While the reports made several significant findings supporting former President Trump’s complaints about the 2020 election, the corporate media ignored those aspects of the audit. //

As broadly reported, the audit established “there were no substantial differences between the hand count of the ballots provided and the official canvass results for the County.” Maricopa County, which represents Arizona’s most populous county thanks to its county seat of Phoenix, had provided Biden a 45,000-vote advantage in the state, propelling Biden to a victory by 10,457 votes. So the media presented the recount as confirming Biden’s victory in the state.

Left unmentioned, however, were the numerous findings of problems with the election and, most significantly, evidence indicating tens of thousands of ballots were illegally cast or counted. A report entitled “Compliance with Election Laws and Procedures,” issued by Senate Audit Liaison Ken Bennett, highlighted several issues, of which two were particularly significant because of the number of votes involved. //

in a 99-page report, Massachusetts Institute of Technology engineer Dr. Shiva Ayyadurai detailed numerous anomalies.

First, Ayyadurai analyzed the early voting ballot return envelopes, on which voters were required to sign an affidavit within a signature block. That review revealed more than 17,000 duplicate images of the return envelopes. When the duplicates were eliminated from the review, Ayyadurai’s company, EchoMail, concluded that Maricopa County had recorded more than 6,545 early voting return envelopes than EchoMail determined existed. EchoMail also concluded that another approximately 500 of the envelopes’ affidavits were left blank.

Ayyadurai also highlighted several implausible statistics, such as that while there was a 52.6 percent increase from 2016 to 2020 in the number of early voting ballots, Maricopa County reported a decrease in signature mismatches of 59.7 percent. “This inverse relationship requires explanation,” the report noted, and then recommended a full audit of the signatures. //

These statutory provisions and procedures prove significant because the audit revealed that 15,035 mail-in votes in Maricopa County were from voters who had moved prior to the registration deadline, another 6,591 mail-in-votes came from voters who had moved out of Arizona prior to the registration deadline, and 1,718 mail-in votes came from voters who moved within Arizona but out of Maricopa prior to the registration deadline.

One of three scenarios seems possible here: First, the mail-in ballot was delivered to the old address and then provided to the named voter, who had only temporarily relocated. Such votes would be legal and entirely proper.

Second, the mail-in ballot was delivered to the old address and then provided to the named voter, who had permanently moved, but failed to timely update his registration record yet signed an affidavit attesting to a false address of residence. Such votes would be illegal.

Or third, the mail-in ballot was delivered to the old address, and then someone other than the named voter cast the vote. Such votes would be both illegal and fraudulent.

Neither Maricopa County nor the state of Arizona knows how many of these 23,000-plus votes fall within each of these three scenarios. And that’s a problem. //

Unfortunately, rather than acknowledge the problems the Maricopa County audit revealed and rise to the challenge of ensuring they are not repeated, while also investigating areas of potential fraud and illegal voting, Democrats and some Republicans pretend the hand recount’s confirmation of the official vote tally ends the matter.

The corrupt press likewise pushes this narrative: The audit confirms Trump lost, and that is all there is to the matter.

But this isn’t about Trump, just as the 2005 report on building confidence in American elections wasn’t about Al Gore. This is about election integrity and our democracy because, as the commission wrote not even 20 years ago:

The vigor of American democracy rests on the vote of each citizen. Only when citizens can freely and privately exercise their right to vote and have their vote recorded correctly can they hold their leaders accountable. Democracy is endangered when people believe that their votes do not matter or are not counted correctly.

The Arizona audit ended nothing including, sadly, the view held by half of our country that their votes do not matter and are not counted correctly—and that many politicians and members of the press don’t care.