Dr. Shiva Ayyadurai, who authored the portion of the Maricopa County ballot audit addressing the signatures on the return envelopes of mail-in ballots, is furious with an article by an Arizona journalist in a left-leaning publication. Ayyadurai believes the Maricopa County Supervisors got Arizona Mirror reporter Jeremy Duda to write a “hit job” on him. He wrote a 67-page letter to Arizona Senate President Karen Fann and Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich about the article, asking them to conduct an investigation, and to allow him to hold a public meeting where he can address his concerns with the supervisors. Brnovich is currently investigating the results of the audit, and has instructed Maricopa County to freeze all 2020 election materials in a litigation hold.
Specifically, Ayyadurai wants to “Expose how the Arizona Mirror has nothing to do with ‘Independent Journalism,’ but is part of an organized network of local and decentralized media funded by Arabella Advisors, what the The New York Times and Politico term as ‘dark money’ aimed to manufacture narratives to meet partisan objectives.”
The focus of the Arizona Mirror’s attack on Ayyadurai was that “he didn’t understand election procedures” and “made a number of false signature claims.” In his letter, Ayyadurai meticulously addresses 47 of the statements about him and his research made in the article.
Ayyadurai is concerned that the attack was racially motivated. He is a “dark-skinned Indian-American who dares to use his hard-earned scientific and engineering training and intelligence.” “For these Maricopa County election officials, it does not compute why a highly educated dark-skinned American, an immigrant, a low-caste Untouchable from India’s despicable caste system, a victim of racism his whole life, would ever perform an audit and report honest findings that may expose potential malfeasance of election officials, who likely support ‘liberal’ Democrats — the rightful and sole heirs of the fight against ‘racism’ in America.”
To demonstrate his credibility, he cites a review of his work that was performed by Professor Deborah Nightingale, a retired MIT Professor of Engineering Systems & of Aeronautics and Astronautics. Nightingale is a Democrat who voted for Joe Biden. She said in her review, which is included in his letter, “The report is stellar, met all its objectives, and, more importantly, provides a thought leadership of Engineering Systems theory that is now necessary to move beyond partisanship so we may squarely address election systems integrity.”
Nightingale agreed the attacks were racist. “The recent ad hominem attacks against Dr. Shiva, by Maricopa County officials effectively through their proxy at the Arizona Mirror, attempting to box him into a predefined category, must be addressed, particularly given their racist subtext.”
She concluded, ”I believe that the state of Arizona (and the country as a whole) would be greatly served by both examining current operating procedures and adopting the recommendations Dr. Shiva makes for future improvements in the voting system.”
Ayyadurai points out that he didn’t vote for Trump in the 2020 election either, he had grown cynical of Trump’s efforts to combat the deep state. He produced a video called “Was Trump the Swamp? Only You Can Decide,” which caused him to lose nearly 25 percent of his followers on social media.
He observes that the Arizona Mirror article fails to address key issues he brought up in his report, like why only 587 out of 1,918,463 early ballots were deemed as having bad signatures, 6,545 missing return ballot envelopes, and “multiple examples of two different early voter ballot return envelopes, under two different voter-IDs, but with the same matching signatures from
Individuals with the exact same name, exact same address.” Nor did the article address ballots returned that were counted even though there was no signature on the envelope, or over 6,000 ballots that were accepted even though the voters had moved out of the state before the registration deadline.
Ayyadurai said his audit report concluded with two requests, to allow him to perform a full audit of the county’s signature verification process, and to have the county disclose the standard operating procedures (SOPs) for early balloting systems, including signature verification and chain of custody. He has tried repeatedly to obtain the SOPs from the county but they have not complied. He believes the purpose of the Arizona Mirror article is to misdirect people from this request.
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Rachel Alexander is a reporter at The Arizona Sun Times and The Star News Network. Follow Rachel on Twitter. Email tips to [email protected].
Image “Dr Shiva Ayyadurai” by Arizona State Senate.
