Georgia Senators Tour AZ Audit Week After PA Lawmakers Did the Same
A pair of Georgia state senators, along with the chairman of the state’s Republican Party, received a tour of the Maricopa County, Arizona, election audit on Tuesday.
GOP state Sens. Burt Jones and Brandon Beach, as well as Georgia Republican Party Chairman David Shafer, were seen speaking with audit co-chair Randy Pullen, according to Arizona Republic reporter Ronald Hansen.
GOP state Rep. David Eastman from Alaska was also among them.
Randy Pullen discusses ballot review process with @davideastmanjr, @burtjonesforga and @BeachforGA. Unclear on the man Pullen is facing. #azauditpool pic.twitter.com/deGa23ocXF
— Ronald J. Hansen (@ronaldjhansen) June 8, 2021
Pullen, who is a former chair of the Arizona Republican Party, said that lawmakers from Wisconsin and Virginia may also take tours this week, Arizona’s National Public Radio station KJZZ-FM reported.
The visit by the lawmakers from Georgia and Alaska came after another by three legislators from Pennsylvania last week.
Following the tour, state Sen. Doug Mastriano said, “Should an audit happen in Pennsylvania, the Arizona model is the one.”
He contended the Keystone State really should conduct an election review.
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“I don’t think we really have an option. We probably have to do this in a couple counties. Let the chips fall where they may,” the senator said. “This is not about overturning. It’s about finding the truth.”
The Arizona audit includes a hand recount of all the county’s 2.1 million ballots cast in November, as well as an inspection of the ballots to look for abnormalities such as different paper or ballots filled in by machine.
Cyber experts also are examining the Dominion Voting Systems machines themselves for potential issues regarding vote tallies generated.
In a Sunday interview with Fox affiliate KSAZ-TV, Arizona Senate liaison and former Arizona secretary of state Ken Bennett differentiated between the Maricopa County audit commissioned by the Senate and those already undertaken by Maricopa County.
Bennett explained there were some hand recount spot-checks done by counties statewide amounting to 1 to 2 percent of the ballots cast.
“Maricopa chose the lowest number, and Maricopa hand-counted about 8,000 of the 2.1 million that were counted in the election,” he said. “The other 2.1 million ballots were never looked at again.”
“They also talked about these other two audits that they had. That was two companies that came in and looked at the machines to make sure there wasn’t any evidence that they had been tampered with or were connected to the internet,” Bennett added.
“But those second and third audits, as they called them — they weren’t really audits, they’re called logic and accuracy tests on the equipment.”
The audits, commissioned by the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors earlier this year “did not look at one single ballot,” Bennett emphasized.
He told reporters Tuesday that he expects the hand recount of the ballots to be completed by the end of this week, according to KJZZ.
“But it’ll take three to four weeks more to conduct what Bennett described as a paper evaluation of the ballots, and weeks after that for firms to publish a final report for Arizona Senate Republicans,” the news outlet added.
The boxes you see here still need to be inspected. More than half of the 46 total. Cant count from here the exact #. They will need to move faster than a pallet a day to get those done by June 30. pic.twitter.com/YzvewI57cq
— Jen Fifield (@JenAFifield) June 9, 2021
A private group of Georgia citizens won the right in court last month to review and scan 147,000 of Fulton County’s absentee ballots; however, the county filed legal motions at the end of May that blocked the audit from proceeding, at least temporarily.
The judge has scheduled a hearing for June 21 to review the county’s objections.
