Maricopa County Officials Approve Forensic Audit of Election Systems

Maricopa County in Arizona will carry out a comprehensive forensic audit of its voting systems to allay concerns raised by some constituents about the integrity of the November 2020 election.

The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously at a Jan. 27 meeting to hire two independent companies to conduct an audit that will review whether voting machines counted votes correctly, and whether they were tampered with or hacked in any way.

The audit is unlikely to satisfy the demands of the Arizona Senate which issued subpoenas to the supervisors in December 2020 demanding they turn over a range of election material, including images of all mail-in ballots and machines used to count votes, so the Senate could carry out its own audit.

Arizona state Sen. Warren Peterson, a Republican who chairs the Judiciary Committee, told Fox 10 that the county's audit won't alleviate the need for a Senate audit.

"A county audit will not prevent the Senate from doing their own audit," Peterson told the outlet.

"My concern with the county audit is that the scope of the audit is an inch deep. With the limited scope they have asked to be audited, they are guaranteed to find nothing."

Seeking to shore up confidence in the November 2020 election, the Maricopa County government on Jan. 27 published a list of steps taken to ensure election integrity, including an October 2020 logic and accuracy test on tabulation equipment and a November hand-count audit of election results that "Found a 100 percent match to the vote tabulation machines."

https://www.theepochtimes.com/maricopa-county-votes-to-perform-forensic-audit-of-machines-used-in-november-election_3675298.html