The Arizona State Senate hired a private firm, whose owner is a Trump supporter, to conduct an audit of the 2020 ballots in Maricopa County. Election officials fear that the voting machines may have been manipulated. Replacing the machines are likely to cost $6 million.
The Arizona Senate gave contractors unfettered and unmonitored access to Maricopa County’s vote-counting machines for an audit of the county’s general election results, raising the question of whether the equipment is safe to use for future elections.
It could take a lot of time and money to determine that, due to strict federal and state laws along with local rules for certifying and protecting election equipment.
For now, county officials are promising voters they will use only certified equipment for elections and not equipment “that could pose a risk to free and fair elections,” said Megan Gilbertson, spokesperson for the county’s Elections Department.
Private companies and individuals having access to government-used voting machines are unprecedented in Arizona.
The Senate’s contractors, including Florida-based cybersecurity firm Cyber Ninjas and others who the Senate and Cyber Ninjas have refused to name, got the equipment last month only after a court ruled that the county had to turn it over in response to Senate-issued subpoenas.
Now that much of the equipment is back, county officials are “working with our attorneys on next steps, costs and what will be needed to ensure only certified equipment is used in Maricopa County, Gilbertson said.
The U.S. Election Assistance Commission, the federal agency that certifies all voting systems used in U.S. elections, recommends that any time the rules or procedures for maintaining and securing voting systems — known as the chain of custody — are broken or could have been broken, that the equipment is completely retested under state and county rules, said Mona Harrington, executive director of the commission.
Harrington did not say whether the chain of custody was broken in this instance.
Matt Masterson, a former leader of election security at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, told The Arizona Republic that this kind of review can take weeks to months and cost $100,000 or more, depending on what processes are used.
Considering this, Masterson said it might not be worth it for the county to use the machines again.
“It’s a really hard call for the county,” he said. “It’s a tough situation.”
The county leases its voting machines through a three-year, $6.1 million contract with Dominion Voting Systems. It’s unclear if the county can break that contract if needed, and how much it would cost to replace the machines.
Senate received hundreds of machines
Maricopa County gave the Senate its election equipment, 2.1 million ballots, voter rolls and other election information in response to subpoenas Senate Republican leaders issued in January.
The Senate then handed everything over to contractors, some of whom they have named and some of whom they have refused to name, to audit the county’s November 2020 election results.
What is known about who is involved is concerning to many election consultants. Doug Logan, CEO of Cyber Ninjas, has touted unfounded claims of election fraud online, and much of the recruiting for the review of ballots was done by right-wing groups.
[Read the rest of the article if it’s not behind a pay wall. It’s fascinating.]
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The newspaper wants me to subscribe to get access.
With all due respect, the Arizona legislature needs to get a brain. Biden won the election, full stop.
Zero respect due to the Arizona Repugnicans behind this charade.
I’ve been following this story through a series of WaPo articles. Judging from the comment threads, the consensus seem to be that AZ has made itself a national laughingstock with this “audit”! I recognize we should take it seriously as an assault on democracy– but I suspect the local Republican, & national reaction is rendering it moot.
The primary goal of mountebank Trump and his band of Big Lie Kool-aid drinkers has always been to sow the seeds of doubt. The more who believe our election results don’t count the more our democracy is imperiled. The cultists prefer fascism to a demographic future that favors the Democratic Party.
See earlier comments.about Doug Logan, CEO of Cyber Ninjas, who has touted unfounded claims of election fraud online, and spouts nonsense. According to his LinkedIn bio, Doug Logan is at least 90 years old.He received a degree in civil engineering in 1954. He has held and invented administrative positions in more than one state, including Florida (Sarasota). LinkedIn gives you information you cannot get through the paywall.
“Arne Duncan
arneduncan
Unconscionable
Children of Texas should boycott school until this changes.”
Poor Arne Duncan. The same Republicans he worked with to expand vouchers and charters and bash public schools are now passing laws banning public schools from teaching about racism. His allies in public school bashing have betrayed him.
How naive are these people that they really believed the public school bashing on the Right was about “improving public education”? They’ve been attacking public schools for decades and the ed reform “movement’, including Duncan, cheered them on every step of the way. Duncan wrote an entire book with the premise that people who work in public schools all “lie” to parents.
Chickens, roost. It’s too late for ed reformers to defend public schools. They’re firmly on the anti-public school side.
“Private companies and individuals having access to government-used voting machines are unprecedented in Arizona.”
The claim that it is unprecedented in Arizona is questionable, given that private companies produce these machines and historically, have retained significant access to them (eg, for “debugging” software) after the sale to the government.
The issue of possible nongovernmental (including unauthorized) access to voting machines extends far beyond the particular case under discussion.
Bev Harris (Back Box Voting) has gone to voluminous lengths to document this issue in her book “Black Box Voting: Ballot Tampering in the 21st Century”
https://blackboxvoting.org/black-box-voting-book/
Ironically, the most secure AND verifiable voting “machine” is the old fashioned paper ballot inserted into a slot in a locked box to which only the local commissioner of elections has the key.