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Maricopa County elections officials count ballots at the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office in Phoenix. (Matt York\/AP)<\/p><\/div>\n
By Charlie McCarthy | NEWSMAX<\/p>\n
The Arizona Senate’s audit of the 2020 election has resulted in a different ballot count than that given by Maricopa County officials, according to the chamber’s president.<\/p>\n
Republican Senate President Karen Fann\u00a0said during a Tuesday radio interview that the Maricopa County discrepancy prompted the state legislature to acquire new machines to recount the ballots.<\/p>\n
Fann added she did not know the size of the ballot count difference.<\/p>\n
“They haven\u2019t released a number yet,” Fann told conservative radio host Mike Broomhead on\u00a0KTAR<\/a>. “However, we do know that those numbers do not match with Maricopa County at this point.”<\/p>\n Approximately 2.1 million ballots are being recounted.<\/p>\n “We are finishing up \u2014 the vendor is finishing up what we call the aggregation: double-checking the spreadsheets against the blue tally sheets, against the scans they did on the ballots,” Fann told KTAR.<\/p>\n “Because before we turn those ballots back to Maricopa County, they want to make sure that every one of those check-and-balances match before they start doing the analysis of all the data they received.”<\/p>\n KTAR said the new tally was expected to start Tuesday. A State Senate spokesman told pool reporters Monday that the new machine count would go into next week.<\/p>\n A hand recount of the votes cast for president and U.S. Senate had been completed, KTAR reported.<\/p>\n President Joe Biden defeated former President Donald Trump to win Arizona by slightly more than 10,000 votes out of nearly 3.4 million cast.<\/p>\n Biden prevailed in Maricopa County by more than 45,000 votes.<\/p>\n Trump has said Biden won the election due to voter fraud in several swing states, including Arizona. Election officials, however, insist there has been no evidence of widespread fraud.<\/p>\n The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, which consists of four Republicans and one Democrat, previously authorized two audits by independent contractors who are certified by the National Institute for Standards and Technology and the U.S. Elections Assistance Commission. Those audits found no problems.<\/p>\n Jack Sellers, GOP chairman of Maricopa County\u2019s Board of Supervisors, told the\u00a0Arizona Mirror<\/a>\u00a0in a statement he was not surprised the state Senate’s “woefully underqualified” audit team came up with a different ballot tally than the “experienced professionals” in his county\u2019s elections department.<\/p>\n Cyber Ninjas, a Florida-based cybersecurity firm with no previous election audit experience, is leading the Senate audit.<\/p>\n During the KTAR interview, Fann acknowledged that things “haven\u2019t gone as smoothly as it could have.”<\/p>\n “Heck, no,” she said. “This is the first time in the history of our nation that anybody has done an audit of this magnitude. And so, quite honestly, we are doing a lot of things, triple-checking, just to make sure that this is all correct.”<\/p>\n Late last month, Maricopa County officials said they\u00a0will not reuse<\/a>\u00a0the voting equipment that was inspected during a review of the 2020 election by a private contractor.<\/p>\n “The voters of Maricopa County can rest assured, the county will never use equipment that could pose a risk to free and fair elections,” the county said in a statement.<\/p>\n