However, Richer plead with fellow Republicans in his report, addressing it to “Arizona Republicans,” reminding them that he is been one among them for years, having voted for Trump and volunteered for Republican political campaigns. “I’m human. In the event you prick me, I bleed,” he wrote. “And should you persistently defame me and the individuals in my workplace, I ultimately struggle again.”
The assaults on him and his staff led Richer to oppose the election evaluation and to proceed to talk out in opposition to it. His prebuttal cites the Cyber Ninjas’ inexperience in conducting audits—it had nothing to do with elections till the Huge Lie surfaced—and the truth that Trump allies have virtually solely funded the fraudit to the tune of $5.6 million. The Senate, in the meantime, used $150,000 of Arizona taxpayers’ funding to rent Cyber Ninjas.
Richer additionally famous the issues within the procedures the frauditors used, and their mishandling of ballots. He additionally mentioned that the Cyber Ninjas’ purpose was clearly to not show how elections could possibly be improved, pointing to the truth that the group has already put out false statements, just like the declare that the county counted 74,000 fraudulent ballots that had not been despatched to voters. “Airing a brand new, inaccurate, declare of fraud just isn’t constructing confidence,” he mentioned. “That’s doing the other.”
Hobbs’ prebuttal is analogous, warning most people that “any ‘outcomes’ or ‘conclusions’ which can be reported” from this report needs to be disregarded due to the clearly fraudulent origins and procedures on this investigation. She additionally referred to as on the state’s political leaders to “proclaim that the 2020 Common Election was truthful and correct.”
Observers from Hobbs’ workplace have been allowed on the ground of the Arizona Veterans Memorial Coliseum throughout the audit, and the 122-page rebuttal consists of detailed dialogue of the issues these observers reported. For examples, the employees conducting the evaluation have been instructed by Cyber Ninjas CEO Doug Logan and his lawyer to stay silent any time observers have been close by. “Observers have been additionally knowledgeable … that code phrases have been utilized by contributors to warn others that the secretary of state observers have been within the space,” the report mentioned.
Hobbs’ report additionally notes that safety protocols weren’t adopted, with a number of employees routinely utilizing the identical workstations and passwords. “The Senate contractors arrange stations for various components of the counting course of,” Hobbs’ report mentioned. “That is problematic for 2 causes: 1) any dangerous actors with entry to the computer systems, or to the passwords for these computer systems, may change and manipulate information within the spreadsheets with out anybody else having the ability to observe it; and a couple of) the info could possibly be misplaced with out constant backups.”
This can be a “important safety concern. Every day, a number of individuals had entry to every laptop,” the report mentioned. “With two shifts, a minimum of two individuals have been usually getting into information on every laptop. Moreover, with a single Home windows login on every laptop and a shared password that dozens of individuals have, any employee may log into a pc.” The truth that staff of one of many audit subcontractors, Wake TSI, stored usernames and passwords on paper that they carried round with them. Sure, the contractors do name themselves Cyber Ninjas, and sure, they rent individuals who have the identical obvious understanding of cybersecurity as your grandparents.
Observers mentioned as effectively that the auditors—a few of whom have been paid and a few who weren’t, and the paid individuals have been instructed to not let the volunteers know they’d been cheated—weren’t even all counting the identical and did not even have to agree on how particular person ballots have been counted. “Because of this every hand tally participant is utilizing their very own ‘normal’ for the way votes are to be counted, with no clear, constant, and repeatable directions in place,” the report mentioned. “This course of failure is deadly to all the endeavor and no depend ensuing from this course of needs to be relied upon for any objective, aside from for instance of procedures that shouldn’t be used.”
Then there’s all of the broken polling gear, which the county is making an attempt to get the state Senate to pay for, for the reason that president of the Senate signed an settlement indemnifying the county “for losses it’d incur on account of transferring its supplies to the Senate.”
The Republican-led state Senate, by the way in which, has been ordered to turn over all of the information it has associated to the hiring of the Ninjas by the Arizona Courtroom of Appeals. The Republican senate has been combating to maintain the press and the general public at nighttime on the method, and continues to be combating. Fann mentioned she goes to attraction this choice. The truth that Fann and staff are working so arduous to cowl up the communications they’ve had with Cyber Ninjas is all of the justification wanted for Hobbs and Richer to be involved about what they’re going to do with the fraudit report.