The Arizona Secretary of State has determined that the Maricopa County voting machines handed over to the private organization supposedly conducting an audit of the November 2020 presidential election can no longer be used in elections because of security concerns after the chain of custody was broken, NBC News reports.

The audit, demanded by Republicans and put under the control of a private company that has no experience in election monitoring or recounts, has been fraught with errors, mistakes and poor planning–some funny, some pathetic, but all avoidable.  This latest issue arises because the company, Cyber Ninjas, have not recorded where machines are and what is being done with them.

Arizona’s Democratic Secretary of State, Katie Hobbs, sent a letter to Maricopa County elections officials saying that if the machines are not taken out of service, she would be forced to decertify them, requiring them not to be used in future elections.

In authorizing the audit of Maricopa County votes by Cyber Ninjas, Republicans in the Arizona Senate gave them custody of 400 voting machines as well as the original ballots used in the election, something virtually unheard of in US history.

The Cyber Ninjas, however, have no experience in election recounts or audits, and their efforts started by handing out blue and black pens to their untrained volunteers–a major no-no in audits where ballots are filled out with ink of those colors.

The Cyber Ninjas are looking at the bamboo content of the paper in the ballots under the false belief that tens of thousands of ballots were filled out in China.  Ballots were left unattended and computers were left on and unlocked without any oversight or security.

Now, the audit is on hold because the arena that was being used by Cyber Ninjas had been pre-booked for high school graduation.