The counting and examination of paper ballots are finished in the forensic audit of the 2020 election in Maricopa County, Arizona.
The Maricopa Arizona Audit Twitter account made the announcement Friday evening.
“Audit Update: Paper examination and counting are finished today,” read the tweet. “Thank you to all the amazing Arizona volunteers who made this audit possible!”
Audit Update: Paper examination and counting are finished today. Thank you to all the amazing Arizona volunteers who made this audit possible! 🇺🇸
— Maricopa Arizona Audit (@ArizonaAudit) June 26, 2021
The announcement confirming the conclusion of the ballot inspection portion of the audit comes less than two weeks after auditors finished a recount of 2.1 million ballots cast in Arizona’s most populous county, which includes Phoenix, with a few exceptions, such as Braille ballots.
The physical review of ballots included an inspection of their weight and thickness, examination of folds under microscopes, and workers holding ballots up to UV lights.
Towards the end of the process, workers were examining 100,000 ballots per day, the Maricopa Arizona Audit said in a tweet on Thursday.
The audit also included the capturing of information from voting machines, after which Arizona’s Democratic secretary of state, Katie Hobbs,advised the county to replace its voting machines over concerns that the review compromised their “security and integrity“
If you’re expecting to hear the finding any time soon, you’ll have to be patient. According to Ken Bennett, the Arizona Senate liaison, we can expect to learn the findings of the audit as early as the end of July or as late as Labor Day.
Maricopa County audit findings are expected to be released in August.
That's the middle of the forecast cone for a report.
Ken Bennett, the Arizona Senate liaison, says earliest could be end of July or as late a Labor Day pic.twitter.com/McgxXLIHyy
— Daniel Chaitin (@danielchaitin7) June 19, 2021
The Trump campaign sued Arizona election officials last year, alleging irregularities in Maricopa County, which Donald Trump won in 2016. According to state-certified results, Biden barely won the state by a 10,457-vote margin. Even liberal networks CNN and MSNBC believed that Trump was on track to win the state.
If both the Maricopa County, Ariz., audit and the Fulton County, Ga., audit found enough fraud to change the results in those states, Biden’s lead in the Electoral College would shrink to 279, and Trump’s Electoral College vote count would be 259—which would still not be enough to alter the results of the election. But, if an audit finds results-changing fraud in Pennsylvania—where a forensic audit is expected to happen—that would mean that Trump’s true Electoral College vote total in 2020 would have been 279 to Biden’s 259.
Unfortunately, this doesn’t mean that the 2020 election would be invalidated and Trump would assume the presidency again, as there is no constitutional process for such an event. According to Trump’s former legal advisor, Jenna Ellis, “The Constitution has only one process for removal of a sitting president: impeachment and conviction.”
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“The best thing we can do as constitutionalists moving forward is to ensure this utter disregard for states’ election laws never happens again,” Ellis continued. “That’s why election integrity is the number one issue facing America today,” she added.
So, let’s wait and see what the results of the audit are.
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