Tag: election audit

Pennsylvania Leadership Conference Poll: Election Integrity Conservatives’ Foremost Concern

Bradley Vasoli

At the Pennsylvania Leadership Conference this weekend, a straw poll of right-leaning activists from across the Keystone State found election integrity tops their public concerns. 

Cybersecurity Association of Pennsylvania President Scott R. Davis, who administered the survey, told attendees at the Penn Harris Hotel west of Harrisburg that 38 percent of those who voted called election integrity the foremost issue facing the state General Assembly. Trailing that topic were the state budget (28 percent) and gun laws (six percent). Eleven percent chose another issue. 

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Pennsylvania Supreme Court Won’t Fast-Track Hearing for Proposed Abortion Amendment

Bradley Vasoli

Pro-lifers and scored a momentary win this week as the Pennsylvania Supreme Court decided against bypassing the Commonwealth Court and hearing a case against a proposed constitutional amendment. 

The Pennsylvania Family Institute and the Pro-Life Union of Greater Philadelphia were among organizations that filed amicus briefs with the majority-Democrat Supreme Court urging it to make Governor Tom Wolf (D) first take his case to the Republican-controlled lower court. In that forum, judges will rule on the validity of a proposed amendment stating that the commonwealth does not confer a constitutional right to abortion.

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After Pennsylvania Court Ruling on Absentee Voting, Republicans Renew Call for Reform

Bradley Vasoli

This week’s decision by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court upholding Act 77 which legalized no-excuse absentee voting in the Keystone State is spurring Republican lawmakers to renew their push for election reform. 

A Republican-led legislature passed and Democratic Governor Tom Wolf signed Act 77 three years ago. Moderate Democratic Senator Lisa Boscola (D-Bethlehem) initially drafted the bill to get rid of straight-party voting, a policy on which Republican legislators largely agreed with her. More Democrats came around to support the measure once a section was added allowing voters to cast mail-in ballots without providing a reason they could not come to the polls (i.e., illness, injury or travel). 

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New Report: Pennsylvania Suffers from ‘Myriad of Election Issues’

Bradley Vasoli

Pennsylvania House State Government Committee Chairman Seth Grove (R-York) released a report Tuesday detailing “a myriad of election issues” in the Keystone State. 

Speaking to reporters at the Capitol Building, Grove reviewed his findings, including inconsistent vote-counting rules, ballot harvesting, fraud and administrative errors. The new report is the third he has issued concerning election problems since November 2020. 

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Mike Lindell Calls Kemp, Raffensperger, and Carr the ‘Triple Crown of Crime’

Addison Basurto

Minnesotan entrepreneur, conservative politico, and CEO of My Pillow, Mike Lindell, spoke to The Georgia Star News on Saturday at the Atlanta Motor Speedway, where he criticized the three most infamous election integrity antagonists in the Peach State when he declared, “you guys have the Triple Crown of Crime down here with Kemp, Raffensperger and Carr and all of them need to go.”

Lindell continued, “I mean, this is our country. Of all the stuff I’ve been out there fighting for with the election crimes. And then you have Republicans, the Republicans have turned on, not just Georgia, but on our country. I mean, you’ve got to get new people and we got to get people that have the people’s back.”

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Arizona Gubernatorial Frontrunner Kari Lake Says She Has Confidence in Senate President Karen Fann to Complete Election Audit

Addison Basurto

Arizona Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake told The Georgia Star News Friday she maintains confidence in Arizona Senate President Karen Fann, despite some doubts in her ability to adequately complete the 2020 election audit.

“I do have confidence in Karen,” Lake told The Star News. “I’ve seen a few things that have made me pause a bit, but don’t forget, she’s the one who got things going.”

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Pennsylvania Lawmaker Proposes ‘Office of Election Crimes and Security’

Bradley Vasoli

Pennsylvania State Sen. Doug Mastriano (R-Gettysburg) announced on Thursday he intends to draft legislation creating an Office of Election Crimes and Security.

The new division within the Pennsylvania Department of State would be charged with probing all alleged violations of voting laws. The proposed bill also targets “ballot harvesting,” the illegal practice of hand-delivering absentee ballots — usually by depositing them in election drop boxes — on behalf of voters other than oneself. Currently, state law treats ballot harvesting as a misdemeanor; Mastriano’s measure would make it a third-degree felony.

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Arizona Attorney General’s Report Recommends Election Reforms Similar to Those Sought in Pennsylvania

Bradley Vasoli

Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich (R) released a report this week on elections in his state—focusing especially on Maricopa County—advocating similar election reforms to those Pennsylvania Republican lawmakers currently seek.

While the report did not make criminal allegations regarding recent elections, it did declare that Arizona’s election system suffers from major procedural vulnerabilities including insufficient time to confirm signatures on ballots submitted during early voting and problems with the chain of custody for ballots placed in drop boxes. Altogether, the attorney general estimates that between 100,000 and 200,000 early ballots were transported without proper protocol being followed.

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Bill Introduced to Correct Pennsylvania’s Voter Records

Bradley Vasoli

Pennsylvania State Sen. Ryan Aument (R-Lititz) announced yesterday he has introduced a bill to correct errors in the state’s voter record-keeping system.

In Dec. 2019, a report by Democratic then-Auditor General Eugene DePasquale detailed a host of problems with that system, known as the Statewide Uniform Registry of Electors (SURE). Within that registry, which is maintained by the Pennsylvania Department of State, DePasquale and his staff discovered 24,408 cases of the same driver’s license (DL) number being indicated on multiple voter records. They also found 2,991 voter records containing information matching that on state Department of Health deceased files.

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Pennsylvania Supreme Court Pauses Examination of Fulton County Voting Machines

Bradley Vasoli

Pennsylvania Senate Intergovernmental Operations Committee contractor Envoy Sage cannot yet gather data from Fulton County’s election devices according to a Friday order of the state Supreme Court.

That directive stays part of a recent Commonwealth-Court ruling that allows the investigation to proceed. Fulton County’s commissioners have voted to comply with the Senate probe, which is part of a broader examination of the 2020 and 2021 Pennsylvania elections and has been spearheaded by the committee’s Republican Chairman Cris Dush (R-Wellsboro). The Democrat-run Pennsylvania Department of State and the voting machines’ manufacturer Dominion Voting Systems are litigating to stop it.

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Voter-Integrity Amendments Pass the Pennsylvania House

Bradley Vasoli

A set of amendments to the Pennsylvania Constitution, including a voter-identification requirement, passed the state House of Representatives this week on nearly party-line votes.

To become part of the state Constitution, the proposed amendments must pass in two consecutive sessions of the Pennsylvania General Assembly and must gain approval by a majority of voters in an election. State House members voted on these measures as amendments to a Senate bill that would let gubernatorial candidates select their own running mates, whereas current law lets Pennsylvanians vote to elect nominees for lieutenant governor.

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Wisconsin Election Commissioners to Respond to Audit in December

The Center Square

The head of the Wisconsin Elections Commission is promising to answer what she says are “misconceptions and misunderstandings” from the state’s recent audit into the 2020 election.

WEC Administrator Meagan Wolfe on Thursday said she and the commission will address the finding of the Legislative Audit Bureau report at the commission’s December meeting.

“We’re pleased that overall, the LAB report confirmed the November 2020 general election was conducted accurately and fairly,” Wolfe said in a statement. “And while there’s always more to be done to ensure consistent election administration in Wisconsin, and we’re working on that every day, we also know there are some misconceptions and misunderstandings built into the LAB’s findings, and that record needs to be corrected.”

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Narrative of a Perfect 2020 Election Eroding as Wisconsin Becomes Investigative Ground Zero

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People at a voting location, voting early at polls

Cognitively impaired nursing home residents in Wisconsin and Michigan cynically exploited for votes. Election mismanagement in Atlanta. Unlawful election instructions in Wisconsin. And 50,000 questionable ballots in Arizona, plus several criminal cases for illegal ballot harvesting and inmate voting.

Eleven months after Donald Trump was ousted from office, the narrative that the 2020 election was clean and secure has frayed like a well-worn shoelace. The challenges of the COVID pandemic, the aggressive new tactics of voting activists and the desire of Democrats to make the collection and delivery of ballots by third parties legal in states where harvesting is expressly forbidden has muddied the establishment portrait and awakened the nation to the painful reality its election system — particularly in big urban areas — is far from perfection.

Nowhere has that story become more clear than the battleground state of Wisconsin, where a local sheriff on Thursday dramatically held a nationally televised news conference alleging he had found evidence of felony crimes involving ballots sent to nursing home residents.

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Wisconsin Election Audit Details Numerous Problems with the 2020 Election Process

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Wisconsin’s Legislative Audit Bureau released its audit of the 2020 presidential election Friday, detailing numerous problems and issues it found with how the election was administered.

The nonpartisan panel reviewed election data from hundreds of cities and municipalities across Wisconsin, as well as written complaints concerning the General Election.

According to the report, the review board is recommending dozens of changes to how the state runs elections, as well as advocating for certain election laws to be adopted or revised.

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Republican Member of Maricopa County Board of Supervisors Resigns After Leaked Recordings Show Support for Election Audit

Cooper Moran

Arizona Republican and member of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors Steve Chucri announced on Tuesday that he will resign, following leaked records.

In the recordings released by the Gateway Pundit, Chucri criticized his colleagues for their lack of support for the forensic audit of the county’s 2.1 million ballots.

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At Pennsylvania Senate Meeting on Elections, Subpoenas Issued, Dem Calls GOPers McCarthyites, Another Has Remarks Curtailed for Breaking Senate Rules

Bradley Vasoli

At Wednesday’s meeting concerning the Pennsylvania’s Senate Intergovernmental Operations Committee’s election investigation, which saw Republicans winning a vote to subpoena voter records, Democrats fumed.

One angrily compared GOP colleagues to Joe McCarthy, the notoriously zealous anti-communist U.S. senator from Wisconsin who served from 1947 to 1957.

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Arizona Supreme Court Allows Release of State Senate’s Records of Contractors Conducting Election Audit

Admin

The Arizona Supreme Court has rejected an effort by the state’s GOP-led Senate to keep confidential records of its review of the 2020 election in Maricopa County now in possession of the contractors conducting the recount.

The court on Tuesday rejected the appeal filed after two lower courts ruled the documents are public records that must be released, according to the Associated Press.

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Fulton County, Pennsylvania Defends Post-2020 Election Audit and Right to Keep Voting Machines

Bradley Vasoli

Fulton County, Pennsylvania election officials are defending their decision to conduct an audit of the 2020 election in their jurisdiction and their right to continue use of their voting machines.

Attorneys from Dillon, McCandless, King, Coulter & Graham LLP who are affiliated with an election-integrity nonprofit known as the Amistad Project, will be handling the case for the small county of about 14,500 residents, situated about 90 miles southwest of Harrisburg.

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Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Vos Expands Election Probe

Bradley Vasoli
Robin Vos

Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester) said Friday he plans to hire more investigators and anticipates allowing more time for a probe into the 2020 presidential contest for Wisconsin’s 10 Electoral-College votes, the Associated Press has reported.

The official vote count in Wisconsin last November put Joe Biden ahead of Donald Trump by 20,682 votes. The margin was just over 0.6 percent of the nearly 3.3 million votes cast statewide. 

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State Senator Paul Boyer Withholds Vote to Enforce Subpoena Against Maricopa County, Arizona Election Officials, Says Auditors Are ‘Inexperienced, Partisan’

Corinne Murdock

State Senator Paul Boyer (R-Glendale) won’t hold Maricopa County election officials in contempt for noncompliance with the Senate’s subpoena for election equipment and materials needed to complete the audit. This was revealed by Senate President Karen Fann (R-Prescott) after Senate Liaison Ken Bennett shared that one of sixteen Republican senators wouldn’t hold the county accountable. 

The auditing company, Cyber Ninjas, explained in a hearing last week that they still lack the splunk logs, chain of custody documents, portable media and external drives, router configuration files or data, network diagram, backups of election management data, digital copies of all election policies and procedures utilized, files transmitted for duplicating or spoiling ballots, records of all paper distributed to vote centers, information and guidelines on adjudication of ballots, total count of all ballots sent to eligible voters on the state’s voter information portal (UOCAVA), and a full backup copy of database of voter rolls. 

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Pennsylvania Punishes County That Allowed Audit of Vote Counting Machines

Admin

The Pennsylvania Department of State decertified Fulton County’s voting machines on Wednesday after officials there participated in a third-party audit.

The voluntary probe came at the request of Sen. Doug Mastriano (R-Gettysburg) who’s currently spearheading a larger effort to audit machines in Tioga, York and Philadelphia counties amid his ongoing campaign to ferret out fraudulent activity during the past two elections.

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Texas State Lawmaker Introduces Bill to Audit 2020 Election Results in Major Counties

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Texas State Representative Steve Toth

ATexas state lawmaker on Monday unveiled legislation requiring a forensic audit of last November’s election results in his state’s most populous counties.

The House bill introduced by state Rep. Steve Toth, a Republican, would require forensic reviews of counties with more than 415,000 residents. The reviews would have to be carried out before Nov. 1, 2021, and completed before Feb. 1, 2022.

Toth’s legislation comes as the Texas legislature is in special session to consider new election integrity laws. The session has been interrupted by the departure of most state Democrat lawmakers in protest.

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Election Auditors Report Surplus of over 74K Mail-In Ballots, 4K Voters Registered After Deadline, 18K Voters Removed from Rolls Following Election

Corinne Murdock

During the Arizona Senate hearing on the election audit in Maricopa County Thursday morning, audit officials reported discovery of issues such as ballot duplicates and surpluses, voter roll data, and machine security. The audit officials testifying were Senate Liaison Ken Bennett, Cyber Ninjas CEO Doug Logan, and digital security firm CyFIR founder Ben Cotton. Cyber Ninjas is conducting the audit.

The Arizona Sun Times checked the Arizona legislature website at 8 am MST. The website was down. All that was displayed was an error message that said service was unavailable. The website remained that way until sometime after the Senate hearing began. 

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Arizona Election Audit Wraps Up Operations, Moves Out of Coliseum

Corinne Murdock

The Arizona audit is wrapping up its operations and has moved out of its three-month home: the Veterans Memorial Coliseum. For about another week, audit workers will finish up in another building on the fairgrounds, the Wesley Bolin Building. Auditors will be able to use the building until July 14.

Although officials told The Arizona Sun Times that they would be finished by last Saturday, more work popped up after the county submitted additional resources that required review. Randy Pullen, a volunteer consultant to the Arizona Senate for the audit, estimated that they would be done sometime next week. He explained to The Sun Times that the slight delay occurred because the county submitted log reports on duplicate ballots last minute. Those logs showed how many from every batch were taken out by the county for duplication.

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The Arizona Republic Sues State Senate, Cyber Ninjas for Election Audit Records

Corinne Murdock

One of Arizona’s largest newspapers is suing the state Senate and the contracted company running the audit, Cyber Ninjas, for access to their election audit records and financial records. The Arizona Republic, part of the Gannett mass media company, filed a special action on Wednesday in the Maricopa County Superior Court – case number LC2021-000180. Reportedly, the Senate denied the paper’s request for access to the audit and financial records, saying they weren’t public record. The specific information they hope to obtain includes the process for the audit, businesses involved, funding sources, and all communications of those involved.

The plaintiffs in the case are Phoenix Newspapers and Kathy Tulumello, news director for The Arizona Republic. Including the state Senate and Cyber Ninjas, the other defendants named are Senate President Karen Fann (R-Prescott), Senate Majority Leader Warren Petersen (R-Gilbert), and the secretary for the Senate, Susan Aceves. 

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Maricopa County to Replace Its Voting Machines, Says Audit Compromised Them

Corinne Murdock

Maricopa County intends to replace all of its election machines, due to concerns that the audit compromised the equipment. The county’s Dominion Democracy Suite 5.5B voting system was turned over to Arizona Senate President Karen Fann (R-Prescott) and Senate Majority Leader Warren Petersen (R-Gilbert) through subpoena earlier this year. The Senate contracted with a private company, Cyber Ninjas, to conduct the audit.

Maricopa County Attorney Allister Adel confirmed on Monday the county’s intent to replace their entire fleet of voting machines in a reply letter to Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs.

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Apparent Break-In Occurred at Georgia Warehouse Housing Ballots at Center of Pending Election Audit

Corinne Murdock
Downtown Atlanta

An apparent break-in occurred at the ballot-holding warehouse where the ballots for the pending Fulton County, Georgia audit were housed. According to reports, security guards hired by Fulton County left the facility. About 20 minutes later, the facility’s alarm was set off. A security detail hired by the plaintiffs’ attorney, Bob Cheeley, relayed to reporters that the facility door was wide open.

The audit concerns over 145,000 ballots from the presidential election. President Joe Biden won Georgia with just over 12,600 votes.

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GOP Gubernatorial Candidate Vernon Jones Calls for ‘An Immediate Forensic Audit of the Georgia 2020 Election’

Julie Carr

Georgia GOP gubernatorial candidate and former State Rep. Vernon Jones called for “an immediate for an immediate forensic audit of the Georgia 2020 election” at a press conference on Wednesday. Here is a transcript of that press conference: Jones: The integrity of our election is nonnegotiable. It is non-negotiable. Zero room. And that is where I’m here today to call for an immediate forensic audit of the Georgia 2020 election. In recent weeks, I found myself troubled by the recent findings coming out of Arizona as they conduct forensic audits of their own led by their state legislatures. From this audit, previously unknown findings have since come to life, including reports of missing ballots, broken seals on the boxes and containers that contain them, and wholly deleted databases of information related to this election. That is not right. Let me make one thing clear. There’s no place in Georgia elections for those types of shenanigans. And the findings of such an audit will paint a clear road map where we must go from here in terms of further reform to safeguard our election process. Since day one, my campaign had made a commitment of integrity to this election while Brian…

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Maricopa County Withholding Subpoenaed Hardware from Election Audit, Citing Alleged ‘Security Risk’

Admin

Officials in Arizona’s Maricopa County are withholding materials subpoenaed by the state legislature as part of its audit of the county’s 2020 election, claiming that surrendering them would constitute a security risk for both law enforcement and federal agencies.

A Monday letter sent from the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office to Ken Bennett, the former Arizona secretary of state and the liaison between the state Senate and the auditors, said the county had elected not to turn over “several routers” requested by the legislature due to an alleged “significant security risk to law enforcement data utilized by the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office as well as numerous federal agencies.”

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Sidney Powell ‘Releases the Kraken’ in Georgia Lawsuit

Corinne Murdock

Attorney Sidney Powell filed her “Biblical” lawsuit on Wednesday in Georgia, making good on her promise to “release the Kraken.” The defendants were named as Governor Brian Kemp, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, and State Election Board members David Worley, Rebecca Sullivan, Matthew Mashburn, and Anh Le. The lawsuit called into question around 146,600 votes at minimum.

The 104-page lawsuit claimed that Dominion Voting Systems (Dominion) engaged in virtual ballot-stuffing through its electronic voting software. It bolstered its claim by alleging that the software design was created to manipulate the Venezuelan elections of Hugo Chavez, and was designed in a way to hide vote manipulations from any audits.

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