IT company steps back from pro-Trump Arizona vote ‘audit’

It’s the latest in a series of stumbles for the prolonged 2020 recount in Arizona

Maricopa County ballots cast in the 2020 general election are examined and recounted by contractors working for Florida-based company, Cyber Ninjas. ((AP Photo/Matt York, Pool))

The main contractor involved in running the ongoing hand recount of 2020 ballots in Maricopa, Arizona, has left the process, USA Today reports.

IT firm Wake TSI elected not to renew its contract setting up the technology used in the recount after it expired on 14 May.

"They were done," audit spokesman and former GOP state chair Randy Pullen told USA Today on Tuesday. "They didn’t want to come back."

Wake TSI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Since 23 April, companies like Wake and others have been running what amounts to a semi-private election audit on behalf Arizona’s Republican-controlled Senate, which subpoenaed the state’s 2.1 million ballots along with voting machines, demanding a recount.

The effort has come in for criticism from a variety of places.

The Maricopa County board of supervisors, the majority of them Republicans, objected to the campaign, noting that the state’s votes had already been audited numerous times.

The Department of Justice has also expressed concerns that handing over sensitive materials like ballots to private companies could violate federal laws, as well as potential plans to privately verify voter registration by going door-to-door.

Others have noted limited media access to the audit sites, as well as a lack of clarity over how vote-counters themselves were recruited. AZ Central has previously reported that volunteers were being used to count the votes, not paid experts or employees.

Doubts have also been raised about the experience of companies running the audit.

Cyber Ninjas, a firm coordinating the recount effort, had previously been criticized for its lack of experience auditing elections, and its CEO Doug Logan reportedly posted unfounded claims about the election being rigged on social media.

At the time, he said his hiring of Wake TSI, which had previously worked with other Republican legislators involved in the “Stop the Steal” movement, would create a counting process that was “beyond reproach.”

Every state in America, including Arizona, has already certified its election results. Joe Biden won the state by just over a narrow 10,000 votes, and carried Maricopa County by more than 45,000, a shock victory in a longtime Republican stronghold.

The 2020 election saw Democrats pick up a US Senate seat in Arizona.