“The controversial Arizona 2020 election review is almost over, but top officials in the state’s largest county and secretary of state’s office aren’t waiting for the conclusions, launching a pair of preemptive strikes against a report that could land as soon as next week. Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, released a prebuttal laying out all of her office’s criticisms of the so-called election ‘audit.’ She detailed the pre- and post-election testing election equipment underwent in Maricopa County and called the state Senate-led effort ‘secretive and disorganized’ that routinely discarded best practices of an actual audit.”

“Trump and his supporters have eagerly been awaiting the conclusion of the review in Arizona, and will likely use whatever the findings are to advance his baseless claims the election was stolen from him. During a July speech in the state, Trump said the process in the state would ultimately reveal that ‘we won by a lot,’ and ‘this is only the beginning of the irregularities the Arizona audit is uncovering.’ (There’s no legal process to transfer the state’s 11 electoral votes to his tally.) Trump has encouraged his followers to try to export the Maricopa review to other states. Republican lawmakers in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin have tried to launch their own, but neither has gotten the traction of Arizona. Ben Ginsberg, a prominent Republican elections lawyer who has spoken out about the efforts to undermine faith in American democracy following the 2020 election, said he hoped the Cyber Ninjas report would land without making much noise and could quell the movement. ‘Once they can’t be backed up, then that will be an object lesson to other states, not to go down that perilous path of basically losing your credibility,’ he said at the briefing” – Politico.