The hand recount of the 2020 Maricopa County, Ariz., election results found that President Biden defeated former president Trump in the county by a slightly larger margin than was recorded on Election Day.
While the county vote totals show Biden winning by 45,109 votes, the hand recount found that Biden won by 45,469, according to drafts of an audit viewed by the Arizona Republic. The audit was conducted by Cyber Ninjas and other subcontractors.
The results of the audit were set to be presented to the Arizona State Senate at 1 p.m. on Friday.
“The tabulation equipment counted the ballots as they were designed to do, and the results reflect the will of the voters,” Maricopa County Board Chairman Jack Sellers said in a statement to the media. “That should be the end of the story. Everything else is just noise.”
Cyber Ninjas CEO Doug Logan, who has compared the U.S. general election with voting in Venezuela, did not immediately comment on the details of the audit. Republican state senator Wendy Rogers, a proponent of the audit, wrote on Twitter on Thursday that she spoke with Logan about the issue.
“I just talked to Doug Logan via phone. The leaked draft is simply a draft and is only a partial report,” Rogers wrote. “Tomorrow’s hearing will render findings of great consequence. Then he said ‘God is in control.’”
The recount has drawn criticism from Democrats and some Republicans over methods used by auditors. One activist involved in the audit told a local CBS affiliate in May that workers were searching ballots for traces of bamboo, to investigate a theory that 40,000 ballots were smuggled into Arizona from Asia.
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