Why what happened in 2021 Arizona election 'audit' still matters

The truth behind the Arizona Senate's "audit" of 2020 election results is emerging in thousands of private text messages from Cyber Ninjas' CEO Doug Logan.

The texts undermine claims the "audit" was a nonpartisan effort to ensure the accuracy of election results, revealing it was part of a multi-state effort by allies of former President Donald Trump to restore him to office.

Logan's messages show the work of hundreds of volunteers − who spent two months in 2021 at Veterans Memorial Coliseum reviewing ballots and recording individual votes onto more than 70,000 tally sheets − couldn't even be counted.

Here's the latest on Logan, his texts and the review of 2.1 million ballots in Maricopa County.

What was reason behind the Arizona 'audit'?

Senate Republicans in 2021 announced they would commission a hand count of every ballot cast in Maricopa County to address claims the election had been stolen from Trump. The Senate subpoenaed the ballots and other election material from the county.

Senate President Karen Fann hired the Cyber Ninjas to lead the hand count. Although neither Logan nor his company had election auditing experience, Fann at the time said he was "well qualified" and "well experienced." The review was supposed to take a few weeks and cost taxpayers $150,000.

It would take about two months and cost Arizona millions of dollars.

What 'findings' did Cyber Ninjas report to the Senate?

Logan announced the results of the hand count on Sept. 24, 2021. He reported Joe Biden won the presidential election in Arizona. Logan's tally differed from the county's official results by 994 votes.

Logan's report skimmed over Biden's win and raised a host of "anomalies" that continued to raise doubts about the election process. It left lawmakers, partisan contractors and Trump allies calling for more audits, the rejection of voting machines and new voter integrity laws to prevent fraud at the polls.

Full story: 'Our numbers are screwy': Cyber Ninjas CEO admits he couldn't tally hand count of ballots

Do Logan's private texts contradict his public statements?

Yes. In hundreds of recently released texts from the summer of 2021, Logan admitted he couldn't make sense of his own data. Days after the hand count ended, Logan confirmed he had no way to tally the results.

"How plausible is this solution looking? I looped back to look through all of the aggregation data again. It (is) pretty broken. A lot of it doesn't make any sense," Logan wrote in a July 5, 2021, text.

Did Logan say, 'Our numbers are screwy?'

He did. Even after he turned over his numbers to Arizona Senate Republicans ― 11 days before the Senate hearing ― Logan was trying to reconcile his own data, with no success.

"Reading through that summary doc on President vs. Senate. Looks like basically our numbers are screwy," he said in a Sept. 13 text message.

What is Logan's response to this?

He has not responded to repeated interview requests from The Arizona Republic. He has declined to answer specific questions about his text messages or his activities.

How did the Cyber Ninjas fix the numbers problem?

Texts show they didn't. For weeks, Logan tried unsuccessfully to tally more than 70,000 sheets where volunteers recorded individual votes with tick marks. He worked with a technology expert named Mike Piehota, but they couldn't come up with a computer system to read the marks.

"To cut to the chase, it's my opinion we're not going to be able to accurately process tally sheets using current text recognition technology," Piehota wrote in a July 6 text. "Ultimately, we need to consider a different approach if you want to revisit tally sheets in the short term. Other than a massive manual effort, I don't have a good answer."

Logan replied minutes later: "I don't care if we have to hand-write in the batch number, etc. As long as the tally is correct most of the time."

Did Cyber Ninjas make up numbers?

Logan's texts show how his team shifted away from trying to quantify the hand count and sought other means to deliver plausible numbers to the Senate.

They first tried counting votes by scanning tally sheets. They couldn't get a software program to read the tick marks. Then they focused on counting the total number of ballots, scouring county electronic tabulation records, creating worksheets and databases and weighing ballot boxes on scales.

The texts indicate they failed at these efforts.

Is that why the Senate brought in machines to count ballots?

Neither Logan nor the Senate issued any public statements about the inability to quantify the results of the hand count.

The hand count ended on June 25, 2021. Days later, Fann said Logan's hand count of ballots were far off Maricopa County's official results. Fann on July 8 said the Senate had purchased two machine counters as a way to "triple check" the numbers.

She did not disclose the number Logan provided.

Was the Arizona 'audit' part of a larger election scheme?

The text messages show Logan already was part of a coordinated effort to overturn 2020 election results in several swing states when he was tapped to lead the Arizona Senate's partisan "audit," records show.

Thousands of text messages to and from Logan show he worked closely with allies of then-President Donald Trump as they plotted to challenge outcomes in Georgia, Michigan and Pennsylvania.

Texts show that Fann privately communicated with Logan in February 2021, likely on a recommendation from retired Army Col. Phil Waldron, an ardent Trump supporter and election conspiracy theorist. She publicly named Logan as the audit leader on March 31, 2021.

Full story: Arizona 'audit' leader traded messages with dozens of 'Stop the Steal' partisans, texts show

When did Logan start strategizing with Trump allies?

Less than two weeks after Trump lost the November 2020 election, Logan was invited to pro-Trump lawyer Lin Wood's plantation properties in South Carolina to map out ways for challenging election results in swing states, texts and court records show.

Logan testified in a Georgia civil elections case last year that he stayed at the plantation for about six weeks, from Nov. 14 until Dec. 24, rubbing shoulders with members of Trump's legal team and other loyalists.

Who on Team Trump helped Logan?

The strategy meetings involved a who's who of Trumpworld conspiracy theorists, cyber specialists, lawyers, retired government officials and some Republican state lawmakers.

The group included Trump lawyer Sidney Powell, former Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne, former National Security Agency official Jim Penrose, former national security adviser Michael Flynn and Former Army Capt. Seth Keshel.

All later would participate in the Maricopa County ballot review. They helped Logan raise millions for the "audit," helped him write reports and offered logistical support, texts and court records show.

Are authorities investigating Logan?

Logan was involved in multiple breaches of voting equipment in Georgia and Michigan in the weeks leading up to the Arizona "audit," texts and court records show.

In January 2021, he and others were captured on video surveillance heading into an elections office in Coffee County, Georgia, where authorities said voting equipment was breached. He has not been charged there.

Logan is under investigation by Michigan authorities for illegally accessing and dismantling voting machines in April 2021 as part of a plot to prove the election was rigged. He has not been charged there.

How did The Republic get Logan's text messages?

The Republic in June 2021 requested emails, text messages and all other communications from Cyber Ninjas and the Senate. When they refused, The Republic filed lawsuits alleging violations of the Arizona Pubic Records Law.

A judge in January 2022 ordered Logan to turn over all records and communications related to the audit and fined his company $50,000 a day until he complied. The fines now total more than $5 million.

Is Logan still withholding records?

Yes. Logan has turned over texts in haphazard, nonsequential batches and in different formats, so threads were broken and not easily searchable. The messages, released in November and December 2022 and February and March 2023, were not organized chronologically or in any other discernable order.

And while Logan has released more than 39,000 text messages, he has redacted 3,000 more without explanation and in apparent violation of court orders.

How did you make sense of 39,000 text messages?

An independent team of nationally recognized data analysts known as The Audit Guys built software to untangle and organize the messages.

The Audit Guys have long challenged Logan's ballot review as "fiction" and after an exhaustive analysis of data in 2021 concluded that Logan's "results" were wildly inaccurate and made up.

After consolidating the texts in a searchable database, The Audit Guys determined Logan at one time omitted about 4,000 messages from his side of conversations and duplicated 5,500 in multiple batches. They have identified gaps in messages, blank and redacted texts and references to messaging systems that Logan never turned over.

Who are The Audit Guys?

The Audit Guys are Larry Moore, the founder of Boston-based election technology company Clear Ballot Group; Benny White, a prominent Pima County Republican data analyst; and Tim Halvorsen, Clear Ballot's retired chief technology officer.

Their stated mission is to "debunk election disinformation and confront those who use their power to spread it."

Why does the hand count matter two years later?

Logan's findings allowed Trump allies to insist the vote was compromised. Its immediate aftermath was to further instill distrust in voting machines and encourage partisan calls for paper ballot tabulations, hand recounts and "audits." They have also called for an end to early voting.

With the 2024 election around the corner, many partisan actors claim without evidence that machine tabulated ballots are rife with fraud. And they insist the only way to prevent fraud is through a hand count of ballots.

Look no farther than Cochise County, where Republican officials in 2022 sought to delay certification of the election until after commissioning a full hand count, which was blocked by the courts.

A judge in April fined two Cochise County supervisors $37,000 in legal and court fees for failing to follow state elections procedures.

How much has the Arizona 'audit' cost taxpayers?

Taxpayer costs are about $5 million so far. That includes $518,000 Maricopa County spent in its fight with Senate Republicans over access to its voting equipment and related records and $3.2 million for new voting machines. The Senate has spent at least $1.1 million, of which about half has been spent on legal fees.

In addition to the public costs, Cyber Ninjas received at least $6.7 million from private donors. The firm last year said it had lost at least $2 million, according to a financial statement shared with the Senate.

Cyber Ninjas has since gone out of business

Robert Anglen is an investigative reporter for The Republic. Reach him at robert.anglen@arizonarepublic.com or 602-444-8694. Follow him on Twitter @robertanglen.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Why new texts about what happened at 2021 Arizona 'audit' matter