Arizona audit boss accused of anti-trans insult at count

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One observer at the Arizona audit of 2020 general election ballots in Maricopa County has said that audit co-chair Randy Pullen told one of the observers that the pink shirt he was required to wear on the floor of the recount “made him look like a transgender”.

Witnesses have said that audit organizers have called observers in the pink shirts “pinkies” or “pinkos”, suggesting they were communist sympathizers.

Mr Pullen told Insider that the observer’s comment was “interesting”.

“We have red shirts, yellow shirts, green shirts, blue shirts, orange shirts, and white shirts on the floor,” Mr Pullen told the outlet. “Every colour has a nuisance associated with it.”

“Our 300 plus volunteers make jokes about the colours of their shirts every day,” he said. “Apparently, the observer lacks a sense of humour. Too bad.”

Observers have reported multiple problematic incidents during the last week.

Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, a Democrat who announced on Wednesday that she’s running for governor, published a summary of incidents witnessed by observers that were both “new and ongoing”, starting on 24 May.

The problems concern security, equipment, communication, and policy or process changes.

The state Senate, controlled by Republicans, hired private company Cyber Ninjas to conduct another recount of the 2.1 million ballots in Maricopa County. Joe Biden won the county in the 2020 election by more than 45,000 votes.

Election experts on the ground said they saw security gates left open and unattended last week. Secret materials were left in public areas, and pens forbidden from being used were seen close to ballots on several occasions. They also saw unauthorized cellphones on the floor of the audit and received confirmation that concealed weapons are allowed in the area.

Observers saw malfunctioning software, which led to Cyber Ninjas having to reverse an update in the middle of the day.

Witnesses also said that Arizona Senate liaison Ken Bennett confirmed that copies of the data from the voting system were being sent to a lab in Montana.

The lab was left unspecified and there was no telling what they would do with the information or how long it would be kept there.

Witnesses added that organizers suffered from “general confusion” and that there was a lack of quality-control measures. Witnesses said that they saw people who were not residents of Maricopa County “rifling through” thousands of military and overseas ballots.

Cyber Ninjas has no previous experience of elections and is led by a Trump-supporting conspiracy theorist.

The choice to conduct another recount was made against the objections of the county’s board of supervisors, which is controlled by Republicans. The board argued that the results had previously been audited more than once by reliable firms.

The Independent has reached out to Cyber Ninjas and Senate liaison Ken Bennett for comment.