‘Absolutely False’: Maricopa County Live-Tweets Fact-Check of AZ Audit Press Conference

Courtney Pedroza/Getty Images
The Maricopa County Twitter account live-tweeted the Friday press conference on the results of the Arizona audit, fact-checking some of the big claims the “Cyber Ninjas” have been making.
The Cyber Ninjas’ press conference continued to raise questions about the outcome of the election, after reports Thursday that it concluded President Joe Biden did indeed win.
So Maricopa County continued to fact-check the claims made Friday, saying state senators gave “unvetted, unqualified, private companies with known biases a platform to share misguided theories.”
Unfortunately, AZ Senators gave unvetted, unqualified, private companies with known biases a platform to share misguided theories and faulty assumptions about Maricopa County elections.
— Maricopa County (@maricopacounty) September 24, 2021
A note on signature validation. We don’t “predict” signatures. We have trained staff looking at every signature. We do a complete signature analysis, the accuracy of which has been proven in court. See Ward v. Jackson.
— Maricopa County (@maricopacounty) September 24, 2021
Special bipartisan election boards assist voters who may need assistance w/ signing affidavits. Often, in case of severe medical conditions such as stroke, people may only be able to make a small mark such as an X. Our boards visually affirm the marks are the voter’s correct sig.
— Maricopa County (@maricopacounty) September 24, 2021
Re: duplicated ballots. Every time a voter has a questioned signature or a blank envelope, we work with that voter to cure the signature. That’s our staff doing their job to contact voters with questioned signatures or blank ballots. Only one ballot is counted. https://t.co/uGNAaDqXYV
— Maricopa County (@maricopacounty) September 24, 2021
They even lambasted the contractors for not “understand[ing] election processes” and said Arizona Senate President Karen Fann was making “absolutely false” claims about signature verification.
“Anomaly” seems to be another way of saying the Senate’s contractors don’t understand election processes. Sadly, this is par for the course for the #azaudit.
— Maricopa County (@maricopacounty) September 24, 2021
So why more cured signatures in Nov. 2020? Maricopa County hired additional staff to contact valid voters and allow them the opportunity to cure their signature. That included a night shift of 40 people from Oct. 29- Nov. 10.
— Maricopa County (@maricopacounty) September 24, 2021
.@FannKfann statement that we just stopped checking signatures is absolutely false.
— Maricopa County (@maricopacounty) September 24, 2021
COMPARE AND CONTRAST: Here’s a reference as we get into the conversation about how ballots were counted. Cyber Ninja process changed throughout, but these are the highlights. pic.twitter.com/Clci2hfMbj
— Maricopa County (@maricopacounty) September 24, 2021
The Senate has determined the County is in full compliance w/ subpoena w/ the hiring of a special master. The County Ballot-on-Demand Printers (Poll Worker Laptop) and Accessible Voting Devices (ICX) were never subpoenaed. If they didn’t ask for it, we didn’t provide it.
— Maricopa County (@maricopacounty) September 24, 2021
In the case of in-person voters who had moved out of Maricopa County, we found no discrepancies with the data in the Maricopa County voter reg. system. We could not identify a single voter in this initial review who had cast more than 1 ballot. 2/2
— Maricopa County (@maricopacounty) September 24, 2021
Kelli Ward, the chair of the Arizona state GOP, reacted to the press conference by calling for yet another audit.
Former President Donald Trump, meanwhile, put out another statement lashing out at the media coverage of the audit, claiming it was actually “a big win” for him.
Trump has repeatedly pushed the big lie about the 2020 election for months, and Republicans in other states are making similar attempts to question the results.
Have a tip we should know? tips@mediaite.com