news/pol…

“The Senate would pay the nonprofit, and Lutz said it would also accept outside donations, but not from political organizations or ‘from crazies.’” 2/

“Asked specifically whether he would accept donations from the Republican nonprofit advocacy organizations that have been created to fundraise for the audit, he said he would not.” 3/

The Lutz audit “would not disrupt the current hand count because it would not use the actual ballots. Instead, Lutz’s team would use the digital image of each ballot.” 4/

“Each time a ballot is fed into a vote-counting machine during the election, the machine creates a digital image of the ballot. The county was required to provide the Senate with those images along with the actual ballots, under the Senate’s subpoenas.” 5/

“Lutz said he has tested his technology using the 2020 general election results from a handful of counties in Georgia and Florida, and those tests show his system is accurate. His organization is still finalizing the reports showing results from those audits.” 6/

“Only one of the major voting system companies nationwide has software that can re-tabulate other company’s ballots, as Lutz is proposing to do, and that’s Clear Ballot.” 7/

“Leon County, Florida, has used Clear Ballot for official audits since 2016. The county’s Supervisor of Elections Mark Earley was surprised to hear that Lutz said he had a technology that could do the same thing.” 8/

“He said to complete valid and official audits, you need to use a system that has been tested repeatedly and comprehensively to ensure it can accurately count votes.
‘This is a fly-by-night system,’ he said, citing its lack of testing. ‘It won’t add validity to the election.’” 9/

Note that Clear Ballot has ties to Diebold and ES&S which has always made me uncomfortable. I do know at least one election integrity advocate/writer who sings their praises. I guess I’m conflicted about them. 10/

This part is key. “Lutz said that his approach is different from that of Clear Ballot, mostly bc of his transparent approach.
Clear Ballot uses proprietary software & contracts its services to election departments across the country. IT DOES NOT SHARE ITS ANALYSIS PUBLICLY.” 11/

This is also key. “Lutz, on the other hand, has created open source technology that operates on the cloud. He wants the public to be able to review his audit results by looking at individual ballots and the results from those ballots.” 12/

Note that I interviewed Lutz before the election. Here is a snip. 13/

I am not sure if Lutz is making the right decision to test Audit Engine in Maricopa, but we have to start somewhere and Democrats refuse to even request meaningful hand audits of their own poll-defying down ballot losses. 14/

Contrary to popular belief most official US election audits are theatre. America’s top election auditing expert told me before the 2020 election that only a few states conduct audits that have a good chance of detecting outcome-altering attacks & they audit only a few races. 15/

Link to post 15:

16/ nybooks.com/daily/2020/10/…

If Lutz’s Audit Engine works, maybe voters will be able to obtain ballot images (through public records requests) and use the Engine to audit the Democrats’ surprising down ballot losses. Ds refuse to request meaningful audits of their own losses. We must do something. 17/

So yeah, I hope it works. And yeah I see the danger too. And no, I don’t know if it will work. Fingers tightly crossed. 18/

Advocates like John Brakey and Ray Lutz have fought to force election officials to NOT destroy and make available ballot images for years. Georgia just passed a law making them available to the public. This is positive progress despite the bleakness of GOP propaganda overall. 19/

PS. Lutz is not a MAGA. Not at all. 20/