According to official results, Joe Biden beat Donald Trump in Arizona in a very close race by 10,457 votes.
The recent forensic audit of votes in Maricopa County questions 57,722 ballots, more than five times that number.
One caution in interpreting results flagging questioned or invalid ballots: auditors say it’s unlikely that every adjustment would have favored a single candidate. Therefore, one cannot assume all 57,722 votes would have been removed from Biden’s tally or credited to Trump.
Nonetheless, discrepancies in the one county alone are large enough to suggest that they could have made a difference in the outcome of the statewide tally.
It’s unclear why most media reports have been declaring, contrary to evidence, that the audit somehow confirmed that Biden won the Arizona race fair and square. (You can read the audit at the link below and draw your own conclusions.) Though a hand recount of ballots was fairly close to the original count, that did not address the anomalies found, nor did it rule out invalid votes and fraud.
In addition to the problems flagged, auditors said it was impossible to conduct a complete audit because county officials failed to cooperate on some important matters. And some evidence was reportedly removed or destroyed prior to a subpoena.
READ: Examples of allegedly fraudulent votes in Maricopa County
Among significant problems uncovered were tens of thousands of people who voted from a prior address, which would technically invalidate the votes if one were to enforce election law. Likewise with 10,342 voters who potentially voted in more than one county.
In one particularly difficult-to-square anomaly, more than 9,000 more ballots were returned by voter than were sent out. In more than 3,000 instances, the official results do “not match who voted.”
There were 2,592 more duplicates than original ballots. There were 2,382 in person voters who had moved out of Maricopa County, and 2,081 who had moved out of state during the 29 days preceding the election. Hundreds more votes were cast by people who were not part of the official precinct register, or returned by mail from people who had not been sent ballots.
While experts say fraud is suggested in numerous instances, there is also the possibility that poor record-keeping on the part of county election officials were responsible for some of the problems. Auditors were not always able to access and examine the records necessary to understand if that is the case.
“…the delta between the Presidential candidates is very close to the potential margin-of-error for the election.”
Maricopa County auditors
Below is the chart summarizing the findings:
