[House Hearing, 117 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
ASSESSING THE ELECTION ``AUDIT''
IN ARIZONA AND THREATS TO
AMERICAN DEMOCRACY
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON
OVERSIGHT AND REFORM
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED SEVENTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
OCTOBER 7, 2021
__________
Serial No. 117-46
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Oversight and Reform
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Available on: govinfo.gov,
oversight.house.gov or
docs.house.gov
__________
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
46-022 PDF WASHINGTON : 2021
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND REFORM
CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York, Chairwoman
Eleanor Holmes Norton, District of James Comer, Kentucky, Ranking
Columbia Minority Member
Stephen F. Lynch, Massachusetts Jim Jordan, Ohio
Jim Cooper, Tennessee Paul A. Gosar, Arizona
Gerald E. Connolly, Virginia Virginia Foxx, North Carolina
Raja Krishnamoorthi, Illinois Jody B. Hice, Georgia
Jamie Raskin, Maryland Glenn Grothman, Wisconsin
Ro Khanna, California Michael Cloud, Texas
Kweisi Mfume, Maryland Bob Gibbs, Ohio
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, New York Clay Higgins, Louisiana
Rashida Tlaib, Michigan Ralph Norman, South Carolina
Katie Porter, California Pete Sessions, Texas
Cori Bush, Missouri Fred Keller, Pennsylvania
Danny K. Davis, Illinois Andy Biggs, Arizona
Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Florida Andrew Clyde, Georgia
Peter Welch, Vermont Nancy Mace, South Carolina
Henry C. ``Hank'' Johnson, Jr., Scott Franklin, Florida
Georgia Jake LaTurner, Kansas
John P. Sarbanes, Maryland Pat Fallon, Texas
Jackie Speier, California Yvette Herrell, New Mexico
Robin L. Kelly, Illinois Byron Donalds, Florida
Brenda L. Lawrence, Michigan
Mark DeSaulnier, California
Jimmy Gomez, California
Ayanna Pressley, Massachusetts
Mike Quigley, Illinois
Staff Director - Russ Anello
Staff - Greta Gao, Kadeem Cooper, Gideon Cohn-Postar, Taylor Edwards,
Kelly Hennessey, Will Ryan
Chief Clerk and Director of Operations - Elisa LaNier
Contact Number: 202-225-5051
Minority Staff Director - Mark Marin
------
C O N T E N T S
----------
Page
Hearing held on October 7, 2021.................................. 1
Witnesses
Mr. Jack Sellers, Chairman, Board of Supervisors, Maricopa
County, Arizona
Oral Statement............................................... 8
Mr. William Gates, Vice Chairman, Board of Supervisors, Maricopa
County, Arizona
Oral Statement............................................... 9
Mr. David Becker, Executive Director and Founder, The Center for
Election Innovation and Research
Oral Statement............................................... 11
Ms. Gowri Ramachandran, Senior Counsel, Brennan Center for
Justice
Oral Statement............................................... 13
Ken Bennett (Minority Witness), Arizona State Senate Audit
Liaison, Arizona State Senate, Arizona
Oral Statement............................................... 15
Mr. Doug Logan (Invited), Chief Executive Officer and Principal
Consultant, Cyber Ninjas, Inc.
Oral Statement............................................... 0
Opening statements and the prepared statements for the witnesses
are available in the U.S. House of Representatives Repository
at: docs.house.gov.
INDEX OF DOCUMENTS
----------
The documents entered into the record during this hearing, and
Questions for the Record (QFR's) for this hearing are listed
below.
* Non-partisan Fact Checker Article; submitted by Chairwoman
Carolyn B. Maloney.
* SB 202 and SB 202 Summary; submitted by Rep. Hice.
* Rep. Gibbs' Letter to the Full Committee; submitted by Rep.
Gibbs.
* Transcripts and Articles of Senators asking questions;
submitted by Rep. Gosar.
* Arizona Republic, article, ``Judge Rules Maricopa County Must
Provide 2020 Ballots to Arizona Senate for Audit Under
Subpoenas''; submitted by Rep. Biggs.
* Glenn Greenwald Tweet; submitted by Rep. Biggs.
* Rep. Connally's Letter to Gowdy; submitted by Rep. Biggs.
* Chairwoman Maloney's Letter to Gowdy; submitted by Rep.
Biggs.
* Baltimore Sun, article, ``Rep. Jamie Raskin `Not Seeing'
Electoral College Challenge for Trump''; submitted by Rep.
Biggs.
* Washington Examiner, article, ``State Legislatures Need to
Restore Election Procedures''; submitted by Rep. Biggs.
* QFR's: to Becker; submitted by Chairwoman Carolyn B. Maloney.
* QFRs: to Bennett; submitted by Chairwoman Carolyn B. Maloney.
* QFRs: to Ramachandran; submitted by Chairwoman Carolyn B.
Maloney.
* QFRs: to Chairman Sellers; submitted by Chairwoman Carolyn B.
Maloney.
* QFRs: to to Becker; submitted by Rep. Quigley.
The documents listed below are available at: docs.house.gov.
ASSESSING THE ELECTION ``AUDIT''
IN ARIZONA AND THREATS TO
AMERICAN DEMOCRACY
----------
Thursday, October 7, 2021
House of Representatives,
Committee on Oversight and Reform,
Washington, D.C.
The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:05 a.m., in
room 2154, Rayburn House Office Building, and via Zoom. Hon.
Carolyn B. Maloney [chairwoman of the committee].
Present: Representatives Maloney, Norton, Lynch, Raskin,
Khanna, Mfume, Tlaib, Porter, Bush, Davis, Wasserman Schultz,
Welch, Johnson, Sarbanes, Speier, Kelly, DeSaulnier, Comer,
Jordan, Gosar, Hice, Grothman, Gibbs, Higgins, Norman,
Sessions, Keller, Biggs, Clyde, and Fallon.
Also present: Representative Stanton (waived in).
Chairwoman Maloney. The committee will come to order.
Without objection, the chair is authorized to declare a
recess of the committee at any time.
I now recognize myself for five minutes.
On November 3, 2020, Joe Biden beat Donald Trump clearly
and decisively in the Presidential election. President Biden
won 306 electoral votes to Trump's 232, and he beat Trump in
the popular vote by more than 7 million votes.
But rather than accept his loss, Donald Trump tried
everything he could to overturn the will of American voters. He
and his allies filed more than 60 lawsuits with false claims of
election fraud and lost all 60 of them. He waged a pressure
campaign at every level of government--from county election
officials to secretaries of state, to the Department of
Justice, to his own Vice President--to try to prevent the
certification of the election results.
At each stage, Donald Trump and his allies were asked to
bring forward evidence that the election was tainted by
widespread voter fraud. But whether in Michigan or Pennsylvania
or, as we will hear today, Arizona, the purveyors of the big
lie repeatedly failed to produce one scintilla of credible
evidence of widespread fraud.
Yet today, more than 11 months after the election, the
attacks on our election system have only intensified, and the
latest weapon of choice is the partisan audit. Let me be clear.
The hyperpartisan audits pushed by President Trump and his
allies are not about fairness, election security, or the truth.
They are instead designed to promote conspiracy theories and to
raise doubts about our elections.
And the ultimate aim of these audits is even worse--to lay
the groundwork for new laws that make it harder for Americans
to cast their ballots, but easier for dishonest officials to
overturn the results of elections they don't like.
Today's hearing will focus on the five-month long,
hyperpartisan audit in Maricopa County, Arizona. It was clear
from the beginning that this so-called audit, led by the
Republican State Senate, was really a fishing expedition in
search of evidence of election fraud, no matter how flimsy.
The State Senate rejected a bid from a qualified and
certified auditor, choosing instead to hire Cyber Ninjas, an
unaccredited firm with no experience auditing elections. What
the company did have was a CEO who had publicly supported Trump
and promoted the so-called ``big lie.''
During the audit, Cyber Ninjas' sloppy, insecure practices
jeopardized the integrity of ballots and voting machines,
forcing Arizona taxpayers to spend millions to replace the
compromised machines. The audit itself was funded with at least
$6.7 million from rightwing dark money groups headed by Trump
allies and supporters of Stop the Steal movement. Documents
show that Trump himself may have funneled funds to the audit
effort in Arizona.
Yet all that partisan dark money failed to overcome the
truth. Last month, Cyber Ninjas finally was forced to admit
that it had found no evidence of widespread fraud in the
Maricopa County election results. In its final report, Cyber
Ninjas wrote that there were ``no substantial differences''
between the official count and the audit results and that there
is ``no reliable evidence that the paper ballots were altered
to any material degree.''
This should have been the end of the story. But rather than
admit that they were wrong about voter fraud, Cyber Ninjas and
Republicans leaders in Arizona are now pushing a host of
unnecessary legislative changes to make it harder to vote and
easier to overturn election results. And hyperpartisan audits
are now spreading to more states.
We are holding today's hearing so we can hear the facts
about the Cyber Ninjas audit in Arizona. We invited the
company's CEO, Doug Logan, to testify today so that we could
hear firsthand about the audit's findings. Unfortunately, Mr.
Logan refused our invitation, and he also refused to produce
documents that the committee requested back in July.
Mr. Logan's refusal to answer questions under oath is just
one more sign that the dark money-fueled audit he led never
should have happened in the first place.
Today, we will hear from the chairman and vice chairman of
the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, both Republicans,
who, unlike Mr. Logan, were not afraid to tell the committee
the truth about this audit. I am honored that they both agreed
to put country over party by testifying today, despite threats
to their personal safety.
We will also hear from election and democracy experts, who
will tell us how partisan audits are spreading to other states,
including Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Texas, and the threat
this poses to our democracy.
The attempts by former President Trump and his allies to
undermine America's elections, are failing to win the last one
fair and square, it represents the biggest threat to our
constitutional republic since the Civil War. This committee
will not be silent in the face of this threat. We will continue
to conduct oversight to ensure that the American people know
the truth about these sham audits and to protect our elections
from further interference.
But it should not just be Democrats who stick up for
America's elections. I urge my Republican colleagues to follow
the lead of our brave witnesses from Maricopa County by putting
country over party and finally renouncing Trump's big lie.
I want to thank our panelists for being here today. Thank
you so much for your testimony.
And I now recognize the distinguished ranking member, Mr.
Comer, for his opening statement.
Mr. Comer. Well, thank you, Madam Chairwoman, for holding
today's hearing because half of America has questions about the
integrity of our elections.
Democrats unilaterally changing the rules in the middle of
those elections, like what happened last summer, does nothing
to answer the questions that Americans have with respect to the
integrity of last year's elections. It is important that the
American public have confidence in election results. So states
and counties should be transparent and open to outside audits.
I hope today's hearing helps to answer some outstanding
concerns regarding election integrity. Unfortunately, today's
hearing is the continuation of two troubling trends from this
committee.
The first trend is the Democrats' obsession with avoiding
any actual oversight of the Biden administration. If you don't
believe me, just look at the actions. This committee has held
less than half the number of hearings they did when President
Trump was in office. This committee has had less than half as
many witnesses from the administration, and this committee
hasn't held a single hearing on the border crisis or on the
disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, or on the illegal leaks
at the IRS, or on the origins of COVID-19, or on many other
important topics like the border security crisis.
The second trend is the Democrats' current obsession with
investigating anything coming out of the states. Recently, we
have had hearings on voting rights and abortion, both solely
because of laws passed in a single state. Today, we are having
a hearing about election integrity, based solely on an audit
that occurred in a single state.
Each of these issues--abortion rights, voting rights,
election integrity--are issues that have long been known to be
handled at the state level. Yet this committee cannot resist
wading into state issues, attempting to trample all over the
Tenth Amendment.
With that, I want to yield the balance of my time to Mr.
Biggs, who has been on the front lines in Arizona on this issue
from the very beginning.
Mr. Biggs. I thank the gentleman for yielding, and I thank
the chair today for having this hearing.
You know, the Democrats really can't have it both ways, can
they? I mean, really, can they have it both ways? You cannot
say that the audit showed the integrity of the election while
at the same time claiming that the mere fact of an audit, in
and of itself, is a threat existentially to our democracy. You
can't do that. It is a fallacious, logical inconsistency.
If, as you claim--by the way, a claim I dispute--that the
election was fair and properly conducted, a complete forensic
audit ought to demonstrate that, which is what you assert. That
is what you are asserting here today.
But at the same time, you are saying, well, while the audit
confirms what we think it did, when you cherry-pick some of the
statements from the audit report, you are also saying that an
audit undermines the election's integrity. Do you see the
inconsistency of your position?
If there are questions as to the accuracy of the election,
a forensic audit will reveal the questionable outcomes and
problems that need to be cured going forward, and the
legitimacy of the election may be compromised. The Dems and
leftists have been highly critical of this audit even before it
began. They had an agenda, and the chairwoman mentioned this
agenda today so that all of you who are participating here, you
can support this agenda.
She said they don't think legislative changes should be
made. That's what she said. That is why we are doing this
today. Because they think any legislative changes are not
appropriate.
Well, in 2018, in Maricopa County, most of you may not know
this, there were such problems with the Maricopa County
election that the Democrat county recorder, who is the
elections official for the county, Adrian Fontes, got to go
under scrutiny by this Board of Supervisors, the 2018 Board of
Supervisors, who took everything back from him that they
possibly could legally and statutorily. That's the history of
problems in Maricopa County in our voting.
Looking from the outside, the election process in Maricopa
County was fraught with problems. If your claim was that the
audit wasn't in order, you must acknowledge several broad
observations of the auditors that they made with regard to this
audit. everything from procedure and conduct--or misconduct on
the part of the board and specific elected officials.
You cannot argue the question regarding election integrity
from the right is an attack on our democracy, our
constitutional republic, especially after four years of the
Democrats claiming that the 2016 Presidential election was
stolen because of Russian interference.
Here is what a member of this committee said, Mr. Raskin
from Maryland said, ``I would love to challenge the Electoral
College vote because our election was badly tainted by
everything from cyber sabotage by Vladimir Putin to deliberate
voter suppression by Republicans in numerous swing states.''
That's what he said.
And we went through--we went through literally 4 1/2 years,
right up to the start of the November voting, the early
balloting in Arizona, of Hillary Clinton and her supporters in
the media saying that the 2016 election was stolen by
Republicans. It is no secret that if you go back and look at
polling data, everything from the Bush v. Gore era forward, the
party whose candidate was not successful asserted that the
election was not fair and impartial.
No secret. Every polling outlet from that point, 2001,
right on up to 2020 claimed that.
I advocated for a full forensic audit because I felt like
election integrity should be restored. One of the biggest
things that I find problematic here is that the two statutory
minimum audits committed to by the County Board of Supervisors
that were done could have been easily expanded in a timely
fashion to full forensic audit. They chose not to do it. They
spent $18,000 for those two audits. They spent literally
hundreds of thousands of dollars, multiple lawsuits, to prevent
the audit that we are discussing today.
And ultimately, the bottom line is we are here because this
chairwoman and the Democrats don't want to see any kind of
legislative change. I believe that there needs to be
legislative change probably in Arizona, and I don't know what
is going on in other states, but other folks tell me that in
their states, there needs to be legislative change, too.
That's --that's why we are here is because the chairwoman
would like to see legislative change scuttled, and I, for the
life of me, don't understand why this committee thinks that it
has the constant obligation to interfere in what is patently a
state issue.
With that, Madam Chair, I thank you, and I yield back.
Chairwoman Maloney. The gentleman yields back. I now
recognize Mr. Raskin, who is the chairman of the Subcommittee
on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, for an opening statement.
Mr. Raskin. Madam Chair, thank you very much for calling
this important hearing and thank you for making our committee a
leader in defending democracy and the voting rights of the
people against this escalating onslaught by Donald Trump and
his supporters against American constitutional democracy.
We know that Mr. Trump never accepted the results of the
2020 Presidential election, despite the fact that Joe Biden
beat him by more than 7 million votes and by a margin of 306 to
232 in the Electoral College, a margin incidentally that Mr.
Trump declared a landslide when he beat Hillary Clinton by the
exact same amount.
So Donald Trump moved quickly to try to browbeat state
election officials, and they were the first line of defense of
the democracy, people like Republican Secretary of State Brad
Raffensperger in Georgia, who refused to participate in Donald
Trump's election fraud, refusing to find just 11,781 votes that
Donald Trump said was all he needed in order to overturn the
lawful result in the state. But there were election officials
across the country who definitively refuted and repudiated
Donald Trump's claims of corruption and fraud. And in fact,
Trump's own Homeland Security Department declared the 2020
election the most secure in American history.
So then he went to court, and 61 Federal and state courts
in the land, from the lowest courts in the land--state, county,
district courts--to Federal district courts, all the way up to
the U.S. Supreme Court definitively, meticulously, and
comprehensively refuted, repudiated, and rejected every claim
that Donald Trump's supporters made that there was election
fraud or electoral corruption. And even the claim that some of
our colleagues have decided to float again today, which has
been rejected all the way up to the Supreme Court, was one that
was thoroughly vetted. The idea that when state election
administrators or state supreme courts under state
constitutions or under state legislative command act in the
electoral process, that is somehow unconstitutional.
There is no basis for that. It has been made up. It was
floated in all of these courts, rejected in all of these
courts. It was floated by the attorney general of Texas, who
sued in the Supreme Court. It was rejected.
And then it was floated again on the House floor on January
6, as the violent insurrectionary mob attacked us. It was
rejected again.
And yet the big lie lives now in these phony audits around
the country. It was amazing, yet telling, for me to hear the
gentleman from Arizona essentially I think he is trying to
allay the fact that this audit rejected the claim that Donald
Trump won in Arizona.
I never really understood Members from Arizona challenging
the result by which they themselves were elected, in the exact
same election where they were elected. And yet, still I
believe--and perhaps Mr. Biggs can correct me if I am wrong--I
hear him not even to be accepting the results of this audit,
which say that Joe Biden got more votes than were lawfully
recorded by the state.
And so----
Mr. Biggs. Will the gentleman yield? You have called me out
and asked if I would respond, I am happy to respond.
Mr. Raskin. Yes, by all means. Do you accept the--do you
accept this audit would show that Joe Biden won and, indeed, by
more votes than----
Mr. Biggs. That is not what the audit concluded, Mr.
Raskin. You know better than that. Have you read the whole
audit, or you cherry-picked the line which talks about the
recount versus the tabulation machines?
That, we would have expected to be very similar, and it
wasn't. So anything that might have inured to President
Biden's----
Mr. Raskin. Well, who won the election is my question, Mr.
Biggs. I am happy to yield to you for that. Who won the
election in Arizona, Donald Trump or----
Mr. Biggs. We don't know. Because as the audit, it
demonstrates very clearly, Mr. Raskin, there are a lot of
issues with this election that took place. We are going to go
through those today, but you can continue----
Mr. Raskin. OK. I will reclaim my time. You see, Madam
Chair, here is the problem.
Mr. Biggs [continuing]. And speaking of the big lie, you
can continue to perpetuate it as long as you want, but we are
going to find out, I hope.
Mr. Raskin. I will reclaim my time. Madam Chair, there is
the problem that we have. Donald Trump refuses to accept the
results, and unfortunately, we have one of the world's great
political parties, which has followed him off of the ledge of
this electoral lunacy, and it is dangerous for democracy.
So I am glad we are having this hearing today, and I yield
back to you, Madam Chair.
Chairwoman Maloney. The gentleman yields back. I would just
first like to respond to my dear friend from the great state of
Kentucky, who said we had not conducted oversight with the
administration.
I would like to remind him that just two days ago, we held
a hearing on Ida, with the Administrator from FEMA on the
response of the Federal Government to that disaster. And in
terms of Afghanistan, last month, at the request of
Republicans, we held a bipartisan classified briefing with the
Defense Department, State Department, DHS, and the intelligence
community to examine the ongoing efforts to help U.S. citizens
and Afghan allies who are still at risk in Afghanistan.
And I will note that just yesterday, our National Security
Subcommittee chair, Mr. Lynch, sent invitations for a
counterterrorism hearing later this month on Afghanistan. But
we do not want to be focusing on areas--we are focusing on this
election audit, and I would now like to----
Mr. Comer. Point of order, Madam Chair.
Chairwoman Maloney. I would like to introduce the
witnesses.
Mr. Comer. Point of order.
Mr. Biggs. Point of order, Madam Chair. Point of order.
Point of order. Point of order.
Chairwoman Maloney. Who is calling for a point of order?
Mr. Comer. Congressman Comer, the ranking member.
Chairwoman Maloney. Will you state your point of order? Who
is speaking?
Mr. Biggs. Mr. Comer.
Mr. Comer. Yes. I just wanted to clarify--Madam Chair, I
just wanted to clarify----
Chairwoman Maloney. Who is speaking?
Mr. Comer [continuing]. We called for a public transparent
hearing----
Chairwoman Maloney. Mr. Comer, OK.
Mr. Comer [continuing]. About the debacle in Afghanistan.
What you have provided us was a closed-door classified
briefing. The American people want transparency and
accountability with what went wrong with Afghanistan.
So what we are asking for isn't a behind the closed doors,
in a smoke-filled room briefing by a bunch of bureaucrats in
the Biden administration. We want a transparent hearing so the
American people can see exactly what went wrong. So that is my
point of order.
I yield back.
Chairwoman Maloney. One is scheduled. And again, I repeat,
I held that classified briefing at the request of Republicans
who asked for it.
But right now, let us return to the subject before us
today. I would like to introduce our witnesses.
Our first witness today is Jack Sellers, who is the
chairman of the Board of Supervisors of Maricopa County,
Arizona. Then we will hear from Bill Gates, who is the vice
chairman of the Board of Supervisors of Maricopa County.
Next, we will hear from David Becker, who is the executive
director and founder of the Center for Election Innovation and
Research. Next, we will hear from Gowri Ramachandran, who is a
senior counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice. And finally,
we will hear from Ken Bennett, who was the Senate audit liaison
and the former secretary of state in Arizona.
The witnesses will be unmuted so that we can swear them in.
Please raise your right hands.
Do you swear or affirm that the testimony you are about to
give is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth,
so help you God? [Response.]
Chairwoman Maloney. Let the record show that the witnesses
answered in the affirmative.
Thank you. Without objection, your written statements will
be made part of the record.
With that, Mr. Sellers, you are now recognized for your
testimony. Thank you for traveling here from Arizona and for
your public service.
Mr. Sellers?
STATEMENT OF JACK SELLERS, CHAIRMAN, BOARD OF SUPERVISORS,
MARICOPA COUNTY, ARIZONA
Mr. Sellers. Thank you, Madam Chair, members of the
committee. Thank you all for inviting me here today.
I want to start by saying that the election of November 3,
2020, in Maricopa County was free, fair, and accurate. Maricopa
County is the second-largest voting district in the United
States of America. I sit before you today as a Republican who
was voted into office in November 2020, and there's a member of
this distinguished committee who was also successful in the
November 2020 election held in Maricopa County.
But the most important people involved in the November
election were the men and women of the Maricopa County
Elections Department. They executed a secure, accurate, and
efficient election of over 1.8 million voters in the Nation's
fourth most populous county during a worldwide pandemic. Our
Election Department was praised by election experts throughout
the country, and we received an award from the National
Association of Counties.
Maricopa County began planning for the 2020 election
immediately after the November 2018 election results were
canvassed and submitted to the Arizona secretary of state. The
county began to assess staff, processes, and equipment needs in
anticipation of the 2020 election cycle and taking appropriate
action to complete that preparation because we also knew that
the election results in Maricopa County would play a pivotal
role in both the outcome of the Presidential race and the U.S.
Senate chamber political makeup.
I'm very proud of the efforts we put forth to prepare. We
worked closely with the Arizona secretary of state, our
legislative leaders in both the House and the Senate, the
attorney general, and the Governor's office.
We were also very inclusive of all the political parties
who participated fully in not only observing Election Day
administration and tabulation, but also in pre-and post
election logic and accuracy testing. If you were in Arizona
politics in November 2020 and didn't understand how Maricopa
County was running elections, then you just weren't paying
attention.
The county authored an election bill regarding electronic
adjudication at the legislature, which passed both chambers
unanimously and was signed by our Governor. The county invested
in a very robust voter education campaign. So if you watched
TV, tweeted, Instagrammed, or used YouTube, you saw our media
campaign.
We implemented the technology to educate our residents on
how--on when and how to register, how you can vote, where you
can vote, and the wait times at the polling locations, all by
pushing a button on your phone.
We ran a Presidential preference election in February. All
participants agreed it was well run and accurate.
We ran the primary election in August 2020. Again, the
public, the candidates, and the political parties all agreed
the county's election execution was excellent.
We ran the 2020 general election in November, and suddenly,
what to that point had been a great process was deemed fatally
flawed by a small, yet loud minority.
I dare say if you're a student of Maricopa County
Republican election history, you are not surprised by the
results. It was not a flawed election process, not a lack of
security. It was a candidate that many Maricopa County
Republicans simply did not support. If that lesson is not clear
to our state and county Republican leaders, then I'm afraid
2022 will not be favorable to my party.
During these last 10 months, I've learned a lot about
people, and frankly, I was naive in thinking that I could just
sit down with our State Senate leadership and explain the
answers to their questions and accusations, and we could put
this uncertainty behind us and move on with securing a fruitful
future for our residents. But it's become clear that there are
those who don't care what the facts are. They just want to gain
political power and raise money by fostering mistrust of the
greatest power an individual can exercise in the United States,
their vote.
I'm an elected official. Some say I signed up for this, and
that's true. But I ran because economic development and
maintaining our quality of life is very important to me. Making
sure the Valley of the Sun has the proper investment in
infrastructure, technology, and education is what drives me.
Relitigating a failed campaign is not what drives me.
So it's time to move on. It's time to put our efforts into
securing a greater future for our country, and that's exactly
what I plan to do.
Thank you.
Chairwoman Maloney. Thank you. The gentleman yields back,
and thank you.
And Mr. Gates, you are now recognized for your testimony.
STATEMENT OF BILL GATES, BOARD OF SUPERVISORS, MARICOPA COUNTY,
ARIZONA
Mr. Gates. Thank you very much, Madam Chair, Ranking
Member, and members of the committee. Thank you so much for
having me here today to discuss a very important issue in our
country, and that's the future of fair and free elections.
The 2020 election in Maricopa County, the general election,
was the best election we've ever run in Maricopa County. And
the way that I know that was it was the most scrutinized
election in the history of Maricopa County. Election experts
said that. Machine counts confirmed it. Hand counts confirmed
it. The court system reconfirmed it, and our residents were
happy, too.
We did a poll of 80,000 of our voters, and 90 percent of
them said that they were satisfied or very satisfied with the
election. Really, by any measure, this election in 2020 was
secure, and everyone who wanted to vote was able to do so.
Unfortunately, some in our party see it differently. They
have attacked the work that was done by our elections workers
in Maricopa County, and they have fanned the flames of
conspiracy. And this willingness to do so, unfortunately, is
what led to the first nonpeaceful transfer of power in our
country's history.
And unfortunately, Arizona has been at the center of this
attack on our American ideals. Even though Joe Biden won
Arizona by 45,000 votes, 20 members of the Arizona legislature
signed a resolution asking Congress to disregard those results
and seat an electors slate of Trump electors. That was, without
a doubt, a staggering refusal to follow the will of the voters.
Next, Republican State senators went to court, and they
tried to get from Maricopa County the people's ballots and the
election machines ``sufficiently in advance of the
congressional review of the Electoral College returns on
January 6, 2021.''
Now when they failed, the senators carried on. They
threatened to jail me and my colleagues on the Board of
Supervisors. And then they cast doubt on two additional audits
that we authorized at the Board of Supervisors. And by the way,
both of these audits found that there was no hacking, there was
no manipulation with our machines or with our software. It
should have ended there, but it didn't.
The Senate then hired the Cyber Ninjas to head up a group
of firms with no or little election experience to conduct an
extralegal review, essentially an extralegal recount of
Maricopa County's ballots. And really, that can only be
described as an amateurish review of Maricopa County's election
technical infrastructure.
The Cyber Ninjas, they changed the policies and procedures.
They chased conspiracy theories. They threw out false claims.
And worst of all, they accused our good elections workers of
committing crimes. They said that they deleted files, but these
were files that the Cyber Ninjas just couldn't find. Now, this
was either an out-and-out lie or a level of incompetence by the
Cyber Ninjas that was staggering.
Elections integrity is not a new thing for me. As a former
Republican election lawyer for the Arizona Republican Party,
it's a passion of mine. And that's why I'm here today to speak
out against those that are passing off this disinformation and
those that would call on legitimate elections to be
decertified.
This is, without a doubt, the biggest threat to our
democracy in my lifetime. If elected officials continue to
choose party over truth, then these procedures are going to
continue on these privately funded, government-backed attacks
on legitimate elections. And losers of elections will just go
out and find financial backers who will continue to drag these
procedures on. And unfortunately, that is going to negatively
impact our democracy.
As a Republican who believes in democracy, I dreamed of one
day going to a nation that was trying to build a democracy and
help them out. Perhaps a former Soviet republic like Belarus or
Tajikistan. I never could have imagined that I would be doing
that work here in the United States of America.
Thank you.
Chairwoman Maloney. Thank you.
Mr. Becker, you are now recognized.
STATEMENT OF DAVID BECKER, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR AND FOUNDER, THE
CENTER FOR ELECTION INNOVATION AND RESEARCH
Mr. Becker. Thank you, Madam Chair and members of the
committee.
My name is David Becker, and I'm the executive director and
founder of the Center for Election Innovation and Research, a
nonpartisan nonprofit that works with election officials and
others from both parties all over the country to ensure
elections are secure and accessible. I've nearly 25 years of
experience working in elections, and I come here before you
today as concerned as I've never been before about the ongoing
threats to American democracy.
First, the good news. In every state, including Arizona, we
saw the most secure, verified, and transparent election in
American history. Almost 95 percent of all ballots were cast on
auditable paper, up from less than 80 percent in 2016,
including all ballots in every swing state.
There were more legitimate audits of those ballots than
ever before in states like Arizona, Michigan, and most notably
in Georgia, where they counted every Presidential ballot three
times, including once entirely by hand.
We saw more pre-election litigation clarifying the rules
than ever before, with each side winning some cases and losing
others. And there was more post election litigation confirming
the results. This was largely due to the heroic efforts of
election officials around the country of both parties, who
managed record turnout while severely underfunded during a
global pandemic.
But the bad news is that tens of millions of Americans,
sincerely disappointed that their candidate lost, have been
targeted in a scam to keep them angry, divided, and donating.
They've been fed a constant diet of lies telling them that
millions of their fellow citizens, half of them members of
their own party, engaged in a massive conspiracy to deliver the
election to the current President and that none of the millions
of conspirators are talking.
This big lie is leading to laws in the states that make
elections less secure and leading to threats against public
servants who run elections, and it's led to the effort that was
recently concluded by the Cyber Ninjas in Maricopa County,
Arizona.
The Ninjas' effort was flawed from the start. They spread
lies about the election months before they got the contract.
And despite having no experience in elections, they raised
millions of dollars from outside sources to fund their efforts.
The Arizona Senate and their contractors had to be taken to
court to get basic documents about the process and the backroom
discussions that drove it.
Meanwhile, the Ninjas seized ballots from the election
officials who were required by law to maintain them and, in so
doing, likely violated Federal law and broke the chain of
custody of these ballots. One of the great ironies is that even
if the Ninjas had discovered an actual election problem, which
they did not, they had so tainted the evidence that it would
almost certainly have been found inadmissible in any legal
proceeding to address the problem.
The Ninjas' conclusions suffered from the same flaws that
afflicted the entire process. They made wild claims about
voters who had allegedly moved, based upon an incompetent and
discredited methodology and an incomplete commercial data base.
Experienced election auditors confirmed that the Ninjas and
their allies got nearly half of their numbers flat-out wrong,
including failing to account for one-third of the hand-counted
ballots.
And despite the fact that Arizona was the best hope for
those that sought to deny the election, the Ninjas' effort
confirmed nothing. It merely demonstrated that even in a state
with the smallest margin of victory among the swing states,
highly biased and motivated individuals, bolstered by millions
of dollars from unclear sources and nearly eight months to
work, could not manufacture enough fake fraud to overturn the
will of Arizona voters.
Before the Ninjas even started, the election had already
been verified and confirmed, consistent with Arizona law. The
voter lists were confirmed and maintained accurately, thanks
to, among other things, Arizona's membership in the Electronic
Registration Information Center, the gold standard of voter
list maintenance that 30 states utilize.
Audits conducted immediately after the election, pursuant
to Arizona law, compared the paper ballots to the machine
counts and confirmed the outcomes. Nevertheless, the Ninjas'
effort has contributed to threats against public servants and
their families. These threats are so pervasive that my
organization recently formed the Election Official Legal
Defense Network, under the leadership of co-chairs Bob Bauer
and Ben Ginsberg, to provide pro bono legal assistance to
election officials suffering threats.
Notwithstanding, lawmakers in Pennsylvania, Texas, and
Wisconsin have pushed similar flawed efforts now, beginning 11
months after the election. In each of these states, as
throughout the Nation, there is still zero evidence of
significant fraud, even after nearly a year of looking for it.
These efforts continue to have a disastrous effect on our
democracy. We're at risk of losing a generation of professional
expertise in election administration due to the ongoing
threats. Laws are being passed that actually make elections
less secure and inject more chaos into vote casting, counting,
and certification of results.
Validly elected leaders are finding their elections
delegitimized, and their ability to govern questioned.
Ironically, many of the same lawmakers in these states are
calling into question their own elections, just as members of
the Arizona Senate have done.
Let's be clear. Real post election audits, conducted
transparently by professional election administrators under
laws established prior to an election are a very good thing. We
had more strong audits than ever before in 2020. If states want
to pass laws requiring even better audits immediately after an
election, I will be there working with them and helping them. I
have already done so with both Republicans and Democrats in
states like Georgia and Michigan.
But that's not what happened in Arizona or other states.
The legislatures in those states did not see any problems with
their existing audit laws pre-election. It was only after they
became unhappy with the results and the losing candidate
refused to concede that they fueled his election denial with
these efforts many months after the elections in these states
had been verified, audited, and certified.
Thank you.
Chairwoman Maloney. Thank you.
And Ms. Ramachandran, you are now recognized for five
minutes. Ms. Ramachandran?
STATEMENT OF GOWRI RAMACHANDRAN, SENIOR COUNSEL, THE BRENNAN
CENTER
Ms. Ramachandran. Chairwoman Maloney, Ranking Member Comer,
and members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to
discuss this critical issue.
In the last year, we have seen a number of techniques
employed to undermine the will of the voters--the flagrant
violence of January 6, the behind the scenes phone calls to
state and local officials, an alleged secret memo advocating
for a coup. None of these techniques succeeded in overturning
the 2020 election, but willfully ignorant sham partisan reviews
are serving up innuendo and baseless suspicions, ready for
deployment by super spreaders of lies.
The impact of these lies is twofold, attacks on election
officials and their families now and the fostering of
systematic efforts at election sabotage in the future. I hope
to make three points in my testimony.
First, after more than nine months and millions of dollars
spent, the sham partisan review in Arizona has given us the
same insinuations that purveyors of voter fraud myths have been
pushing and that real election experts have been debunking for
years. And it's no surprise. The contractors that the Arizona
Senate chose to conduct this charade were biased from the
start.
Second, we cannot dismiss these foolish exploits out of
hand because they are spreading and providing seed material
that common actors leverage in their disinformation campaigns
to keep the big lie alive.
Third, all of society must do its part to protect our
democracy. Congress can help by providing resources to help
election officials defend against these attacks and by passing
legislation to protect election officials, workers, and voters.
The Arizona Senate's partisan review was conceived and
executed by people who were the subject of pressure from former
President Trump and his supporters to propagate fraud claims.
From a State Senate meeting with Giuliani to a call from Trump
to Senate President Fann to the voicemails left with the
Maricopa County supervisors, who stood firm and did not call
back, the pressure campaign did not let up.
It was in this context that instead of choosing objective,
transparent, and competent contractors, the Senate choose Cyber
Ninjas. Doug Logan, the CEO of Cyber Ninjas, has authored and
apparently still stands by a memo to legislators chalk full of
debunked Stop the Steal conspiracy theories, including a viral
claim against a former Dominion employee who had to go into
hiding after a flood of harassment and threats.
In addition to being biased, the Cyber Ninjas have resisted
transparency about their procedures and for the press at every
turn. There is also very little transparency about who is
funding the review. What little information has been disclosed
is troubling.
Finally, the Cyber Ninjas were incompetent to perform any
election review. The firm's top three findings are textbook
examples of how purveyors of voter fraud misunderstand data.
First, they ignored the birthday problem, a basic concept of
probability. They looked for Arizona voters who shared a first,
middle, and last name and birth year with another voter, and
they found about 10,000 such matches.
They then gave this finding the alarming title, voters that
potentially voted in multiple counties. But within groups of
people who have a common name, such as Robert Smith, it is
expected that some of them will share a birthday. And it is
even more common for people to share a birth year, which is all
the Cyber Ninjas found.
In another example of their willingness to cast aspersions
on their fellow citizens, they labeled one finding critical,
supposedly impacting over 23,000 ballots. This is the number of
people who Cyber Ninjas found through matching voter check-in
files to a commercial address verification list.
But temporary moves do not change a voter's eligibility to
vote from their permanent residence. This isn't an obscure
election law fact. It appeared in mainstream news stories
before November, since many voters had questions about this
during the pandemic.
And Cyber Ninjas is not the only biased contractor that was
chosen. Shiva Ayyadurai was contracted to look at ballot
envelope images. He has a history of conflating ballot images
and ballots to allege election fraud in his home state of
Massachusetts, and he did this again with envelope images and
ballots in Arizona.
These errors and misleading innuendo would be sad if they
weren't so dangerous. Most election officials do not have the
staff and resources to run year-round fact check operations.
Congress should assist with these resources.
Many of the provisions in the Freedom to Vote Act would
also be helpful, such as the one providing for voters to bring
a lawsuit if their right to vote has been infringed in a
Federal election. This provision would provide a remedy in the
worst-case scenario, where an official gives in to pressure to
overturn an outcome.
Thank you for the opportunity to testify today. I look
forward to answering your questions.
Chairwoman Maloney. Thank you.
Mr. Bennett, you are now recognized. Mr. Bennett?
STATEMENT OF KEN BENNETT, FORMER SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE
STATE OF ARIZONA, ARIZONA STATE SENATE LIAISON TO CYBER NINJAS
AUDIT
Mr. Bennett. Thank you, Chairwoman Maloney, Ranking Member
Comer, and members of the committee.
Auditing elections is not a threat to our democratic
republic. Anything we can do to make sure our elections are
transparent, trackable, and publicly verified only strengthens
our country. Elections are how we, the people, give our consent
of the governed, as is stated in the Declaration of
Independence. And every citizen deserves to know that they are
treated equally under the law, as guaranteed in the
Constitution.
Every lawful vote must be counted accurately and not
canceled out by unlawful ones. Even the election system used by
Maricopa County, known as Dominion, points out in their
marketing materials that the fourth of four steps in an
election is to audit the election. They even trademark that
module saying, ``This ballot-level audit trail allows election
officials and other stakeholders to review not only the ballot
images, but also the tabulator's interpretation of each
ballot.''
And why does each ballot matter? In 2020, Arizona had the
closest contest for President in our state's history. To use
numbers we can all easily relate to, if Arizona was 1,000
people, we had 80 percent, or 800 people vote. The official
results were President Biden, 397; President Trump, 395. Yes, a
two out of 800 vote margin, or 3/10ths of one percent, which
was the exact percentage of about 10,000 out of 3.4 million in
the actual election.
Now you notice that 397 and 395 don't add up to 800 either.
That's because on one percent of the ballots, eight out of 800,
the machines didn't record any vote in the Presidential race.
In the actual election, it was almost 34,000 ballots out of 3.4
million statewide.
Maybe that's what those voters intended, or maybe some
voters circled their ovals or checked next to the oval, not
getting any mark inside the oval. In either case, no vote was
counted by the Election Management System, and those undervotes
would not have been sent to adjudication teams to determine
voter intent.
This fact alone warrants auditing an election that was this
close by reviewing each ballot, which is exactly what we did in
the audit. We reviewed each of the almost 2.1 million ballots.
And despite months of warnings from the county, our secretary
of state, election experts, and most of the media that the
auditors' procedures were imprecise and unreliable, the most
significant finding of the audit is that the hand count of the
physical ballots very closely matches the county's official
results in the President and U.S. Senate races.
Now that finding is frustrating to many who expected the
audit to prove a different election result. But as Arizona
Senate President Karen Fann stated numerous times, the audit
has never been about trying to overturn the 2020 election. It
is about verifying that Arizona laws and procedures were
followed and identifying how our laws can be improved and
better enforced going forward to maximize integrity in our
elections.
To that end, we did find several areas where election laws
and procedures were or may have been violated. These include
missing or unmatched signatures on ballot envelope affidavits,
missing serial numbers matching duplicate ballots to their
originals, common usernames and passwords used to log into the
Election Management System, insufficient security protocols and
procedures, deleted files and churned logs from the data
delivered to the Senate, and numerous voter registration
anomalies.
Now some of these are findings, and some are observations
or questions to which the county say they have answers and
explanations. We welcome those answers.
One of the most disturbing aspects of the audit was the
county's lack of cooperation, especially their unwillingness to
answer any questions once the audit began. Not many people like
to have their work checked, but audits are much better with the
cooperation of the auditee.
The audit report has been forwarded by the Senate to our
state attorney general, whose Election Integrity Unit will work
with the county to find those answers and accountability.
Election integrity is so important, we must find ways to work
amongst different levels and branches of government to achieve
it.
No election or election audit can be conducted perfectly,
as they are administered by imperfect human beings. I believe
the majority of election officials throughout our fine state
are honorable, well-intentioned people trying to do the best
job they can. I believe the same about the audit.
We should not fear auditing elections. We should embrace it
and welcome it.
Chairwoman Maloney. Thank you. Thank all of the panelists
for your testimony.
I now recognize myself.
Chairman Sellers and Supervisor Gates, thank you for being
here today. You are both lifelong Republicans. Mr. Gates, I
understand that you even founded a teenage Republican Party
while you were in high school, and I don't think anyone would
question either of you for your long-held allegiance to the
Republican Party.
Yet you have both been outspoken messengers that the 2020
election was safe, secure, and fair, even when that message has
brought you into conflict with members of your own party.
Nearly every Republican in the Arizona State Senate voted to
hold both of you in contempt for standing up against the Cyber
Ninja audit. One Republican state senator called for the entire
Maricopa board to be arrested and put in solitary confinement.
My question for you, Supervisor Gates, why have you chosen
to speak out so forcefully on this issue, even against some
members of your own party?
Mr. Gates. Well, thank you, Madam Chair.
It hasn't been easy to do this. I have been a lifelong
Republican, and I'm proud to be a Republican. But I'm also a
member of the Board of Supervisors, and as was mentioned
earlier, the Board of Supervisors took more authority in
running elections in 2020 because we wanted to run an excellent
election, and we believe that that's what has happened here.
But the problem is, that as people have been distorting
what happened in this election--I have no problem with people
raising questions. What I have a problem with is people going
to the lengths as you mentioned.
We had gone to court to get direction from a superior court
judge on whether we had the legal authority to turn the ballots
over. We had asked for an expedited hearing. And despite that,
the Arizona State Senate was one vote away from holding us in
contempt and most likely detaining us. That was wrong.
It was also wrong, once they had the ballots, in my
opinion, to conduct an audit with auditors who had no elections
experience and then also auditors who clearly had a
preconceived notion. I don't have a problem with audits. I had
concerns with this particular audit, and that's why I'm
speaking out.
Chairwoman Maloney. And Chairman Sellers, what about you?
Why are you speaking out today?
Mr. Sellers. When I first got on the Board of Supervisors,
we were in the process of taking the parts of the election
process back that we could because we'd had some issues with
elections in the past couple of elections, people waiting in
lines for 4 or 5 hours and those kind of things. And the
interesting thing to me was that every step of the way, we
ensured that we were staying within the U.S. and the Arizona
constitution on everything we did.
When we were faced with the pandemic and had to change the
way we were going to run the election from a precinct-based
model to a vote center model, we again went back to the
political parties, to the secretary of state, to the governor,
to the attorney general, and got their agreement on everything
we were doing, that it was legal and going to provide us with a
safe, secure election going forward.
So----
Chairwoman Maloney. Thank you. Thank you.
Reclaiming my time, I have very little, limited time. Mr.
Sellers and Mr. Gates, you faced pressure to support President
Trump's big lie even before the audit started. On Christmas Eve
last year, former President Trump's personal lawyer, Rudy
Giuliani, called both Mr. Sellers and Mr. Gates as part of
Trump's pressure campaign to try to overturn the election
results in Arizona.
Neither of you picked up. So he left a voicemail message. I
would like to play one of those voicemails now that Mr.
Giuliani left for Chairman Sellers. May we hear the audio now,
please?
Mr. Giuliani.
[on voicemail recording] Hi. Rudy Giuliani, President
Trump's attorney calling. I'm hoping we could have a chance to
have a conversation. I'd like to see if there's a way that we
could resolve this so it comes out well for everyone. We're all
Republicans. I think we all have the same goal. Let's see if--
let's see if we can get this done outside of the courts. Gosh.
OK, call me. Anytime. No problem. Bye.
Chairwoman Maloney. Mr. Giuliani said, and I quote, ``We're
all Republicans. I think we all have the same goal.''
I would like to ask you, Supervisor Gates, what you do
think that goal was? And you got a similar call where he said--
he asked you to ``get this thing fixed up'' and saying ``I
think there may be a nice way to resolve this.'' What do you
think Mr. Giuliani wanted you to do?
Mr. Biggs. Madam Chair, just a point of order real quick. I
hope I am going to be extended the same courtesy to go beyond
the five-minute limit?
Chairwoman Maloney. Absolutely.
Mr. Gates. Madam Chair, that voicemail was left at a time
we were in litigation with the State Senate over turning over
the ballots and the election machines. I think he was trying to
get us to settle that lawsuit so that they could very quickly
get the ballots in advance of the January 6 certification of
the Electoral College.
Chairwoman Maloney. And why was this so important? What was
Mr. Giuliani's ultimate goal? What do you think his ultimate
goal was?
Mr. Gates. Well, you know, I can't speculate on that. But I
think that he wanted to look at the evidence and see if there
was evidence to support not certifying the election.
Chairwoman Maloney. And I want to thank you both--my time
is up--and the many other state and local officials who stood
up to Trump's pressure campaign and turned back his efforts to
overturn a free and fair election.
The late Senator from Arizona John McCain once said, and I
quote, ``We are Americans first, Americans last, Americans
always.'' I agree. We are Americans before we are members of
any political party.
Chairman Sellers and Supervisor Gates, I hope other
Republicans, including my colleagues in Congress, follow the
example that you set today. I want to thank you for your
testimony. Thank you so much.
I now recognize the gentleman from Arizona, Mr. Gosar. Mr.
Gosar?
Mr. Gosar. Can you hear me, Madam Chairwoman?
Chairwoman Maloney. I can hear you.
Mr. Gosar. That sounds good.
Well, I want to thank all of the witnesses, especially Mr.
Bennett from my district. Ken, it is good seeing you again. Mr.
Sellers, Mr. Gates, thank you for attending.
You know, the majority is very shortsighted, and this
hearing today reminds me of 2017, I think, maybe 2018, when we
actually--one of our own members from the other side actually
introduced legislation, Mr. Raskin, for the Election Vendor
Security Act. Part of that was due in terms to security--an
election security vendor infrastructure subcommittee hearing on
the U.S. Senate side in Homeland Security, which basically said
that the equipment or the vendors or these machines were
potentially 100 percent corruptible. Interesting. Interesting.
Now I want to bring back into point a film, and I am not
usually complimentary of films. But this one is very
interesting, released in March 2020. It is called ``Kill
Chain'' by the HBO Films.
And basically, what it is, is they go in with a security
expert, cybersecurity expert by the name of Harri Hursti. I
think most of you would admit he is very good at what he does.
And basically, what he talked about, he goes systematically
through an election and these machines.
You know, in the old days of the 20th century, I guess when
my hair was still around and it is not so gray, they were
basically adding machines with a light. But today, they are
controlled by a computer. And all computers can be hacked. And
what Harri Hursti does is he goes through a number of scenarios
and people and experts to show how these machines can be
corrupted.
Yes, the results we see here supposedly don't change the
outcome, but there is more to the story as to how those votes
could be manipulated by the machine, and then the calibration
or the certification of those ballots is covered up by the
machine.
Don't take my word for it. I want you to go back to watch
``Kill Chain.'' I think it is a wonderful documentary that
doesn't take a partisan look either way, at least for most of
it. But it highlights a series of problems that exist,
undeniably. Undeniably.
Hackers can make this change, and we have problems, as Mr.
Biggs talked about, with Maricopa County from the 2018
election. The Board of Supervisors adamantly and valiantly took
back some of their power and oversight at that election. But
Mr. Fontes kept custody of the voter registration rolls. Very
important. Very important when we start dissecting what the
Cyber Ninjas did.
Second of all, they want the scrutiny from private entities
like Cyber Ninjas because the certification of these audit
folks is not exactly what you really want, and I don't think it
is what Mr. Raskin and anybody else wants either. You don't
want government OKing a process and then certifying that
process. You want somebody independent of that aspect. So from
the standpoint that we see this, there are problems.
How about me? Where do you account for me? The day after
the election, I was contacted by two individuals. One had
security and fraud jobs with the banking world. The other one
does fraud from Department of Defense. They were monitoring the
election through Edison, the amalgamator, that was providing
information to the media.
What they saw in Arizona--they were watching the secretary
of state at the same time. What they saw from Arizona drew
their attention quickly first, based on numbers of 90,000-some,
60,000-some, 40,000-some ballots dropped into Donald Trump's
category and then quickly come out verbatim. Now there may be a
reason for that. We don't know.
But then they started watching and looking to the dumps.
And what I mean by that is, is there is a first dump. There is
multiple dumps, maybe 9 or 10 through the night. So if they are
random, which they should be, if the first dump in Coconino
County was 61 percent for Joe Biden, you would expect the rest
of the time and the rest of the dumps to be very similar, 58,
62, 55, and so forth. Not 40, 38, 35. That drove their--a big
question mark for them.
There were four anomalies in our state--Maricopa County,
Pima County or Tucson, Coconino County up in Flagstaff, and
Pinal County down just southeast of Phoenix. Interestingly
enough, the top two election officials in Pinal County actually
resigned the very next morning. That doesn't draw any
attention, does it?
So it gets even worse. So they go, the election--Maricopa
Election Committee actually takes 100 random duplicate ballots.
These are ballots that can't go through the machine for
smudges, tears, whatever. And you do a new one with judges from
both sides of the aisle looking over, making sure that it is
done right. So when you run them through the machine, you
should have a zero percent error rate.
They had a three percent error rate. And in Maricopa
County, that represents over 90,000 ballots. Wow, we got a
problem. The margin of loss was right under 11,000.
So then they did 2,500 random duplicate ballots. They never
finished. They locked them up. We were told that there was
double-digit error rates. So the two guys, going back to the
two guys, they estimated between 450,000 and 700,000 ballots
had some electronic or some kind of issue. They still may be
valid, but that had an issue.
Well, if you take 3 times 3 at 90,000, you are talking
about over 200,000 or 270,000 ballots. This should be a cause
for an audit. It shouldn't be that you are suing the State
Senate who has jurisdiction over you, and we had to go to court
for that aspect. And yes, the State Senate won in this-that
discard.
But we saw the county supervisors lock them up, sue at
every case they got. They lost at that superior court judge
that they don't have to answer to the State Senate. They do.
They didn't provide different mechanisms. So they didn't allow
a full canvass. They didn't have access to the routers. They
didn't have full access for voter signature acuity and
documentation and accuracy.
Chairwoman Maloney. The gentleman's time has----
Mr. Gosar. There are certainly problems here, and
hopefully, I will be able to get some time yielded to me so I
can explain even more.
Chairwoman Maloney. OK----
Mr. Gosar. There should have been an audit based on this
information, and this information alone.
Thank you.
Chairwoman Maloney. OK. The gentleman has received equal
time, and we were both over time.
I now recognize the gentlelady from the District of
Columbia, Ms. Norton. She is now recognized for five minutes.
Ms. Norton. Thank you, Madam Chair, and I will certainly
try to stay within my time.
This oversight hearing is the appropriate response to
claims that the election was stolen. Let's look into it. Let us
call, as we have, those who were in charge of conducting this
election.
And I note for the record that Cyber Ninjas who did the
audit is not here. I would have thought that they would be
first to want to step up to speak to the issue of the audit.
They were invited. They are not here.
The other side mentioned problems in all of our elections.
There has never been a problem such as the problem we have seen
here. This is unprecedented.
He mentioned Bush v. Gore. I remember very distinctly that
at that very close election, Gore stepped up to concede the
election. That is the American way. This is the first time that
has been broken in the history of the United States of America.
I have questions for Chairman Sellers and Supervisor Gates,
who I thank for appearing before us today. I understand that
since the election, you have been the targets of horrific
threats of violence, something else unprecedented in American
life.
I would like to ask each of you about the threats you have
received. Chairman Sellers, approximately how many threats have
you and your family received since November 2020, and have
these threats--how have these threats affected you and your
family?
Mr. Sellers. OK. I have not reacted as much to the threats
as some of my colleagues because I'm widowed, I live alone, and
you know, I think even my staff and our law enforcement
agencies have admonished me for not being concerned enough
about the threats. But to that point, I have had Sheriff's
Department and Chandler Police Department vehicles that parked
in front of my house overnight on many nights because of very
specific threats against me.
And in fact, the Maricopa County sheriff told me if you
don't have a Ring doorbell, I will buy you one if you're not
willing to buy one for yourself. And I now have one of those as
well, just to--to enhance the security where I live.
Ms. Norton. Madam Chair, that kind of threats after an
election again is unprecedented in American life.
Supervisor Gates, can you describe some of the threats that
you and your family have received, and is it your understanding
that people making these threats support the notion that the
election was stolen?
Mr. Gates. Thank you for that question.
We have been--my family--I have three daughters, and we
have been subjected to many threats over the past few months.
We have been doxxed. One of our colleagues had 90 people
outside of his house one evening, and we've had phone calls
into the Board of Supervisors saying that they were--people
were going to come and slaughter us and our families.
Sadly, we had a state senator who sent out a fundraising
email in which she told us--she's a veteran, and she told us to
``check our six,'' which I believe means that, you know, we
better watch our back.
This is clearly an attempt by people--and we see it on both
sides of the aisle, sadly--people all across the spectrum. But
for us, it's generally been people who have--who have been
unhappy with the election result. There's been an attempt to
intimidate us and intimidating others who are doing elections
work. And that's what I'm most concerned about is that this
would deter good people who want to be involved in running
elections in the future from getting involved and making a
difference.
Ms. Norton. Vice Chairman Gates, that`s a very important
point. These are volunteers. We need them every election.
Could I ask you, Chairman Sellers, have other supervisors
and employees of the county been targeted by similar threats of
the kind that you and the vice chairman have mentioned?
Mr. Sellers. Yes, absolutely. And in fact, we had a fence
put up around our building in downtown Phoenix, a fence put up
around our election headquarters just to protect the employees
who are--and the important thing to me is that the Elections
Department people are nonpartisan people that have worked
through all--all the elections without any political
involvement at all. They are just experts at what they do. And
yet they, as well, were getting threats.
Ms. Norton. Madam Chair, this has been important to put on
the record. This kind of conduct you would expect in an
autocratic republic, not a democracy like the United States of
America. That is why this hearing is so important, and I thank
you.
Chairwoman Maloney. Thank you. I now recognize the
gentleman from Arizona, Mr. Biggs, for as much time as he
needs.
Mr. Biggs. Thank you. I will try to stay as close to that
five as I can, Madam Chair. Thank you so much.
It is unfortunate that we have devolved that there are
threats. I mean, that really is a terrible thing. I spent the
first two years receiving threats from the hard left
repeatedly. I couldn't even hold town halls anymore because I
had to have massive amounts of protection there not just for
me, but for anybody who would come because we had no idea what
would happen.
The threats were real. I know that Senator Fann, the
president of the Arizona Senate, has received threats from the
other side as well. So, I mean, this is a problem that we face
in a very divided nation right now.
But I wanted to just--I had to point out something about
Vice Chair Gates' testimony that I thought was interesting
because you mentioned in your written testimony. I read that,
and you stated it, and you kind of read that today that the
Senate was trying to put you in jail. That isn't really the
full context.
The full context was this. That the Senate in December
after their hearing issued subpoenas. You guys were
negotiating, trying to figure out how to respond to those
subpoenas. Didn't happen. In January and February, there was an
attempt to issue second subpoenas. Those subpoenas were not
responded to.
A court hearing was held. Court, Timothy Thomason said the
subpoenas issued by the Arizona Senate were valid. You didn't
go to court to say, hey, you know, we want to participate. We
just want to know what we can and can't get. You went to quash
the subpoenas. That's a huge difference.
And to be held in contempt, it takes a majority. They
didn't get their majority because the Senate is very evenly
split. That is something quite different than saying, yes, they
were trying to put us in jail. They were trying to cite you for
contempt of something that constitutionally and statutorily the
legislature was allowed to do.
I just needed to make sure that that was clear as we go.
And now I am going to turn to Mr. Bennett.
Mr. Gates. May I respond to that?
Mr. Biggs. No, you can't. It is my time.
I am going to turn to Mr. Bennett. Mr. Bennett, I want to
ask you a question with regard to this notion of--let me get to
my question here--Mr. Becker, yes, he was critical of the chain
of custody. Can you talk to us about the valid chain of
custody?
And I don't mean to be rude, Mr. Gates. I have a very
limited amount of time, and I got to get to certain things.
Mr. Bennett. Yes, I think Mr. Becker's testimony was that
the Ninjas had seized the ballots and machines. Nothing could
be further from the truth. I personally, along with the co-
election director of Maricopa County, Mr. Scott Jarrett,
supervised the transition of the ballots and the machines from
the county to the audit over a period of two days. We processed
46 pallets, 1,691 boxes.
Now, a box contains about 1,200 to 1,300 ballots. That
process went very smoothly. I've been very complimentary both
privately and publicly of Mr. Jarrett and the county's
transition of the ballots. But we did find, for example, 26
mismarked boxes. We found eight boxes that were not listed on
the manifest, the chain of custody documents that Maricopa
County was supposed to have since the election until they
turned them over to us on April 22 of 2021.
We found two boxes that were on the manifest, but not
present on the pallets. And then we found three boxes that were
on different pallets than they were listed.
So the point is that out of 1,691 boxes, there were 40-some
boxes of errors. But the transition was not one of the auditors
seizing the ballots and the machines. We had a very smooth
transition. And once they were in our custody for the audit, we
never had a break or lack of chain of custody until we returned
them to the county.
Mr. Biggs. And why is the chain of custody so important
here, where the folks that didn't want to see an audit take
place were claiming there was a chain of custody problem? But
the actual chain of custody problem was in transferring from
the county to y'all? Why is it important to have good chain of
custody?
Mr. Bennett. Well, the chain of custody that has never been
provided is the chain of custody that is required by state law
that should be created when the ballots are delivered to the
county by their vendors and then are processed in the election
through the election. That chain of custody should have started
then, and that chain of custody should have been part of the
documentation that was delivered to us when the ballots and the
machines were given to us in April. We never received that
chain of custody.
But we do have a full chain of custody. And the reason the
importance of chain of custody during the audit is the same as
during an election, to be able to account to the people of your
county and your state that you have accounted for all of the
ballots and the ones that you used, the ones that you didn't
use, the ones that were spoiled, the ones that were duplicated.
And all of that chain of custody is important in the election,
as it is in the audit, which is why we maintained full chain of
custody during the audit.
Mr. Biggs. Thank you, Madam Chair. I will yield back to
you.
Chairwoman Maloney. The gentleman yields back. I now
recognize the gentleman from Massachusetts, Mr. Lynch. You are
now recognized Mr. Lynch.
Mr. Lynch. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Mr. Gates, I will give you an opportunity to respond to the
fact pattern that was presented in your question. But first of
all, I want to say that how shameful, how absolutely shameful
the conduct that some of my colleagues has been in perpetuating
this big lie.
I just--you know, I chair the Subcommittee on National
Security, and we regularly visit failed states. I spent a lot
of time in Afghanistan as well as other countries where there
is one common denominator in these failed states, and that is
there is no trust in the election process. For decades,
decades, in Afghanistan, the losing candidate always says it
was stolen, and they undermine the ability of the winning party
to actually govern.
And while that has been a characteristic in other failed
states, it is having the same impact on our country. It is
undermining the faith in whoever wins, whether it is a Democrat
or Republican candidate, and that is shameful.
It really is shameful that so many of my colleagues have
followed the Trump lie. This is all about Trump. Mr. Trump has
had other occasions where he has questioned elections.
Remember, he actually tweeted out when Romney lost to Obama. He
tweeted out that, oh, the election was stolen. The election was
stolen. Check the machines, he said.
When Ted Cruz beat him in Iowa, Trump said he stole it.
Anybody who--look, I have attended several caucuses in Iowa.
You have got to physically be there. You have got to raise your
hand for your candidate. But Trump said it was stolen.
And then months before this election, this past election,
when President Biden won, he said, oh, the only way they are
going to--the only way Biden could win is if he is going to
steal it. That is absolutely shameful. What is more shameful,
that he has taken so many good people down with him.
You know, history--history will remember, will remember the
people like Mr. Gates and Chairman Sellers who stood up for
democracy, stood up for democracy, in the face of threats,
physical threats to themselves and their families. And history
will also remember the quislings, the quislings who backed
Trump and his allegations that the election was stolen.
So this is not only a day to stand up for what you believe
in, it is also reputationally something that is going to be
visited on your family that you attacked this country, you
attacked a legitimate election in favor of that man, President
Trump. It is disgraceful.
Sixty-two cases were brought in court. None of them, none
of them--and before Trump-appointed judges, Federal judges,
they are Trump appointed. A lot of Federal--excuse me, a lot of
state judges that were Republicans, long-time Republicans, and
they never, ever substantiated.
Most of those cases were dismissed for lack of evidence.
They never got to the merits. And yet you continue to support
the big lie. It is disgraceful.
Mr. Gates, I now yield my last minute to you to address the
custodial issues that the gentleman from Arizona raised.
I yield back.
Mr. Gates. Thank you very much, Congressman.
I didn't want to leave any lack of clarity on what
happened. Congressman, we did receive a subpoena, and we didn't
attempt to quash that subpoena, for the record. We went to
court to get direction. We believed that it was a violation of
Arizona law to produce the ballots and the machines. We were
looking for direction.
And I would point out as well, we did not appeal that
decision to the Court of Appeals, which a lot of people have
said was a mistake on our part. But I did not want to give
that--I wanted to make sure that was clear for the record. The
vote that was going to--the vote that took place, we were in--
Jack Sellers and I were in Karen Fann's office, and we said
we've asked for an expedited hearing. You don't have to do
this. She said it's going up on the board.
And I said, ``Karen, you know, my daughter called me, and
said, 'Dad, are you going to get thrown in jail?' '' She said,
``Bill, we're not going to throw you in jail.'' I said, ``This
resolution gives you the authority up to and including throwing
us in jail,'' and there will be lot of people pressing for us
to be in jail if we weren't by the end of that day.
Mr. Lynch. Thank you, Madam Chair. I yield back.
Chairwoman Maloney. The gentleman from Georgia, Mr. Hice.
You are now recognized, Mr. Hice.
Mr. Hice. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Here we are. This committee continues to ignore its
responsibility, as we have so many issues facing our country at
the border and inflation. I mean, we have got so many issues,
and here we are meddling with what states are doing in their
election laws, which the--and the audit here, which the
Constitution clearly grants the states to oversee all of this.
But nonetheless, I hear a lot today about the ``big lie.''
Let us remember the big lie was the Russian hoax that we had to
live with for years and going through the hoax impeachment
processes over and over. I don't recall a single hearing that
we had on that, Madam Chair, and yet here, it is somehow wrong
for Republicans to raise legitimate questions when we had an
election that was fraught with irregularities and potential
fraud, where rules and laws for the election process were
changed immediately prior to the election, and it created all
sorts of problems.
And I think all of us recognize this. Our republic is based
on the foundation that the people, the voters of this country
must have faith and confidence in our election process. And yet
tens of millions of people from this last election have serious
concerns as to what happened and serious concerns with
potential fraud.
There are thousands and thousands of affidavits of people
expressing that. Many of those affidavits I personally have
looked at. And when the people of this country lose faith in
their elections, when they lose the belief that they can enact
change at the ballot box, then we are in serious trouble.
And us somehow to have an attitude that it is OK to sweep
these concerns under the rug is major disservice to our
Constitution and the people of this land. Wherever, if ever,
there is a fraudulent vote, that vote in itself, by nature of
what it is, suppresses the vote of a legal voter. Whatever way
the legal voter expressed his or her opinion at the ballot, if
there is a fraudulent vote on the other side, then that legal
vote is suppressed.
We must look at these things. We cannot sweep these under
the rug. And the only way to expose this type of thing or the
only way to deal with this type of crisis, potential crisis in
our elections is to expose it and to address the problems
straight up.
My home state of Georgia, as we all know, in many ways has
become the center of this, and thankfully, the Georgia General
Assembly has addressed the problems. And they enacted SB 202,
which is a great step forward to making sure that we have fair,
accessible, secure, and transparent elections in our state,
regardless of what Democrats try to portray with the election
law.
And Madam Chair, I would ask unanimous consent to submit SB
202 into the record, along with a summary of that bill.
Chairwoman Maloney. Without objection.
Mr. Hice. Thank you very much.
And in spite of it all, Georgia has not been able to have a
full audit, which I believe we should have and I continue to
call for. But in all that context is why I believe this Arizona
audit is extremely important and something that we have got to
continue to look at. I think it is unfortunate that Maricopa
County, in many ways, resisted this and only through subpoenas
and court order finally got through with all of this.
But there are still problems. There are inconsistencies.
There remain question marks with the Arizona results. For
example, there appears to be many ballots from individuals who
had moved prior to the election. There are missing files from
the Election Management System.
We have a host of other issues where the numbers don't add
up. They don't equal up to one another. That is a serious
problem. There were ballot batches that were not clearly
delineated.
Serials numbers that were missing. Originals that were
duplicated more than once. As we have already heard, chain of
custody issues.
Now, look, the question is, folks, we have got to take this
whole issue of election integrity seriously. Regardless of
whether you are pleased with the outcome of the current
administration and the disastrous results happening in our
country, election integrity is of utmost importance to our
country. We have got to look at this in a serious way, and I
see my time has expired.
But where there are concerns of fraud and irregularities,
they must be dealt with, and I encourage us to move forward
with that kind of attitude. And with that, Madam Chair, I yield
back.
Chairwoman Maloney. The gentleman yields back. The
gentleman from Maryland, Mr. Raskin, you are now recognized.
Unmute, please. We can't hear you. Unmute, please.
Mr. Raskin. Thank you, Madam Chair.
I hope that those colleagues who are saying that
legislatures have a right to obtain the information they seek
and that holding people in contempt for not complying with
subpoenas is not an excuse to put them in jail, but rather, it
is an attempt to effectuate the people's right to information
will remember that this week and next week, as the legislature
you belong to works to get information from material witnesses
to the violent insurrection that led to the wounding and the
injury of more than 140 officers and interrupted the counting
of Electoral College votes for the first time in American
history in the most sweeping violent attack on the U.S. Capitol
since the War of 1812.
So that is a point that people should keep in mind. The
second point I want to make is you cannot bemoan the people's
loss of faith in elections while you are spreading information
and propaganda that are eroding the people's faith in
elections. Now when there are real problems, all of us need to
act to address them. But I don't think it is a fitting response
to the situation to spread lies and propaganda and
disinformation that are being refuted today by Republican
witnesses and then say we have a problem with people's faith in
elections.
Now, Madam Chair, this is one of the most important
hearings I have ever seen in my life. There is no doubt this is
the most important thing going on in America today, and I hope
everybody listens to it.
We have before us top-ranking, highly qualified election
officials who happen to be Republicans, Chairman Sellers and
Mr. Gates, who have told us that the election in Maricopa
County was the most secure, verified election in our history.
They have told us that the attacks on the election are a scam
to keep people angry and donating.
They have said that the attacks on the election are lies.
They have explained to us that the elections in Arizona were
free, fair, and accurate and that Joe Biden won by more than
45,000 votes. This was confirmed by the counties, confirmed by
the hand--the hand counts, confirmed by the machine counts, and
confirmed by the people, over 90 percent of whom believe the
lawful results.
And yet still we have people today in this hearing trying
to perpetrate the big lie, which their own concocted audit
itself discredited. So it is just a remarkable, remarkable
moment and an extraordinary thing for America to see here.
Now, Chairman Sellers, let me come back to you. Was there
any fraud or corruption materially affecting the outcome of the
election in Arizona in 2020?
Mr. Sellers. No. And in fact, before we certified the
election, we asked a lot of questions. We had an over 2-hour
meeting where the results of the election were presented to us.
We were able to ask questions that had been presented to us by
different people in our legislature and our Senate. And you
know, we very carefully went through everything before we
canvassed and approved that election.
Mr. Raskin. You have invoked in this remarkable onslaught,
which continues by Donald Trump and his followers, against the
election a ``staggering refusal to follow the will of the
people,'' which, of course, is the essence of democracy. How do
you explain this staggering refusal to follow the will of the
people?
Mr. Sellers. Well, you know, I'm not sure how I explain it.
Because a lot of people don't seem to realize that the Board of
Supervisors do a lot of things other than just elections. And
we are the fastest-growing county in the United States, and I'm
so anxious to get us back onto doing the kind of things that
are truly important for us to be doing, rather than
relitigating things. And as people have asked questions about--
about the audit and the things that have been brought up in the
audit, virtually everything has already been answered.
Our recorder is working on----
Mr. Raskin. At every level--and forgive me, I just want to
ask you one last question before we go. Because much has been
made of the fact that you guys are Republicans. You have been
lifelong Republicans, active Republicans, and all you are
trying to stand up for is a free, fair, and accurate election
against all the lies and propaganda.
But what if you were Democrats? You can only imagine what
they would be saying in that case. There are some people who
just will not accept an accurate count in the election, and my
question for you is what does that mean for democracy if we
have people who will question, even after all of these audits,
even after all of this investment, the final results as
determined by election officials? What does that mean for
democracy?
Mr. Sellers. It's very troubling because when you give
people the facts and they still do not accept them, that's a
problem.
Chairwoman Maloney. The gentleman's time has expired. And
the gentleman is recognized for a point of order?
OK. The gentleman from Ohio, Mr. Jordan, is now recognized
for five minutes.
Mr. Jordan. Thank you, Madam Chair.
The previous member just said ``bemoan the results and talk
about the big lie.'' Well, how about the big lies? How about
all the lies that Democrats have told us over the last couple
of years?
Democrats told us the protests in the summer of 2020 were
peaceful. Democrats told us the dossier was real. Democrats
told us Trump colluded with Russia. We had a $30 million
investigation done by Bob Mueller that said that wasn't true.
Democrats told us the Russian bounty story was true.
Democrats told us COVID didn't start in a Chinese lab.
Nope, nope, didn't start there. It was a--it was a bat to a
penguin to a hippopotamus to Joe Rogan, and we get bit--no, no,
no.
And then Democrats for four years told us the 2016 election
was stolen. For four--they could investigate that for four
years. We are not allowed to question some concerns we have
about the 2020 election for four minutes, but they could
investigate that for four years.
In fact, on January 6, 2017, Democrats objected to more
states than Republicans objected to on January 6, 2021. Mr.
Raskin himself objected to the state of Florida, to certifying
the results from the state of Florida on January 6, 2017. But
we are not allowed to ask questions.
I mean, they objected to the state of Alabama. Alabama, a
state that President Trump won by 30 points. They can object to
Alabama, but we are not allowed to object to Pennsylvania,
where in the run-up to that election, they changed their
election law in an unconstitutional fashion? We are not allowed
to object to that or do an audit in Arizona? Give me a break.
Mr. Becker, the chairwoman--in her opening statement, the
chairwoman criticized the fact that private funds were used to
finance the Arizona audit. Do you share her criticism of that?
Mr. Becker. I do in the sense that it was untransparent.
They resisted any kind of transparency in that endeavor. My
organization----
Mr. Jordan. Do you agree with the fact that Facebook and
Mark Zuckerberg gave over $4 million--$400 million, excuse me,
$400 million for the election itself?
Mr. Becker. Yes. I was just getting to that. Actually, my
organization received over $60 million from Mr. Zuckerberg and
Ms. Chan to grant to any state that wanted to apply for it for
purposes of conducting voter education for----
Mr. Jordan. You took how many million? They took how many
million?
Mr. Becker. Over $60 million that my organization regranted
to the states.
Mr. Jordan. You got $60 million? And that is fine?
Mr. Becker. It was all done transparently. We put out in
March of this year----
Mr. Jordan. The funds----
Mr. Becker [continuing]. And I'm sure you've read it,
Representative Jordan. We put out a report, a full transparent
report listing all of the states that applied, 23 states--some
of them very blue, like Connecticut; some of them very red,
like South Carolina--the exact amounts that went to each state,
and what the money went for.
Mr. Jordan. So it was OK for private funds to be used? But
I got a question here. It is OK for private funds to be used to
run the election, it is not OK for private funds to be used to
audit an election. Is that what you are saying?
Mr. Becker. No. What I'm saying is transparency is
paramount and that transparency should be done under any
circumstances. Ideally, private funds wouldn't be used for
election administration. What would----
Mr. Jordan. I would like some transparency on how it----
Mr. Becker. Madam Chair, may I----
Mr. Jordan. I would like some transparency on how that $400
million was used to run the election and exactly what your
organization did with the over $50 million I think you said you
received.
Mr. Bennett, there were three numbers that were pointed out
in the audit that I just want to get your reaction to. Oh,
first of all, is auditing a bad thing? Auditing an election, is
that a bad thing?
Mr. Bennett. Absolutely not. In fact, it's already in state
law that the counties do a limited audit. The Senate did a full
forensic audit in this situation.
Mr. Jordan. Yes, normally we think auditing is a good
thing. It just keeps everything--it is accounting. It is an
understanding of what actually took place. We normally do that.
Why do Democrats hate audits?
Mr. Bennett. You'd have to ask a Democrat. I don't know why
they hate audits. To me, we have an auditor general office in
the state of Arizona. Every state agency is audited every three
or four years, some annually. Everyone seems to support that. I
think audits of elections are warranted as well.
Mr. Jordan. Yes, no kidding. I mean, they tried to audit
the 2016 election. They are still trying to do it. They still
haven't accepted the results from the 2016, but we are not
allowed to ask questions and do a few audits on the 2020
election.
I have got three numbers I want to run by you that were in
the actual audit of Arizona--23,344 mail-in ballots from a
different address, 9,044 more ballots returned by a voter than
were sent to that voter, and 5,295 ballots with the same name
and birth date from a different county than were sent to the
voter. Can you tell me about those three numbers and what those
findings, what they may--just tell me what your thoughts on
those three--those three numbers.
Mr. Bennett. Well, the first number was the 23,000. My
recollection is that 15,000 of those 23,000 were voters who
moved within Maricopa County just prior to the election. That
does not make them ineligible to vote in the county. So there's
probably nothing wrong with those 15,000.
There were 6,000 of that 23,000 that was thought by the
auditors to be folks that moved out of Arizona just prior to
the election and, if so, probably shouldn't have been allowed
to vote. But when they looked at the voter registration of
those 6,000, it was divided equally, 2,000 Republicans, about
2,000 Democrats, and about 2,000 no party designation.
So we don't know whether or not those--what the votes were
on those ballots. But all----
Mr. Jordan. Six thousand? That was 6,000 something?
Mr. Bennett. That was about 6,000, yes.
Mr. Jordan. OK.
Mr. Bennett. The other two numbers that you mentioned are
numbers that the auditors determined to be questionable based
on their comparison of the final vote data released by Maricopa
County, compared to commercial data bases. That has given rise
to questions that Maricopa County says that they can answer.
Chairwoman Maloney. The gentleman's time has----
Mr. Bennett. And so, as I said in my testimony, we welcome
answers and verification of that from the county.
Mr. Jordan. What about the 5,000----
Chairwoman Maloney. The gentleman's time has expired, and
maybe we can get these answers in writing on that.
The gentleman from Georgia, Mr. Johnson, is recognized for
five minutes.
Mr. Johnson. Thank you, Madam Chair, for holding this very
important hearing.
My friends on the other side of the aisle claim that our
democracy is strengthened when close elections are subjected to
forensic audit by outside entities. And I think that all
reasonable people would agree that if Maricopa County should
have hired an outside entity to conduct a forensic audit of the
Maricopa County 2020 Presidential election, then Doug Logan and
the Cyber Ninjas should not have been the firm entrusted with
that obligation.
Why? Because the Arizona State Senate knew that Doug Logan
and his business known as the Cyber Ninjas had absolutely no
election or auditing experience or expertise, and they knew
that Doug Logan was a well-known and notorious pro-Trump
conspiracy extremist when they hired him to conduct the audit.
Doug Logan and Cyber Ninjas were hired in a no-bid, sole-source
process despite it being well known that Doug Logan was
spreading false claims of election fraud on social media.
The Arizona Senate also was well aware that Doug Logan was
spreading QAnon theory, racist QAnon theory, and they knew that
Doug Logan was intimately involved in promoting the Stop the
Steal movement that was key to inciting the January 6
insurrection, which was a violent attack on the U.S. Congress
in an attempt to overthrow the results of the Presidential
election that President Biden had won by the popular vote and
also in an Electoral College landslide.
The fact that the Arizona Senate entrusted their so-called
audit to a partisan political hack like Doug Logan is revealing
as to the true purpose of the so-called audit. The real reason
why the Arizona Senate entrusted this process to Doug Logan and
the Cyber Ninjas was to undermine public confidence in our
elections while providing a false justification for efforts in
Georgia with its infamous Senate Bill 202 and also in Arizona
and other states around the country to pass laws making it
harder to vote and easier for partisan officials like those in
the Arizona Senate to subvert elections.
And it has now been revealed that Doug Logan and the Cyber
Ninjas took $5 million--excuse me, $7 million, over $7 million
they took from private organizations connected to Donald Trump
to fund their so-called audit. You know, America Project was
one of those firms, run by Patrick Byrne, the former chief
executive of Overstock.com, who has sought to overturn the 2020
election based on unfounded conspiracy theories.
America's Future is another private firm raising money from
angry citizens misled by Donald Trump and his minions about him
losing the election, the election having allegedly been stolen
from him. America's Future has collected millions of dollars
from Americans, and they used part of that money to give it to
the Cyber Ninjas to conduct this sham audit which we are
talking about here today.
And America's Future is chaired by none other than the
notorious Michael Flynn, President Trump's discredited and
felonious first National Security Adviser. Michael Flynn, who
has called for the military to rerun the 2020 election. Can you
believe that?
Cyber Ninjas also took money from----
Mr. Biggs. Would the gentleman yield for a question?
Mr. Johnson. Not at this time. I am speaking fact, and you
will have some time when I finished to refute those facts. Do
you disagree with anything that I have said?
Mr. Biggs. Yes, thanks for yielding. Are you yielding time
to me to respond? Thank you, Mr. Johnson.
Yes. As public record, there were three bids for the
audits. You said that it was a no-bid process.
Mr. Johnson. Oh, OK. All right. Reclaiming----
Mr. Biggs. There were three bids.
Mr. Johnson. Reclaiming my time. OK, I knew I was going to
get somebody to contest me on that. So it wasn't a no-bid
contract. But the other allegations are much more severe that
you choose not to contest because they are uncontestable.
Do you contest the fact that America Project, run by
Patrick Byrne, funded this audit? Do you contest the fact that
Michael Flynn----
Mr. Biggs. Thank you. So are you yielding time for me to
answer post--and I am sorry.
Ms. Norton.[Presiding.] But his time has expired. He has no
time to yield to you.
Mr. Biggs. Sorry. Thank you, sir.
Ms. Norton. And if that saves you from----
Mr. Johnson. Having to answer.
Ms. Norton. Yes, I bet you are.
Mr. Johnson. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Ms. Norton. Your time has expired, sir, long time ago.
Mr. Johnson. I yield back.
Ms. Norton. I recognize the gentleman from Wisconsin, Mr.
Grothman, for five minutes.
Mr. Grothman. Sure. It is too bad that we have to have this
hearing. But nevertheless, I always think it is good to review
the last election.
I think absentee ballots, mail-in ballots are necessary for
military folks, for people who are out of town. But
nevertheless, it seems they were used more in this election
than ever before. More, and perhaps they were unnecessary. I am
always worried about them. Could somebody, maybe Mr. Bennett,
tell us about how many mail-in ballots there were in this
election compared to, say, the 2016 election?
Mr. Bennett. In Maricopa County, there were about 1.9
million ballots that were submitted by mail out of the 2.1
million total.
Mr. Grothman. Almost all were by mail?
Mr. Bennett. Almost all what? I'm sorry.
Mr. Grothman. All were by mail, you are saying?
Mr. Bennett. About 1.9 million by mail, and a little shy of
200,000 who voted at a polling or a voting center they now call
it.
Mr. Grothman. Could you compare that to four years ago?
Mr. Bennett. Well, that ended up being about 88 percent
vote by mail, which is up from about 80 percent four years ago.
Is that about right, David?
Mr. Grothman. OK. I have two concerns about vote by mail,
and I am just wondering how you dealt with it in your audit. My
first concern, you know, when you show up in person, you are
right there. We know that Glenn Grothman is the one voting. He
showed his driver's license and whatever.
When you get somebody who votes by mail, you don't know
whether it was really that person. Did somebody else get the
mail and fill it out? You know, how did you in the audit deal
with the concern that maybe people were filling out a ballot,
but it wasn't the same person who should have been filling it
out? How did you deal with that, or how did the auditors deal
with that?
Mr. Bennett. Well, the auditors dealt with the original
ballots after they had been either voted in person or submitted
by mail. They had, during the election, been separated from
those envelopes. So the auditors did not have the envelopes
themselves.
There was a subcontractor, Dr. Shiva, who looked at the
images of the envelope affidavit signatures, and that was part
of his report as one of the five sub-reports for the audit. But
the auditors did not have the physical envelopes.
Mr. Grothman. The question I am trying to get here, if I
have a ballot from Mary Smith at 123 Elm Street, and how do I
know that it was really did Mary Smith even still live there or
that Mary Smith was the one who filled that out? Did the audit
do anything in that regard?
Mr. Bennett. The audit did very little in that in the sense
that we did not have the envelopes. The answer to your question
is in Arizona, if the envelope is returned and the County
Election Department can tell that it's a valid envelope that
they had sent to a voter. There's a bar code where they can
check, and it pulls up the voter's information. And then
there's a signature box, which is the affidavit that that voter
is verifying that that's their ballot inside.
So in Arizona, we do it primarily by verifying the
signature in the signature box as matching the voter
registration information that the county has on record.
Mr. Grothman. OK. Next question I have, my other concern
that I always wish we wouldn't have so many vote by mails, is,
is somebody else influencing that person, right? If I vote in
person, there is nobody next to me. There is nobody checking
the box for me. There is no ``make sure you are going to vote
for President Trump'' here.
Is there any way we can check if there was undue influence
of that nature?
Mr. Bennett. Not to my knowledge, Congressman.
Mr. Grothman. OK. Do you think that is a flaw in the
system, a flaw in having too many absentee ballots, and that we
really will never know if, you know, people were--people's
boyfriend or girlfriend said you have to fill it out this way
or--we are never going to know that, right?
Mr. Bennett. It's hard to know that. In Arizona, most
counties--well, all counties put a line underneath that
signature box, which invites the voter, if they did receive
assistance from someone to help them cast their ballot, a name
can be entered there and a phone number for contact.
Mr. Grothman. Do you feel--or maybe I will even ask Mr.
Sellers here. Because I think part of the purpose of this
hearing is to see whether we should change the election laws in
any way. Do you feel that those are--and this is nothing
against you guys, how you administer. But do you feel that
there is a flaw in absentee voting in the sense that I am not
sure we can really ever know, you know, who filled out that
ballot or if that person was being coached? And if those laws
do not happen, wouldn't we have to vote in person?
Mr. Bennett. I believe, Congressman, that we can make some
significant improvements for voter identification purposes. A
driver's license number or some other type of data that can be
confirmed by the county to make sure that those vote by mail
ballots were cast by the voters themselves.
Ms. Norton. The gentleman's time has expired.
Mr. Grothman. Thank you.
Ms. Norton. The gentleman from Vermont, Mr. Welch, is
recognized for five minutes.
Mr. Welch. I thank the chair.
There is a frustration about having these hearings for me
certainly, but probably for many of us, because we are
accustomed to having the vote in the election occur, the votes
be counted, and then the candidate who got the most votes be
accepted as the leader of the country. That is in dispute now.
And there are two elements here that are relevant. One is
the role of President Trump himself, and the other is the role
of social media. We know that President Trump used an enormous
energy and effort to promote this--his theory that he won the
election, and it was stolen. The call to the Georgia secretary
of state, the invitation to the Capitol riot, all the folks who
showed up on January 6, the pressure he put on the Justice
Department, essentially threatening to fire Mr. Rosen and
replace him with a loyalist.
These lies, the assertion he made that he won the election
and it was stolen was picked up by social media, and what we
now have is a situation where we are having this hearing. And
even today, Mr. Biggs won't even acknowledge that President
Biden was the elected leader of this country, won't accept
that. I am just going to state it. Not a hard question to
answer.
Mr. Biggs. Madam Chair, I would like an opportunity to
respond since he mentioned me by name.
Mr. Welch. The second, in fact, the majority of the
Republicans--the majority of Republicans, according to polls,
do not believe that Biden was elected. Why is that?
Mr. Biggs. Point of order.
Mr. Welch. Just because their party tried to----
Ms. Norton. The gentleman has cited a point of order. Just
a moment.
Mr. Biggs. Madam Chair, I have been cited by name, and my
statement has been misconstrued and actually misstated. If he
is going to continue, I would like an opportunity to respond to
that at some point.
Ms. Wasserman Schultz. Madam Chair, that is not a proper
point of order. That is not a proper point of order.
Ms. Norton. Not a proper point of order. Would the
gentleman continue?
Mr. Welch. Thank you.
So we have the situation where the President, who is
trusted by the folks who voted for him, is telling them a lie
that he, in fact, won the election. So it is not surprising the
majority of Republicans and candidates for Congress on the
Republican Party are asserting that the election was stolen.
So I want to ask a few questions, both about the big lie
and also about media. The July 15 Cyber Ninjas CEO Doug Logan
claim there were 74,000 mail-in ballots that had been counted
with no record of having been sent in, they were, in fact, as
we know, in-person early ballots.
Is that right, Mr. Sellers? I want to ask you about that.
Mr. Sellers. I am sorry. Could you repeat the question?
Mr. Welch. The mail-in ballots were claimed by President
Trump to have mysteriously appeared. What, in fact, was the
reality of that?
Mr. Sellers. There is no reality of that. The--every
portion of the election process was very, very carefully
monitored and controlled.
Mr. Welch. Did that theory that was spread by President
Trump on social media make it more difficult for you to do your
job in just a straightforward way?
Mr. Sellers. Well, yes. But you know, 88 percent of the
people in Arizona voted by mail, and that became a very
important part of the efficiency of our election during a
pandemic.
Mr. Welch. Thank you.
And Ms. Ramachandran, can you explain why conspiracy
theories and disinformation about the election, something that
has now pervaded our society, are so dangerous for our
democracy?
Ms. Ramachandran. Thank you so much for that question.
Conspiracy theories and disinformation are dangerous for
our democracy because they lay the groundwork for legitimizing
future attempts to sabotage elections to reject the will of the
voters. And these sham partisan reviews, like the one we've
been seeing in Arizona, contribute to that disinformation and
those lies because insinuations are made. They're not backed up
by proper evidence, and then they get picked up and amplified,
as you've described, on social media.
So, for instance, I mentioned that Shiva Ayyadurai, one of
the people that was hired by the Arizona Senate to look at
ballot envelope images in this review, he conflated the
envelope images with the actual ballots. And so he made a
presentation to the Arizona Senate in which he falsely stated
each of these voters submitted two ballots, when he was
describing these images that he was looking at in a data file.
Promptly the same day, that statement was picked up by
Arizona State Senator Wendy Rogers in which she said that there
were double votes, there were double--duplicate votes, that
sort of thing, on Twitter and insinuated that there was fraud.
So that's the relationship between these sham reviews and this
disinformation campaign.
Mr. Welch. So a final question. In addition to having
whoever is the candidates are accept the outcome of the
election, is it time for us to have some rules that apply to
social media with respect to the spreading of false
information?
That is to you, Ms. Ramachandran. Thank you.
Ms. Ramachandran. Thank you. Thank you for that question.
In a report that the Brennan Center published a little bit
earlier this year describing attacks on election officials, we
made a number of recommendations for the problem of
disinformation on social media. One of those recommendations is
for social media companies to amplify the true information that
is provided by trusted election officials so that they're not
sort of drowned out by all of this disinformation.
Mr. Welch. Thank you. I yield back.
Chairwoman Maloney.[Presiding.] The gentleman's time has
expired. He yields back.
I now yield to the gentleman from Kentucky, Mr. Comer.
Mr. Biggs. Madam Chair?
Chairwoman Maloney. Mr. Comer, you are now recognized.
Mr. Comer. Thank you, Madam Chair.
If there were no irregularities, as the Democrats on the
committee have indicated today, with the past election, I
wonder if the Democrats on the committee would take back all
the conspiracy theories that they spread about the U.S. Postal
Service sabotaging absentee ballots. Because that was a
mainstay in this hearing--in this committee for many months
prior to the election.
But then, poof, once the absentee ballots went
overwhelmingly for Mr. Biden, it seems that, you know, there is
not a peep. I wonder if the Democrats on this committee, Madam
Chair, will take that back, and would they issue a formal
apology to all the postal workers and the postal unions who
were very offended by the accusation that they would sabotage
an election?
Chairwoman Maloney. This is a very serious conversation
about the integrity of our elections, and you are trying to
change the subject. And I am focused on this.
Mr. Comer. Madam Chair, I am talking about the
irregularities in the election. But Madam Chair, obviously, I
am going to take that as a no. Again, I think it is terrible
what--what the Democrats on this committee assumed that the
postal workers would do to the election. But with that, I would
yield the balance of my time to Mr. Gosar from Arizona.
Mr. Raskin. Would the gentleman yield? Would the gentleman
yield? Would the gentleman yield for a response?
Mr. Comer. I yield the balance of my time. You can have
time if someone will yield to you, Mr. Raskin. I yield the
balance of my time to Mr. Gosar from Arizona.
Chairwoman Maloney. Mr. Biggs. Mr. Biggs is recognized. He
means Mr. Biggs.
Mr. Biggs. Thank you, Madam Chair.
I think he yielded to Gosar, but I will go ahead and take
briefly to calling into question the testimony of the gentleman
from out of town that said, mischaracterized the colloquy that
I was engaged in. When I was engaged in that colloquy, Madam
Chair, what I said very clearly was, as to the state of
Arizona, the production and the outcome of the audits, I don't
know who won in Arizona because there are a lot of questions
and anomalies that have arisen through the audit that were not
answered.
And so, with that, I will yield back to Mr. Comer, who I
think yielded to Gosar.
Thank you, Madam Chair.
Chairwoman Maloney. The gentleman yields back, and I
recognize Ms. Bush.
Mr. Biggs. Madam Chair?
Chairwoman Maloney. There is still time?
Mr. Biggs. Yes, there is still time, and I was yielding
to--see, Mr. Comer originally yielded to Mr. Gosar, but you
gave to me. So I took it.
Chairwoman Maloney. So it goes to Mr. Gosar now?
Mr. Comer. I have three minutes remaining to Mr. Gosar.
Chairwoman Maloney. OK. Mr. Gosar, you are recognized, Mr.
Gosar. Are you on?
Mr. Biggs. You are muted, Paul.
Chairwoman Maloney. Please unmute.
Mr. Gosar. Can you hear me now?
Chairwoman Maloney. Yes.
Mr. Gosar. OK. Mr. Gates, I wanted to hear, I think you
stated that the County Board of Supervisors really tried to
work with Senator Fann. Is that true?
Mr. Gates. My apologies, Congressman. My testimony was that
we received the subpoena from the State Senate. We----
Mr. Gosar. I know. But you--I have a short amount of time
here.
Mr. Gates. Yes.
Mr. Gosar. You tried to work with her? That is a simple
question, yes or no?
Mr. Gates. I believe that we tried to work with them, yes.
Mr. Gosar. OK. So, so, Mr. Bennett, so in compliance with
that--those subpoenas, it was said that everything was given to
the audit team. Can you discuss the routers and the signature
envelopes that to this day have not been given, in fact, they
have obstructed every single way to be able to validate and
have more information to this audit team? Can you address that,
Mr. Bennett?
Mr. Bennett. Yes. As to the routers, I was told personally
by one of the staff in the county attorney's office that they
would provide those routers when they delivered the ballots and
the machines. When that did not occur, I was told in person
that they would provide virtual access to the routers within
the next couple of weeks.
When that didn't happen, we were then told that there was a
problem within the county to secure Sheriff's Department Social
Security numbers and county health records and that we would
not have access to them at all. I believe that just within the
last few weeks, the Senate and the county have come to an
agreement to jointly appoint a Special Master to allow the
routers and the splunk logs and all of the other things to be
looked at as far as the Internet connectivity.
As to the ballot envelopes, was that your second question,
Mr. Gosar?
Mr. Gosar. Yes, it was.
Mr. Bennett. To my recollection, the ballot envelopes were
not on the January subpoena, and--but the images of the ballots
were, and those were eventually----
Mr. Gosar. Let me direct you. My understanding is the court
order from the judge said all information pertaining to the
election was mandated from the accountant to the oversight of
the Senate. Is that not true?
Mr. Bennett. I was not at that hearing. So I would defer to
yourself or others that may know better than I.
Mr. Gosar. I understand that--I understand those were the
premises. You know, this wasn't a lose-lose situation. And it
was a win-win situation because trust is a series of promises
kept. What better way to keep up the trust in your voters is by
being transparent?
That is why I find it very disheartening from the actions
of the County Board of Supervisors and their attorneys fighting
and kicking every step of the way. So the last thing I would
like to make sure is that everybody----
Chairwoman Maloney. The gentleman's time has expired.
Mr. Gosar [continuing]. On this committee should watch
``Kill Chain.'' I hope everybody watches ``Kill Chain.''
Chairwoman Maloney. The gentleman's time has expired. The
gentlelady from Missouri, Ms. Bush, is recognized. Ms. Bush?
Ms. Bush. St. Louis. And I thank you, Madam Chair, for
convening this hearing.
Although the audit in Arizona failed to uncover any
evidence of widespread fraud, it was successful in achieving
its bigger goal, to pave the way for election subversion laws
that are spreading across this country. We have all talked a
lot about voter suppression in recent months, as the House has
considered historic legislation, but the threat of election
subversion has received far less attention.
So I would like to hear from our experts, and I know going
over this again, just to be clear, just having a very clear
understanding for me what election subversion is and how this
audit has fueled it and what Congress can do to address it.
So, Ms. Ramachandran, briefly can you explain what election
subversion is, just so we can be a little more clear, and how
it differs from voter suppression, the difference?
Ms. Ramachandran. Sure, and thank you for that question.
I'm sure that different people would have slightly
different definitions of all of these terms. But to me,
election subversion is what occurs when someone tries to change
the outcome of an election or manipulate the outcome of an
election that does not reflect the true will of the voters. And
of course, suppressing votes is one indirect way of doing that.
Ms. Bush. Thank you.
How has the Cyber Ninjas' partisan audit laid the
groundwork for more election subversion laws, if you could
answer that?
Ms. Ramachandran. Thank you for that question.
The Cyber Ninjas' review has laid the groundwork for these
laws because they've made insinuations of fraud. For instance--
that we've seen repeated here today, actually. For instance,
they implied that perhaps some voters had voted more than once
in multiple counties. They implied that some voters who had
moved from their residence and insinuated they were no longer
eligible to vote had voted.
They implied that, you know, that the county was not
keeping up its list maintenance properly despite their
membership in the ERIC data base that the other witness
mentioned. And through all of those implications, they justify
future legislation that would propose undermining the will of
the voters.
So it fortunately did not pass, but there was a bill
proposed in Arizona that would have permitted the state
legislature to simply pick electors for President that were not
the ones that the voters voted for. That kind of outrageous
bill is the sort of thing these insinuations unfortunately lead
to.
Ms. Bush. Yes, yes. Thank you for bringing that up.
The Brennan Center has found that in this year alone more
than 200 bills containing election subversion provisions have
been introduced in state legislatures across the country, and
24 of those bills have been enacted into law. How are these
laws being used to subvert the legitimate election results? I
know you kind of touched on it, but we know that they are
extremely dangerous. So can you go a little bit further into
that?
Ms. Ramachandran. Thank you so much for that question.
I do have to apologize. It's a large effort to track all of
these laws across the states, and I am certainly not the sort
of primary lead on that effort at the Brennan Center. But I am
familiar with my colleagues' work and the fact that there is a
whole host of laws that make it harder to vote that have been
popping up all over the country.
Ms. Bush. Yes. And as you brought up, two months into the
Cyber Ninjas' partisan audit in Arizona, HB 2720 was introduced
by State Representative Shawnna Bolick on May 24, 2021. So, Ms.
Ramachandran, could you please explain what impact this
particular bill would have on voters in Arizona, particularly
Black, Brown, and Indigenous voters?
Ms. Ramachandran. Thank you so much for that question.
If that sort of legislation were ever to pass in Arizona,
the impacts would be severe because the voters would be at risk
of having their choices not respected in the election for
President. There would be a risk that the state legislature
would attempt to choose a different slate of electors than the
slate that received the most votes merely because they did not
like the outcome of the election. And obviously, that would
be--that means risking the disenfranchisement of millions of
voters in Arizona, if that were ever--ever to come to fruition.
Ms. Bush. So this bill would allow the state legislature to
override the popular vote in Presidential elections up through
Inauguration Day, which is a blatant display of white
supremacy. It is profoundly dangerous for the survival of
American democracy.
If the people who run our elections do not believe in
counting people's votes, it is clear that the threat of
election subversion is present and grave. We must continue our
oversight work to expose this audit and prevent anti-democratic
election subversion laws from spreading any further.
Thank you, and I yield back.
Chairwoman Maloney. The gentlelady yields back. The
gentleman from Ohio, Mr. Gibbs, is recognized. Mr. Gibbs?
Mr. Gibbs. Madam Chairman, Chairwoman?
Chairwoman Maloney. Yes.
Mr. Gibbs. I ask unanimous consent for a letter that I sent
to you and the committee from myself to be entered into the
record.
Chairwoman Maloney. Without objection.
Mr. Gibbs. Thank you.
In this letter, I talk about disappointment for the work of
this Committee on Oversight and Reform as performed under your
leadership. Congressional oversight is one of the most
important responsibilities of the U.S. Congress, and we are
responsible for investigating alleged instances of poor
administration, arbitrary and capricious behavior, abuse,
waste, and dishonesty and fraud.
Since the beginning of the Biden administration, our
country has been faced with multiple crises and failures of
executive leadership, and yet you have not allowed our
committee to conduct oversight in these pressing issues. We
have not examined the policies and decisions which have led to
the Southern border crisis, where apprehensions were up almost
500 percent compared to last year.
Recently, former chief of the U.S. Border Patrol Rodney
Scott wrote a letter to the Senate and House leadership stating
multiple options have been given to the Biden administration by
Civil Service staff within Customs and Border Patrol,
Immigration, and Department of Homeland Security on border
security, but every recommendation has been similarly rejected.
Last week, the Civil Rights and Civil Liberties
Subcommittee conducted Part 6 of its hearing titled,
``Confronting Violent White Supremacy.'' But you have yet to
hold a hearing on the summer violence perpetuated by Antifa-
associated groups in 2020 during which dozens of people were
killed or injured, over 62,000 National Guard personnel were
activated and at least 14,000 people were arrested, and
approximately $2 billion worth of property damaged.
Additionally, you continue to waste this committee's time
examining state laws regarding abortion. A week after the House
of Representatives passed the so-called Women's Health
Protection Act, legislation to expand the right to kill a baby
in the womb up until the day it is born. This committee does
not have jurisdiction over state laws. The Supreme Court has
the power to decide if state laws regarding abortion are
constitutional and is already set to review the 15-week
abortion ban law passed in Mississippi.
Finally, on the ongoing national security and humanitarian
crisis in Afghanistan, it is unbelievable that we have yet to
hold a public, I meant public hearing, including with Secretary
of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin.
The American people deserve to have those responsible for the
disastrous events that transpired in Afghanistan and for the
loss of 13 of our service members held accountable.
Instead of working to address any of these crises, you have
decided to waste this committee's time by holding a hearing
trying to bring private contractors fulfilling a contractual
obligation which they were hired by the Arizona State Senate.
The audit was conducted in a timely manner at minimal cost to
taxpayers in Arizona.
This is compared to the congressional Democrats spending
two years perpetuating false accusations of election
irregularities in the 2016 Presidential election where Mueller,
the special counsel, spent nearly $32 million investigating
President Trump, during which they found no evidence or
collusion with Russia. And I would add in recent declassified
documents, they knew from the beginning, nearly the beginning,
that was fraud that was being laid on the American people and
the allegations were untrue.
I implore you to stop using this committee for political
messages to divide this country further and instead work
urgently to address the issues caused by the current
administration.
Mr. Bennett, in your testimony, you talked about the audit
may have confirmed the results of other things that deal--not
just the numbers. You talked about missing or unmatched
signatures on ballot envelope affidavits, missing serial
numbers, matching duplicate ballots from the originals. And you
also talk in your testimony about the lack of cooperation and
unwillingness for the local Board of Election officials to work
in the audit to get these answers.
The question is, Mr. Bennett, did you get any answers of
how many, what kind of numbers we are looking at of missing or
unmatched signatures, missing serial numbers, voter
registration abnormalities, Mr. Bennett?
Mr. Bennett. I would say that the audit did not receive
those answers, but the audit report has gone to the Senate. The
Senate has forwarded that on to the state attorney general, who
I think is going to be working through his Election Integrity
Unit directly with the county to get answers to those
questions.
For example, I believe the county reported that they
rejected about 1,400 envelopes for lack of signatures. The
subcontractor that worked for the audit thought that there
could be as many as 3,500 to 4,000 either missing signatures or
just scribbles. Those kinds of things will be worked out, I
think, between the attorney general's office and the county as
to whether they have justification for the envelopes that they
opened and processed or not.
Mr. Gibbs. And I think to--you know, asking for questions,
especially in closely held elections, and have audits and
review is a good thing and how to we ought to proceed,
particularly going forward.
And I am out of time. I yield back.
Chairwoman Maloney. The gentleman yields back. The
gentlelady from Florida, Ms. Wasserman Schultz, is now
recognized.
Ms. Wasserman Schultz. Thank you, Madam Chair. And I want
to thank all of our witnesses for appearing before the
committee.
Given the election experts here, in a moment I want to
discuss the methodology that the Cyber Ninjas used to come to
the conclusions in its report. But first, Mr. Gates, how would
you respond to Representative Gosar and Mr. Bennett's
allegation that the county hasn't cooperated with the auditors?
In particular, why were you concerned about turning over
routers to Cyber Ninjas?
Mr. Gates. Yes. So the issue of the routers is we had grave
concerns from our sheriff and others at the county level that
if we were to turn those routers over, it basically would have
provided a road map for even a decent hacker to get into our
systems. So, one, there were significant cybersecurity
concerns.
Second, this would have basically brought down our
operations at the county, and we are the fourth-largest county
in the country. We've got to provide services to our residents
every day. And then, additionally, there would have been a cost
in putting that network back together.
That's why we came to an agreement, as Mr. Bennett
mentioned, with President Fann. And in that agreement, by the
way, President Fann signed it, saying that the county has fully
complied with the subpoena. But just so that, you know, we
wouldn't have these cybersecurity concerns, we have jointly
agreed on former Congressman John Shadegg serving as the
Special Master.
Cyber Ninjas can ask questions about the routers and what
went on there, and Congressman Shadegg will consult with IT
experts, and they'll be able to provide answers to those
questions.
Ms. Wasserman Schultz. Seems like a pretty basic principle
of election integrity that the keeper of the routers and the
protector of the integrity of our elections shouldn't be
turning over the routers to a private organization that has
absolutely no expertise in conducting audits. And that's really
the premise of the rest of my questions.
Mr. Becker, can you briefly describe how the method Cyber
Ninjas used to count ballots differed from standard procedures?
And really, what was the acceptable error rate for that
process, and what error rate is typically permissible in
standard audit procedure?
Mr. Becker. Thank you, Congresswoman.
So, in general, the way audits are conducted--and there is
an established set of best practices for these, and these have
been done extensively in many states and were done in
extensively many states, including Arizona in 2020. Is that
generally there is a statistical random sampling of the ballots
that is taken. They are reviewed by nonpartisan or bipartisan
teams and observed by observers from all of the parties in the
campaigns while this process is going on, and those tallies are
then checked against the official tallies.
This process is entirely transparent from start to finish,
and very importantly, it is designed and defined well in
advance of the election before anybody knows what the outcome
of the election is. Georgia is a great example of that, where
they literally counted every single paper ballot by hand, first
time they had paper ballots in Georgia in two decades.
When you're spinning ballots around on colored lazy Susans,
being observed by people who don't have adequate training, who
have no experience in elections, where there are severe
limitations on the ability of observers from across the
political spectrum to view them, you're going to have
significant problems with that process. The error rate is going
to be extremely high.
And yet even with a high error rate and with an invalid
process, what we saw was they could determine--they reached--
they found no evidence that indicated that Maricopa County's
processes yielded the wrong result. In fact, they--again, I
would say this didn't confirm the result in any way because it
was unnecessary. It was already confirmed under Arizona law, as
written by the Arizona Senate in advance of the election.
Ms. Wasserman Schultz. Thank you.
An audit, when run well, verifies the results of an
election and assures voters that their vote has been counted.
But this circus didn't meet those basic standards because it
wasn't really an audit. It was a gaslighting exercise funded by
dark money groups who want to promote the big lie and undermine
confidence in our elections.
This conspiratorial worldview also infects Republicans in
my home state of Florida, where a pending bill in the state
legislature would conduct a forensic audit of the 2020
election, but of course, only in counties that Biden won. And
this effort is especially puzzling, given that the noted Trump
lackey, Governor Ron DeSantis, heaped praise on the 2020
election process.
These so-called audits aren't about unearthing facts. They
are about ginning up justification for repressive voting rights
laws that prevent Black and Brown people from access to the
voting booth and helping Republicans lay the groundwork for
setting aside the work of local elections officials so they can
possibly usurp future elections. These are democracy corrosion
exercises, nothing more.
So thank you very much for your testimony, and I hope the
committee remains continued--and I trust that we will--
continued to election integrity, not promoting the big lie, as
our colleagues have been doing since the end of the election.
I yield back the balance of my time.
Chairwoman Maloney. The lady yields back. The gentleman
from Louisiana, Mr. Higgins, is recognized for five minutes.
Mr. Higgins?
Mr. Higgins. Thank you, Madam Chair.
How dare we? How dare we? How dare the sovereign states and
free Americans challenge the oppressive, omniscient authority
of the all-powerful national Democratic machine? How dare we
exercise our legal and constitutional rights to question
irregularities of an incredibly significant election?
We have thousands of affidavits signed by American citizens
regarding very suspicious election irregularities on the days
and weeks leading up to the 2020 election and specific shocking
observations of electoral sabotage on Election Day itself.
Well, my colleagues summarily dismiss the sworn affidavits of
American citizens as liars and conspiracy theorists, yet an
illegal alien crossing our border with a scripted plea for
asylum taped to his head, he is seen as a paragon of virtue.
The 2020 Presidential election was, indeed, compromised. We
don't know how much because investigations take time. Yet as of
January 20, 2021, Joe Biden was, indeed, our inaugurated
President.
Listen good. On January 20, 2025, we are going to fix that.
And Democrats will have an opportunity to deal with the re-
election and newly inaugurated President Donald J. Trump again,
and I have no doubt that my Democratic colleagues across the
aisle will object.
Madam Chair, I yield the remainder of my time to my friend,
colleague, and gentleman from Arizona, Mr. Biggs.
Mr. Biggs. I thank the gentleman for yielding.
You know, I am straining out a gnat, and I am just going to
go back, Mr. Gates. I am just going to tell you that Bob
Christie of the AP--and you know who Bob is, and I know who Bob
is--of Arizona, on February 5 said that the County Board of
Supervisors asked the court Friday to quash a State Senate
subpoena.
Well, you and I can continue that conversation offline, but
we got so much more to go, I am straining out a gnat. But that
just--I don't know, it is just bugging me, OK? Just wanted to
make sure we get that out somewhere.
So, Mr. Bennett, what is the standard error rate on audits
run by Maricopa County?
Mr. Bennett. The stand--well, in Arizona state law, when
you do a hand count, it's a very limited hand count.
Mr. Biggs. And that is the audit that we are talking about
here? That they claimed that they did?
Mr. Bennett. Yes. For example, in this election, the--the
total number of ballots processed by Maricopa County ended up
being processed in 10,341 batches, most of them at 200 per
batch. As the first mail-in returns were coming in, before
election and before being counted, 52 batches were set aside as
potential batches to hand count verify.
Twenty-six of those 52 were randomly selected through a
process that's stipulated in state law, and it was those 26
batches, totaling about 5,000 mail-in ballots, that were hand
counted and compared with the tally by the election machines
that Maricopa had run. And in this election, they--their hand
count audit, as it's called in Arizona, matched exactly. They
said there was no difference between the machine count of those
5,000 ballots and the hand count done by bipartisan teams.
But that's 26 batches of ballots out of 10,341. It's very
front loaded, and it's not a random sample of all 10,341
batches.
Mr. Biggs. Just I guess that is part of the essence of
this. It is not even a random sample?
Mr. Bennett. Correct.
Mr. Biggs. Yes. And so that changes the nature of what you
are looking at. You are looking at, with a full forensic audit,
you are trying to get at everything you can?
Mr. Bennett. Mm-hmm, yes.
Mr. Biggs. So, and what I am trying to understand is, if I
understand right, there were chain of custody issues and other
statutory violations that you mentioned in your opening
statement. I am trying to understand if my colleagues--not my
colleagues, but my friends over here from Arizona are saying
they are OK with those laws, those statutory violations.
And I will just--Chairman Sellers, you got your mask off.
So I guess you are ready to go. So I will ask you. Are you OK
with those statutory violations?
Mr. Sellers. I, frankly, don't believe there were any
statutory violations. We, before----
Mr. Biggs. So you don't think the chain of custody, you
don't think that was a violation at all?
Mr. Sellers. We were very, very careful with our chain of
custody. I can't speak for what happened after it left our
chain of custody because the Arizona Senate signed off,
accepting responsibility, once we delivered the ballots----
Mr. Biggs. But the testimony today is that you had chain of
custody problems that were inherent in what you delivered. You
don't--didn't see that?
Mr. Sellers. I disagree with that.
Mr. Biggs. I yield back.
Chairwoman Maloney. The gentleman's time has expired. The
gentleman from Maryland, Mr. Sarbanes, is recognized for five
minutes.
Mr. Sarbanes. Thank you, Madam Chair, for doing this very
important hearing.
There are two things that should make us really nervous
about this fishing expedition, this sham audit that was
conducted by Cyber Ninjas. One is that Cyber Ninjas doesn't
really have the qualifications to conduct this kind of an audit
in an authentic fashion, and so that is obviously a source of
real concern.
The other is how this thing was funded. And I know a couple
of my colleagues have already referred to it, but I would like
to go into that a little bit more. We know the Arizona Senate
only agreed to pay Cyber Ninjas I think $150,000 for the audit,
which was far short of what was ultimately needed to conduct
this thing.
Instead, what happened was the Republican Party in Arizona
went out to raise funds from dark money groups, these 501(c)(4)
groups with ties to President Trump and ties to the big lie
narrative, and they raised $6.7 million from those groups,
which was 98 percent of the cost of the audit overall.
Ms. Ramachandran, does the public have visibility into the
donors who contributed to these 501(c)(4) groups?
Ms. Ramachandran. Thank you so much for that question.
No. There's been minimal transparency into the donors.
There's been a small amount of disclosure from Mr. Logan about
some of the top groups, the top (c)(4)'s that you mention. As
far as, you know, who--who, in turn, has donated to those
groups, I'm not aware of any publicity on that front.
Mr. Sarbanes. And are legitimate election audits usually
funded by dark money groups? Why or why not?
Ms. Ramachandran. Thank you. Legitimate election audits are
usually performed by election officials with members of the
political parties present, observing and with meetings open to
the public. They're not very costly. They are generally funded
from within the budget for the elections office, and it would
be ideal for them to continue to be funded in that way.
I know that in the Freedom to Vote Act, Congress has called
for risk-limiting audits and has also called for appropriations
to help support election officials and move them toward those
audits.
Mr. Sarbanes. Thanks very much. That is how it ought to--
that is how it ought to operate.
You know, if you look at some of these groups that funded
the audit, this sham audit, you have got a nonprofit chaired by
former National Security Adviser for Donald Trump, Michael
Flynn. That was $1 million coming in from that group. Former
Trump lawyer Sidney Powell's group provided over $500,000 to
support this inquiry that was conducted. Patrick Byrne--we
heard this before from my colleague Congressman Hank Johnson--
prominent businessman supporter of former President Trump,
heads a group that contributed over $3.4 million to this audit.
All three of these individuals, the ones I just mentioned,
by the way, in December--last December, Ms. Powell, Mr. Flynn,
Mr. Byrne--took part in an Oval Office meeting where they
reportedly encouraged President Trump to take steps to overturn
the election, including by seizing Dominion voting machines.
So, Ms. Ramachandran, would you question the impartiality
of any audit that was primarily funded by groups headed by
these three individuals?
Ms. Ramachandran. Absolutely I would question the
impartiality, and I would add that objectivity is a minimal
standard that's required for an audit to provide confidence for
the public.
Mr. Sarbanes. I have to say Mr. Bennett made a comment
apparently that he told reporters it doesn't matter who paid
for it when he was referring to the audit. But I disagree with
that completely. It matters a great deal.
When your salary and your security and 98 percent of the
entire audit is paid for by people who want to overturn the
election and maybe even a losing candidate himself--because we
know Donald Trump was certainly interested in getting in there
and supporting these efforts--that should make everyone
question its impartiality and its results.
I am glad you mentioned the Freedom to Vote Act. This is
another reason why we have to pass it, to shine a light on this
dark money in politics, require all organizations involved in
political activity to disclose their donors. The current system
allows big money contributor special interests to hide the
source of their political spending.
We have to fix that. We need to do it for the public and to
lift up the credibility of our political system. So passing the
Freedom to Vote Act would certainly help that.
Thanks very much, Madam Chair, and I yield back my time.
Chairwoman Maloney. The gentleman yields back. The
gentleman from South Carolina, Mr. Norman, is now recognized.
Mr. Norman?
Mr. Norman. Thank you, Chairwoman Maloney.
Let me just say, you know, I have heard a couple of
statements made, the fact that undermining democracy, and I
have heard my good friend Mr. Raskin say this is the most
important hearing. You know, the hearing that we should be
having now is the crisis on the border. The polls show people
are fed up with the 8 million immigrants that are coming in
here intentionally by the Democrats.
We undermine democracy by our military leaving Afghanistan,
having the 13 Marines die, leaving Americans behind. We
undermine democracy by intending to stack the Supreme Court.
And it goes on and on. So I wish we would have that.
And the other good thing, the one good thing about this
hearing that is crystal clear, Democrats do not want voter ID.
They just don't want it because that gives them a chance to do
the mail-in ballots, which can be altered. It is showing it in
this--the testimony that is given.
I would like to yield the balance of my time to Congressman
Barr. Andy?
Mr. Biggs. Yes? You mean Biggs, right? Not Andy Barr.
Mr. Norman. Biggs. Biggs. I am sorry. I am sorry.
[Laughter.]
Mr. Biggs. Boy, that hurts, but it hurts Mr. Barr far worse
than it hurts me. I am sorry about that, Mr. Barr.
Thank you, Mr. Norman. Appreciate that very much.
So I am going to direct a few of these questions. I am
going to ask the Arizona folks here these questions. So I will
start with Mr. Bennett, and then we will try to work on down so
everybody can get there.
Is it standard practice to delete files off a server after
an election, Mr. Bennett?
Mr. Bennett. I hope not.
Mr. Biggs. So, Mr. Gates, will you agree with that?
Mr. Gates. I would say that it is appropriate to maintain
files, and that's exactly what we did. We deleted--the deleted
files have been discussed. They were archived.
Mr. Biggs. So you admit that you guys did delete--Maricopa
County did delete files off the server after the election?
Mr. Gates. That were--that are archived.
Mr. Biggs. Yes, and so when you released these servers and
this information to the auditors to begin with, they didn't
have access to those archived files at first. Is that fair to
say?
Mr. Gates. They did not subpoena those. That's correct.
Mr. Biggs. OK. So, so you didn't feel obligated to turn
that over then to them?
Mr. Gates. We responded to the subpoena.
Mr. Biggs. OK. Mr. Bennett, your response to that?
Mr. Bennett. I find it, frankly, laughable to suggest that
a county, in response to a subpoena, could say we will delete
files from the hard drives and materials that we give to the
auditors because we have those files archived on data that we
did not give to the auditors, when the subpoena said turn over
all the records related to the election.
Mr. Biggs. Yes, see, that is the way I read the subpoena is
more broadly than the county read it, for sure.
So, so your Twitter account mentions that the purging of
the 2020 election data base in the beginning of February is a
standard practice. Can you please confirm for me that that is
what you do for all elections, after all elections that you do
that?
Mr. Gates. I cannot confirm that for you today, but we can
certainly get you that answer, Congressman.
Mr. Biggs. Thank you.
Mr. Chairman, can you confirm that today or not?
Mr. Sellers. I really can't confirm that either today. I
just know that because there is limited space on these servers,
when you have to run another election, then you have to make
room for the additional election data.
Mr. Biggs. So, so was there additional--was there still--
well, let me just rephrase this. If that is the standard
practice, which is kind of--I don't think you guys are saying
that you know for sure, but the chairman just intimated that
that is the case, can you explain to me why data was still
present for prior elections on the data base, in and of itself?
Mr. Gates. Yes, again, I don't have an answer to that
question, but we'll certainly get you an answer for it,
Congressman.
Mr. Biggs. OK. All right. I would appreciate it if you
would get me that information.
Mr. Sellers. And I do think that it's important that our
recorder has suggested that he will be answering every question
in a timely fashion.
Mr. Biggs. That is the same recorder that campaigned that
Adrian Fontes was incompetent and called him a criminal? And he
was the guy that was running the 2020 election, and you
actually hired someone to oversee Mr. Fontes because you guys
didn't trust Mr. Fontes as well. Is that the same guy, Steve--
is that the same Stephen Richer?
Mr. Gates. Yes, I wouldn't--I wouldn't put it that way
exactly. But what we did was we did have statutory in--as you
know, Congressman, Boards of Supervisors have responsibility
for Election Day operations, and we took that back so that we
would have four Republicans and two Democrats overseeing the
2020 election. We thought that was important.
Mr. Biggs. I will yield back. Thanks.
Chairwoman Maloney. The gentleman from California, Ro
Khanna, is now recognized. Ro Khanna?
Mr. Khanna. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Mr. Bennett, you testified that the most significant
finding of the audit is that the hand count of the physical
ballots very closely matches the county's official results in
the President and U.S. Senate races. That finding is
frustrating to many who expected the audit to prove a different
election result.
I appreciate your honesty in that. So I just wanted to get
a few things straight under oath, and please be brief since my
time is limited.
Mr. Bennett, given your statement, did Cyber Ninjas' hand
count show that Joe Biden won more votes than Donald Trump in
Maricopa County?
Mr. Bennett. Yes. If I heard your question correctly, did
the audit show that Mr. Biden got more votes in Maricopa County
than Mr. Trump?
Mr. Khanna. Yes. Did Cyber Ninjas--yes.
Mr. Bennett. Yes, the audit--the audit--the audit shows
that.
Mr. Khanna. Do you have any reason to believe today that
Joe Biden did not win the state of Arizona?
Mr. Bennett. Not other than the, you know, questioned
ballots, questioned envelopes.
Mr. Khanna. I mean, do you think he is the legitimate--
legitimately elected President?
Mr. Bennett. Yes.
Mr. Khanna. So when President Trump says we won the Arizona
forensic audit yesterday at a level that you wouldn't believe
and said of President Biden he didn't win Arizona, he lost in
Arizona based on the forensic audit, that is false. Correct? I
mean, I am not asking you to pick a fight with the former
President. I just want to make sure that people understand what
the record is, that that is not a true statement. Correct?
Mr. Bennett. I would not characterize it that way. I was
asked by the Senate to be the liaison to the Maricopa audit,
and the Maricopa audit found that the results were very similar
to what Maricopa County canvassed in the official results.
Mr. Khanna. So if anyone, including the former President,
was saying that the audit somehow suggests that Donald Trump
won the Arizona election, that would be a wrong and false
interpretation of the audit. Correct?
Mr. Bennett. I would say that he's probably making that
statement based on his opinion of other things in the audit. I
can't begin to----
Mr. Khanna. But it would be--it would be--it is not your
characterization of the audit?
Mr. Bennett. Correct.
Mr. Khanna. Well, then I don't think we have to have a post
modern version of truth. There is truth and falsehood, and I
don't think everyone just gets to make their own
interpretation.
Let me ask you this. Is it true that Cyber Ninjas found no
bamboo fibers or watermarks placed by the Trump campaign on
paper ballots or suspicious folds that show that ballots were
fake or evidence for any of the conspiracy theories about
changing the ballots that have been circulating online?
Mr. Bennett. Did they do what about bamboo fibers,
Congressman?
Mr. Khanna. That they found no bamboo fibers or watermarks?
This is one of the conspiracy theories.
Mr. Bennett. To my knowledge----
Mr. Khanna. I know it is----
Mr. Bennett. To my knowledge, I never witnessed any
evidence that they were specifically looking for bamboo fibers.
Mr. Khanna. I appreciate that. And the report said that
there was no evidence that the paper ballots had been tampered
with. Correct?
Mr. Bennett. I did witness on the floor of the audit that
there were some paper ballots that were of concern as to
whether they were authentic. So to say that none were I think
would be incorrect.
Mr. Khanna. But none that would materially affect your
judgment, right, your earlier testimony that you thought Biden,
President Biden legitimately got more votes than Donald Trump.
Correct?
Mr. Bennett. It would not change that outcome. Correct.
Mr. Khanna. So far, Cyber Ninjas has refused to provide any
meaningful documents to this committee, and it turned over just
four documents to the Arizona Senate despite a court order. You
know, you seem like someone who believes in the rule of law. Do
you agree that Cyber Ninjas should obey court orders and
requests from Congress?
Mr. Bennett. Yes.
Mr. Khanna. Let me ask you this, Mr. Bennett, because, you
know, we come from different parties, different views, but you
seem like you are trying to do a decent job in terms of the
election. And it is all we have in our democracy, and you have
people really concerned about whether the democratic system is
going to continue in the robust way that we have had for 200
years.
Let me ask you just two final questions, and you can answer
them both. One, do you think that there would ever be grounds
for a state legislature to overturn votes if a candidate for
President wins the popular vote in that state, or do you think
that is going down a very dangerous road?
And two, do you think it is healthy--put aside being a
Republican or whether you voted for Trump or Biden. Do you
think all of this conspiracy theory is healthy for our
democracy? I mean, we have a legitimate President. And when
half the country is saying that he is not elected President,
does that help America stay a great nation in the 21st century?
Mr. Bennett. Let me answer your second question first,
Congressman. I do not consider it healthy for the number of
references that have occurred even in this hearing alone that
this was a hyperpartisan audit. The first thing that I did
after being asked by the State Senate to be the liaison was to
call the state Democrat chairman and ask that a co-chair, a co-
liaison be assigned who is a Democrat. I was refused four
times.
I called several prominent Democrats personally, all who
either refused or told me after checking with state Democrat
leaders that they should not. And so----
Mr. Khanna. Mr. Bennett, I don't want to interrupt. I am
not even trying to answer--maybe that is part of the point. I
am not even trying to go at whether the auditors--I am just
saying even some credibility--how do we get----
Chairwoman Maloney. The gentleman's time has expired. The
gentleman's time has expired. The gentleman may answer him in
writing.
The gentleman from Texas, Mr. Sessions, is recognized for
five minutes. Mr. Sessions?
Mr. Sessions. Madam Chairman, thank you very much.
Mr. Gates, I am interested in going back to some
conversation of several members, several members back. When an
audit was done and prepared, did you follow these same
procedures that under law would have been required from the
time a ballot came in and you looked at the envelope and then
placed that to make sure that it was the correct person and
looked at that process that I understand is--has eight or nine
different characteristics to it to ensure accuracy?
Mr. Gates. So which audit were you talking about,
Congressman?
Mr. Sessions. So let me go back. At the time that Maricopa
County did their audit or the audit that was performed by your
county, whether that is you or the county, did you follow the
same procedures in looking at the law that would have been
followed by the people running the election?
Mr. Gates. Well, I want to make sure that everyone
understands the audits that we did. So we ran two audits. We
authorized two audits that were run by certified voting
technology companies.
Now, you know, as Mr. Bennett referenced, at that point,
you don't get to have any examination of the envelopes because
the ballots have already come out. And in fact, the audits that
we did were more focused on the machines themselves, on whether
there was malware attached to the machines, whether there had
been hacking, whether the machines had been connected to the
Internet. Because there's been a lot of questions about that.
So I want to be clear that the nature of the audit, the two
audits that we authorized didn't involve the full process
because, frankly, you're unable to do that because when the
ballot comes out of the envelope, it's separated.
Does that answer your question?
Mr. Sessions. Well, it is your answer. I think you are
trying to help me. What I am suggesting to you is, is there a
process that is normally followed by the elections
administrators or workers at the time they receive a mail-in
ballot? Is there a process?
Mr. Gates. Oh. Yes. No, there absolutely is a process. I
apologize.
So there's been some discussion about voter ID as it
relates to mail-in ballots, and that's something, as an elected
official, I've been concerned about over the years. And we
currently have signature verification, and that's what happens
when the ballot comes in. It does have--when the mail-in ballot
comes in, it has a signature on it, and then the signature----
Mr. Sessions. OK. So you and I have worked really well
together. Was that process followed in the audits that you did?
Mr. Gates. So, again, I want to be clear. I'm not trying to
be obtuse, but that particular portion, the signature
verification, was not part of our audit because the ballot had
come out, it separated from the envelope itself.
Mr. Sessions. OK. And I want to come back to that. I've got
a question. Was there at any point in early voting an
indication that was given by election officials that there
would be no verification or audit process like what was given
in Georgia that was given by election officials to say to
people all the ballots will be counted?
Mr. Gates. I'm not aware of any indication given from
Maricopa County that we would not do the normal signature
verification on mail-in ballots and voter ID check for Election
Day voters.
Mr. Sessions. So you believe then that there was no
information given, public information that would have swayed
anyone to think that the full, what are there, eight or nine
different verification steps by a mail-in ballot person who is
processing that, they check a number of things?
Mr. Gates. Correct. Yes, I'm not aware of--well, go ahead.
Mr. Sessions. OK. Well, no, you answered the question. OK,
I have got 10 seconds left.
Mr. Becker, there was a reference a minute ago to Internet.
Is there any state that allows an Internet process to be
utilized, or said another way, would it be against the law in
Arizona for the Internet to have been used?
Mr. Becker. So I have no information at all that Arizona,
which has been using the same very verified paper processes for
years with extensive mail balloting, as Secretary Bennett
pointed out, that there was anything connected to the Internet.
The most extensive use of even a small number of ballots that
may have been transmitted over the Internet that I know of is
in West Virginia, where they have been using a pilot program
there to allow for primarily military and overseas voters to
transmit their ballots over the Internet.
Mr. Sessions. So during the process of the early voting and
day of election, in your opinion, use of the Internet, by and
large--except for West Virginia--would not have been allowed by
law?
Mr. Becker. So I'm not as much of an expert on Arizona law
as the gentlemen that I'm sitting up here with, but I would----
Mr. Sessions. No, I just said across the country.
Mr. Becker. But what I'd tell you is I have--I know Arizona
election procedures extensively. I've not seen any evidence
that that did exist or could exist.
Chairwoman Maloney. The gentleman's time has expired.
Mr. Sessions. Thank you very much. Thank you, Chairwoman.
Chairwoman Maloney. And now the gentlelady from Michigan,
Ms. Tlaib, is recognized.
Ms. Tlaib. Thank you so much, Chairwoman. Thank you so much
to all of you being here. I think this is so incredibly
important.
I know that in my community, we witnessed firsthand the
radical backers of the former forever-impeached President's
attempt to prevent votes from being counted in one of the most
beautiful blackest cities in the country, the city of Detroit.
But we all know it didn't stop there.
Ever since Donald Trump was voted out of office by an
overwhelmingly majority of voters in our country, he and his
allies, led on the ground by Arizona State Senator--Senate
President Karen Fann, have sought to turn Arizona into the
poster child for their efforts to push false election fraud
claims that failed elsewhere.
Before their attempt, Chairwoman, to overturn the election,
before it even started, I believe Senator Fann told the people
of Arizona that it would be a ``big step in returning trust and
confidence in our election process.'' Again, when the report
was released, she said, ``This is not about Trump. This is not
about overturning the election.''
But you all should know that as early as December 2020, she
bragged that she was working with Rudy Giuliani and the
President to get ``forensic audit,'' which, you know, in
Detroit, we call that voter suppression tactic, the so-called
forensic audit in Arizona.
Supervisor Gates, as you know, you are under oath, yes or
no, do you believe the so-called audit was about restoring
``trust and confidence in our election process?''
Mr. Gates. So I believe that some of the people who were
involved in this, you know, some good volunteers who got
involved, I think that really was what they were focused on.
But unfortunately, I do believe that a lot of people who
led this, that was not their major focus was restoring
confidence. Instead, I think it was more on raising doubts, and
I think we're seeing that again today, quite frankly.
Ms. Tlaib. Yes, they misled so many of our American people
that really fell for it.
You know, Chairman Sellers, was it your impression that
Senator Fann was willing to work with you to conduct a fair and
impartial so-called audit of the votes in Maricopa County to
help restore trust in the elections process. Yes or no?
Mr. Sellers. Well, I can't give just a simple yes or no
answer because I've known President Fann for a number of years,
and she and I had a lot of private meetings to try to resolve
some of the issues that were coming up. And early on
especially, I truly believed that her approach was to simply
say there are questions from a number of our constituents that
we need answers for, and I said I'm willing to work with you to
get those.
Ms. Tlaib. Well, we all know, although based on completely
unreliable procedures, that Joe Biden actually won by more
votes in Arizona than initially reported after it was done. Is
that correct?
Mr. Sellers. Well, that's what the results from this----
Ms. Tlaib. Yes, he won more votes. Is that correct? At the
end, it showed that he won more votes than it was initially
reported in Arizona. Is that correct?
Mr. Sellers. I can't verify the results that the Cyber
Ninjas got in their report.
Ms. Tlaib. OK. Well, Secretary Bennett, is that correct?
Mr. Bennett. Yes. The hand count done by the audit
increased----
Ms. Tlaib. Hand count. Remember, not Internet, y'all. Hand
count.
Mr. Bennett. The hand count done by the audit reflected an
increase in 350 votes as the margin Biden won in Maricopa
County.
Ms. Tlaib. So yet after the report was published, the
former forever-impeached President issued a statement claiming,
I quote, and I think my colleague said, ``It is clear in
Arizona that they must decertify the election. You heard the
numbers. It is a disgrace. We won the Arizona forensic audit
yesterday on a level you wouldn't believe.''
I mean, make no mistake, democracy is dying in America,
folks. Fascism is here. We all must stand up against it, and we
all--it is so incredibly important. I am asking, urging my
colleagues, especially my Republican colleagues, to reject this
lunacy, these complete lies, and we have to be committed to our
causes --I apologize, committed to our democracy.
I will end with two questions. Very quickly, Mr. Becker.
First, do partisan attempts to overturn the will of the people
like the one in Arizona and the efforts being planned in other
states restore faith and confidence in America's elections? And
the second, do you believe----
Mr. Becker. No, we're seeing----
Ms. Tlaib. The second, do you----
Mr. Becker. No, we're seeing them having disastrous
consequences----
Ms. Tlaib. Absolutely.
Mr. Becker [continuing]. And it appears--yes.
Ms. Tlaib. And do you believe--and I am sorry because I
only have 10 seconds. Do you believe efforts like this are
intended to lay the groundwork for states to pass laws that
intentionally make it more difficult for some people to vote?
Mr. Becker. I don't know what the intentions are, but the
effects of this are that it is actually deterring many people
from voting, particularly Republicans, it appears, because they
are believing a lot of these lies about--falsehoods about the
integrity of the process.
Ms. Tlaib. Thank you so much, and I yield, Madam Chair.
Chairwoman Maloney. The lady's time has expired. And at the
request of a witness, we will take a very brief bathroom break.
The committee stands in recess for three minutes.
[Recess.]
Chairwoman Maloney. The committee will come to order. The
gentleman from Georgia, Mr. Clyde, is recognized.
Mr. Clyde. Thank you, Madam Chair.
It is no secret that this country faces an uphill battle in
restoring trust and integrity in our elections. Now Democrats
claimed Republicans did not win races fairly in 2000 and again
in 2004. And since 2016, we listened to the left repeat the big
lie that Russia stole the election. That lie has been repeated
now for almost five years.
Now those same voices are simply beside themselves that
Republicans would dare ask for integrity in our election
process. So the question is when do we stop pointing fingers
and start carrying out our duty to ensure our constituents can
trust our elections?
Building trust starts with taking steps to verify that all
votes are legal and cast by eligible voters. Building trust
does not start by harassing a private company doing a job that
it was contracted to do.
Nor does it start by violating the Tenth Amendment,
federalism, and the rule of law by stepping in with a ``the
Feds know best'' attitude. The Federal Government does not and
should not have a say over how the state of Arizona carries out
its elections, nor should it actively work to prohibit Arizona,
or any state for that matter, from carrying out a forensic
audit to verify the integrity of its election laws and to
restore public trust at the polling booth.
We need less Federal involvement in our elections, not
more. The American people, and specifically, for today's
hearing, those from Arizona, deserve to be able to cast votes
with confidence and trust in an electoral process and outcome,
irrespective of which candidate or party wins. Every legal vote
must be counted, and those that are illegal must be set aside.
We cannot allow any voter's legal vote to be invalidated and
canceled by an illegal vote.
I find it important to remind my friends on both sides of
the aisle and our witnesses of the fact that we can take $100
in $1 bills and count it as many times as we want, and the
count will remain the same, 100. But if many of those bills are
counterfeit, you may have 100 pieces of paper in your pocket,
but you sure don't have $100 in legal tender.
That is the real issue here today. It is not just the
count. It is the counting of legal votes. Illegal and
counterfeit votes must be tossed out. That is a common sense
rule that must be followed in Arizona, Georgia, and all other
elections.
Thankfully, my home state of Georgia has worked to fix the
serious problems that plagued our state's election process,
such as signature discrepancies on absentee ballots, off-hour
ballot counting, and unsecured ballot drop boxes, just to name
a few, so that voters can trust the process. I will do
everything in my power to ensure that Washington keeps its
hands off Georgia's election laws and that our state's Tenth
Amendment rights are not seized by the Federal Government.
With that, I yield the remainder of my time to Mr. Biggs,
so he, too, can keep Washington and this committee out of the
business of the people of Arizona.
Mr. Biggs. Thanks. I thank the gentleman from Georgia.
So this is a question for Vice Chairman Gates and Chairman
Sellers. So either one of you can answer it. Don't need both,
but just either one. So I am trying to understand because it
gets on the thematic thing that we were talking about just a
moment ago.
I am trying to understand how the auditors, whether the
auditors you hired or the auditors that work for the State
Senate, how were they able to do any type of validation of the
2020 results if the data base was actually cleared before they
got started?
Mr. Gates. And again, that--well, again, that's something
that I would prefer if we can provide a followup answer to you
on that. But again, this was--this was all available, and I
believe--I believe there may have been a public records
request? I'm not sure if there was on that.
But you know, we can----
Mr. Biggs. But you had actually cleared the servers, and
you backed them up to the--to the archive, you said. So just to
change slightly, the auditors hired by y'all to do the audit,
they were not FEC-certified forensic auditors, right? They
were----
Mr. Gates. They are--they were from--they were certified to
operate on these machines, and----
Mr. Biggs. But not audit----
Mr. Gates [continuing]. They're voting system--they're from
voting system laboratories.
Mr. Biggs. Right. But they are not auditors. They are not
certified auditors because the FEC doesn't actually certify any
forensic auditors for elections. Is that correct?
Mr. Gates. They are people who understand how election
machines work. They have significant experience.
Mr. Biggs. OK. So I am going to ask you a yes or no
question because--because you and I can bounce around here. The
FEC does not certify full forensic auditors at all?
Mr. Gates. I'd--I believe that--I believe that's--oh, it's
the EAC that certifies them.
Mr. Biggs. They are not--they don't certify--EAC doesn't
certify full forensic auditors?
Mr. Gates. That term, that ``full forensic auditor,'' I'm
not familiar. I don't think I've ever----
Mr. Biggs. They don't--they don't do--they don't do
forensic auditors. They don't certify. What they certify is
deals with the machines themselves and tabulators and whether
they can operate on those machines, right?
Mr. Gates. And whether they've been tampered with and
connected to the Internet.
Chairwoman Maloney. The gentleman's time has expired. And
without objection, Mr. Stanton is authorized to participate in
today's hearing. Mr. Stanton, you are now recognized.
Mr. Stanton. Madam Chair, thank you for allowing me to
participate in today's important hearing.
I am very disappointed that Mr. Logan declined to appear
here today to address questions about how the Cyber Ninjas firm
was selected to conduct a multi-million dollar, month-long
partisan audit. I suspect the reason he isn't here is because
he does not have good answers, that his involvement is one of
the reasons the so-called audit was a fraud from the beginning.
Mr. Logan has a history of spreading baseless conspiracy
theories about the election and may be one of the reasons why
he was chosen to advance the false narrative by Mr. Trump's
loyal followers in Arizona. I would like to walk through a
little of that history right now.
On November 19, 2020, Mr. Logan tweeted, ``Dominion servers
in German were grabbed by the good guys in Germany.'' Dominion
is a company that makes election servers.
Mr. Logan was apparently referring to the theory spread by
gateway pundit as well as convicted felon and former Trump aide
George Papadopoulos that the U.S. military seized Dominion
servers in Europe following the election.
Mr. Becker, were Dominion election servers seized by the
U.S. military in Germany or anywhere in Europe after the
election?
Mr. Becker. There is zero evidence to support any part of
that allegation, including the idea that there were Dominion
servers in Germany at any time.
Mr. Stanton. Thank you.
For the record, USA Today, the Associated Press, and
Reuters all fact checked this claim and rated it false.
According to USA Today, ``The U.S. Army denied performing such
a raid, and the company whose purported servers were seized
didn't even have servers in Germany.''
The week before January 6, Mr. Logan prepared a document
for the recently sanctioned Trump lawyer Sidney Powell to help
Republican Senators who wanted to object to the certification
of the election. This document's central claim was that
Dominion's core software ``originates from intellectual
property of Smartmatic, a company that was founded in Communist
Venezuela with links to Chavez.''
Mr. Becker, you are an expert in this field and have
studied elections. Are you aware of any evidence to suggest
that Dominion's core software originates from a company with
ties to former Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez?
Mr. Becker. There is absolutely no connection between
Dominion or any other software vendor in the United States and
Hugo Chavez or the Nation of Venezuela, to my knowledge--or to
anybody's knowledge, for that matter.
Mr. Stanton. Thank you.
And I want to point out for the record that even the Trump
campaign knew this conspiracy was baseless. According an
internal memo prepared for the campaign in mid November 2020,
Trump campaign lawyers stated that Dominion has no direct ties
to Venezuela.
More recently, this summer, while the fraudulent audit in
Arizona was taking place, Mr. Logan starred in a film called
``The Deep Rig,'' which sought to prove that the 2020
Presidential election was rigged against Donald Trump. In the
film, Mr. Logan states without any supported evidence that the
CIA or former members of the intelligence agency may be
spreading disinformation around election fraud.
Mr. Becker, is there any evidence supporting the theory
that the CIA officers spread disinformation about election
fraud? Any at all?
Mr. Becker. There is zero evidence of that.
Mr. Stanton. These conspiracy theories are all completely
groundless, and yet Mr. Logan has publicly espoused them. If
this was the person that Trump loyalists and Arizona Senate
believed was the right person for the job, it is pretty clear
that their goal was not to conduct an honest audit.
If Mr. Logan were here today, we would ask him whether he
still believes these conspiracy theories. We would also ask him
how he could possibly conduct a fair and impartial audit when
he has already made up his mind on the basis of debunked
Internet conspiracy theories nearly eight months ago.
We can't ask these questions because Mr. Logan
unfortunately declined this committee's invitation to defend
his work under oath.
I yield back.
Chairwoman Maloney. Thank you. The gentleman yields back.
And before we close, I want to offer Mr. Biggs an
opportunity to offer any closing remarks you may have. Mr.
Biggs, you are now recognized.
Mr. Biggs. Thank you, Madam Chair.
As an old trial lawyer, I just got to know how long you are
going to give me? Oh, as long as I want. OK. My flight doesn't
leave for a couple hours. I can just go on.
Anyway, thanks. Thanks, Madam Chair. Appreciate it very
much.
I agree with so much of what colleagues on my side of the
aisle have been saying today that this is an unnecessary
encroachment into Arizona's travails, if I can put it that way,
over the audit and our election system. The Constitution leaves
that to us. If there was some kind of something that was
materially violative of civil rights, then maybe that would
have warranted this, but I am going to just go through a few
things that I think are so important.
Not the least of which is the fact that in September of
this year--excuse me, last year, September of last year before
the election took place, polling data showed that only 22
percent of Americans thought that the Presidential election of
2020 would be free and fair. Only 22 percent.
That was consistent with polling in 2012, 2008, 2004, and
the last time that my Democratic colleagues believed that they
legitimately lost an election was 1988. That is what the
polling--that is what the polling indicated. What we have heard
called the ``big lie'' over and over today by our friends from
the left and the Democrats is something that they set the gold
standard for in 2016 over the last four years.
The question of the audit, as I mentioned early on, was
bizarre to me because my colleagues across the aisle want it
both ways. So they repeatedly, as one of them said, it is
shameful, it is shameful that we had this audit. They kept
going on and on.
The last gentleman just ripped Doug Logan. I don't know Mr.
Logan. I don't know his history. They ripped that. They ripped
the dark money. The funding sources, they had problems with.
They ripped everything they possibly could about the audit, and
at the same time that they were attacking the audit, they
simultaneously argued that it buttressed their position as to
who won the election.
I view that as specious, inconsistent, fallacious. I was
asked who won in Arizona? I don't know because there were
statutory issues with this election. No election is ever
perfect. But in my mind, we have not resolved the issues that
took place at this time.
I had more questions to ask. We don't have time to ask more
questions. I am going to go without asking those questions and
maybe submit them in writing. Maybe we can get answers in
writing.
There is so much underlying this and this notion that this
was a fraudulent effort to get at the root of this election I
think is--that is abhorrent in and of itself. We should have
welcomed an audit. I regrettably have to say that, in my view,
watching from outside, it certainly looked to me like the board
was obfuscating and trying to prevent an audit.
My recommendation early on was just do a full and complete
audit. Get it over and done with. Resolve it. That is what I
said in November. Resolve that issue. Put this thing to bed.
And here we sit almost a full year later, and people still
have questions about election integrity. I don't know how we
are going to resolve that, but I do know that this continued--
this continued antagonism toward this audit, while at the same
time saying, well, it proves what we said, but it stinks, that
is ludicrous. I would hope that we can have audits, meaningful
audits.
The audit that was conducted statutorily by Maricopa
County, that was a statutory audit. But that really wasn't an
audit. Nobody here would say, oh, yes, that is a full and
complete audit. No, none of us would say that. It just isn't.
It is meant to provide some kind of statistical reference
point.
And as Mr. Bennett, former secretary of state of Arizona,
pointed out, it simply was not even with a random sample. I had
people who worked in polling locations who told me they came up
and said they were concerned. I had people who worked on those
boxes who said they were concerned.
I think there are legitimate concerns, and I am not sure
that the audit revealed those. But I can tell you what, both
sides are further entrenched today than they were 6, 8, 10
months ago in Arizona. And that is--that is a shame. It is a
shame, and I don't know how we are going to resolve that.
I am going to yield one minute to Paul Gosar from Arizona.
Mr. Gosar. Madam Chairwoman, I would like to just ask
unanimous consent to submit several transcripts to the record
of Democrat and Republican Senators and many others raising the
same concerns as myself and my constituents. I ask--and several
articles to the record.
Chairwoman Maloney. Without objection.
Mr. Gosar. The last thing--aspect is to really hit home
that Mr. Biggs made a very great point, is Code 52 U.S. 271. It
was passed by a Democrat majority over 50 years ago, and it
supports audits. It encourages audits and their findings.
There is plenty of unanswered questions here. I talked
about it earlier. Trust is a series of promises kept. The way
you keep trust with the American people, with Arizonans, is be
transparent. That solves that.
And when you look back at my testimony on January 6, that
is what I asked for. I asked for a 10-day moratorium to let any
state have 10 days to look at an audit, to do it right. Look at
``Kill Chain.'' Please, please take the time to watch ``Kill
Chain.'' It is hardly a conservative group that points it out.
But this isn't a Republican or a Democratic issue. This is
an American issue. Getting it right that when I cast my ballot
for whoever is there that I cast it for, it goes there
appropriately. And electronic, hand manipulation doesn't skew
that aspect. That is all we are asking.
So from that standpoint, I love the conversation back and
forth, but I don't think people are bad like we intended. You
know, even Mr. Raskin introduced legislation because he saw
electronic manipulation and problems. And it goes both ways.
Whether it be 2016, 2018, 2020, there is plenty to go around.
So why not get it right this time?
Why not be transparent? That is how you gain trust with the
American people. Trust is transparency.
Madam Chairwoman, thank you for the indulgence. I
appreciate it, and I yield back.
Mr. Biggs. Thank you. And Madam Chair, I have some articles
that I would submit.
Chairwoman Maloney. I recognize you for purpose of putting
items in the record.
Mr. Biggs. Thank you so much.
The one is a piece from February 26, 2021, Arizona
Republic. Another one from Representative Shawnna Bolick, dated
February 2021, Washington Examiner. One from Glenn Greenwald,
September 27. One letter from Madam Chair to Honorable Trey
Gowdy, dated April 5, 2018. Another one from Representative
Gerry Connolly, dated January 29, 2018. And the last one from
the Baltimore Sun, dated January 5, 2017, entitled ``Rep. Jamie
Raskin Not Seeing Electoral College Challenge for Trump.''
Chairwoman Maloney. Without objection.
Mr. Biggs. Thank you.
Chairwoman Maloney. OK. We have been told that Mr. Keller
has logged on. Mr. Keller is now recognized for five minutes.
Mr. Keller?
Mr. Keller. Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you very much
to all our witnesses for taking time to testify before the
committee today.
Before addressing the subject of this hearing, I would like
to take a moment to urge the majority to use its oversight
power to focus on any of the numerous crises facing our
country, be it rampant inflation, the crisis on our Southern
border, the irresponsible way in which the Biden administration
pulled out of Afghanistan, skyrocketing energy prices, or the
staggering national debt, just to name a few.
The price of natural gas alone is at a 10-year high. This
must be addressed before winter sets in and Americans have to
make difficult financial decisions just to heat their homes.
The integrity of our elections is directly linked to the
integrity of our democratic system of government at the local,
state, or Federal level. While proper election protocol is
essential, the matter of Arizona election audits is
fundamentally a state issue. This is the second time in the
course of a week that this committee has raised issues firmly
in the states' jurisdiction into the Federal arena.
Rather than attacking a private company for fulfilling its
contract in conducting an election audit, this committee should
be directing any objection about the audit to its originators,
the Arizona State Senate. One thing that all voters, regardless
of party affiliation, can agree upon is that we must have
election integrity. That is the only way to ensure trust in our
elections, faith that our elected officials have been
righteously elected, and confidence in our government.
I would just again encourage the majority party to take a
look at the issues that lie squarely within the jurisdiction of
the Oversight and Reform Committee. Believe me, there are
plenty of Federal agencies that need oversight and reform. We
should be focused on those, and the states, where they have
issues, should focus on making sure that they address those
issues.
We certainly aren't going to call in, you know, the Arizona
Department of Revenue and investigate how they handle their
state income tax collection. If we have an issue at the Federal
level, we should be dealing with that. But issues that are
within the states' jurisdictions, we should actually go back to
those states and follow the Constitution and do exactly--and
have them address those issues.
With that, Madam Chair, I yield back the balance of my
time.
Mr. Biggs. I will take your time.
Mr. Keller. All right. I yield to Mr. Biggs.
Mr. Biggs. Thank you. Thanks, Mr. Keller. Appreciate that.
So I am going to be able to ask a couple of the questions
that I didn't think I was going to be able to ask.
So I was looking at your website called justthefacts.vote.
And on Myth No. 4, I found that it said that the county does
not change its--that the county does not change its Election
Management System--that it is false that the county does not
change its Election Management System passwords. I assume that
what you are asserting then is that you regularly change the
passwords for your EMS server, for the server for EMS?
Mr. Gates. Yes, my--I'm not sure what you mean by
``regularly,'' but it is something that is changed.
Mr. Biggs. So would you then be surprised, I guess, that
the records from CyFIR clearly indicate that all accounts have
the same password, and even the username was the same and has
not been changed since the EMS server was set up?
Mr. Gates. Yes, again, I don't--I don't have that in front
of me. So I'm not sure what the basis of that is.
Mr. Biggs. If that were--if that were true, that would be
concerning about cybersecurity, would it not?
Mr. Gates. No. No, that would not be concerning about
cybersecurity because, Congressman, I think, as you understand,
the EMS is not connected to--as relates to cybersecurity, it's
not connected to the Internet in any way. It's an air gap
system. We held--we did two audits that confirmed that these
machines that were used in the 2020 general election were never
connected to the Internet.
Mr. Biggs. And that is your--that is your assertion here
today? OK.
Mr. Gates. That is. Yes.
Mr. Biggs. OK. All right.
Mr. Gates. Based upon certified folks that took at that as
well.
Mr. Biggs. And how is the paper--so let us talk about paper
for a second. Myth 8, vote-secure paper does not have a special
coating to prevent bleed-through. Are you saying that only
vote-secure paper was utilized in the 2020 general election?
Mr. Gates. Yes. Vote-secure paper was utilized, but it is a
fact that you can have bleed-throughs. Bleed-throughs, and
that's why we made sure we redesigned the ballot, so that if
there was a race on side of the piece of paper, it wouldn't
bleed through and show up as a vote on the other side, on the
election on the other side.
Mr. Biggs. OK. I hope to be able to ask Mr. Bennett about
that.
Thank you.
Chairwoman Maloney. The gentleman yields back. I am now
told that Mr. Fallon has logged in, and Mr. Fallon, do you wish
to ask questions?
Mr. Fallon. Yes, Madam Chair. Thank you very much.
Chairwoman Maloney. OK, you are recognized.
Mr. Fallon. Thank you.
I dream of the day that we have hearings in this esteemed
committee on the crisis, not really even a crisis, but the
catastrophe on the border. Being from a border state, I believe
now that this administration made all other 49 states border
states as well.
But Madam Chair, I would like to yield the balance of my
time to my colleague and friend from Arizona, Mr. Biggs.
Mr. Biggs. I thank the gentleman. Thanks, Mr. Fallon.
So, Mr. Bennett, let us talk about the paper. You heard the
testimony from Vice Chairman Gates. Can you please respond to
us about the paper that you found in the audit--that the
auditors found in the audit?
Mr. Bennett. What I was informed of is that there appeared
to be 10 different sources or types of paper used for the
ballots. I personally witnessed the fact that on some ballots,
there was a fair amount of bleed-through from one side to the
other.
But as Mr. Gates mentioned, one of the things that you're
supposed to do in setting up your election in Arizona is align
the ballots so that if there is bleed-through from front to
back or vice versa, that no corresponding ovals are affected.
And it's my understanding that even though we found bleed-
through, we did not find that bleed-through overlapping an oval
on the other side.
Mr. Biggs. So, to your knowledge, there was no encroachment
from one side to the other and----
Mr. Bennett. That is my--that's my understanding.
Mr. Biggs. Thank you. Can you add on here to whether there
was any issues with regard to the use of the same password and
usernames in some of these servers?
Mr. Bennett. I can simply repeat the testimony of Mr. Ben
Cotton, the CEO of CyFIR, the company that looked at the
equipment, who said that their evidence showed that they--that
the county used common usernames and passwords, and that I
think there was more than one, but as required by state law and
election procedures manuals in Arizona, they did not use unique
usernames and passwords.
So that if there was a question related to who did what in
the Election Management System, not a cybersecurity issue, as
Mr. Gates mentioned, but the purpose for having unique
usernames and passwords is so that if you have things happen
within an election, you can tell who did it. And he said that
the use of common usernames and passwords make that impossible
to detect.
Mr. Biggs. So you wouldn't know necessarily who was even
logging in because the usernames are not discrete?
Mr. Bennett. Correct.
Mr. Biggs. Explain to us the election procedure manual and
its relationship vis-a-vis statute.
Mr. Bennett. The election procedures manual is specifically
authorized in state law. It is under the direction of the
secretary of state's office, which I occupied for six years. I
did three of them during my six years. It's adopted in the off-
election years, also has to have the consent of the attorney
general and the Governor to sign off on the election procedures
manual. It has the effect of law, as is dictated in state
statute itself.
Mr. Biggs. So if there is an issue with compliance with the
procedures manual, that is a statutory violation because----
Mr. Bennett. Yes.
Mr. Biggs [continuing]. It is a law?
Mr. Bennett. Yes, sir.
Mr. Biggs. So my understanding is that the--is that the
Senate president attempted to reach out and attempted to work
with the county, but that for whatever reason an impasse was
reached, and the subpoenas were issued, and the ultimate issue
is compliance and whether there was contempt on the part of the
board in responding to those subpoenas. Mr. Sellers?
Mr. Sellers. Well, as I mentioned earlier, I had met
personally with the Senate president numerous times, telling
her that if there were--if there were serious issues or
questions that needed to be answered, I wanted to help get
those answers.
And she felt that--well, and I'll back up a little bit.
Because the two additional audits we did after the election was
over were really done to answer questions that had been given
to us by the--by the Arizona Senate.
Mr. Biggs. Thank you. I thank the gentlelady.
Chairwoman Maloney. The gentleman yields back. And I now
recognize myself.
People are coming in and logging in at the end here. Our
good friend, committee member Jackie Speier is now recognized
for five minutes for questions.
Ms. Speier. Thank you, Madam Chair.
And I have been on for a good part. I am also in the middle
of an Intelligence Committee hearing, but I did want to get
back on since there are still questions that need to be
answered.
Let me ask you, Mr. Bennett, you have been a public
servant. Do you condemn political violence in this country,
including attacks on elected officials and elected
representatives?
Mr. Bennett. Of course. I've had----
Ms. Speier. Of course----
Mr. Bennett. I've had death threats myself.
Ms. Speier. OK. So you know that Chairman Sellers and
Supervisor Gates and their staff have received threats against
their safety. The District of Columbia experienced political
violence on numerous occasions in the weeks following the
election.
I was one of the members in the House Gallery lying on the
floor when the shots rang out, thinking that I was going to die
that day. So making sure that we quell violence is critical.
With that in mind, it is very important that we identify
those organizations that have sought to further inflame
tensions. One of those groups is Look Ahead America. On
September 24, this group held a rally in Arizona in which
nearly half of the attendees were Proud Boys, which is an
organization identified as a far-right neo-Fascist group.
Have you ever heard of the organization Look Ahead America,
yes or no?
Mr. Bennett. Yes, ma'am.
Ms. Speier. And you know this group has been associated
with violent hard-right activities for a long time?
Mr. Bennett. I'm not aware of that, ma'am.
Ms. Speier. The group tweeted that it would participate in
a conference hosted by Nick Fuentes, a well-known neo-Nazi.
You are currently listed on Look Ahead America's
``leadership'' page, as it is, as its state chairman. According
to the page, you are fifth-highest ranking individual in this
organization. I am kind of astonished that you would be
associated with a group such as this, let alone take a
leadership role.
Your biography on the group's website notes that you serve
as ``Senate liaison for Maricopa County 2020 election audit.''
Now, Mr. Bennett, you said a few weeks ago that you are on a
``leave of absence'' from this organization to focus on
election review. Is this true?
Mr. Bennett. Yes, I was working on a voter registration
project in Arizona known as AZ51. AZ51, connected with Look
Ahead America, who wanted to help that process in Arizona, and
AZ51 decided to transition the voter registration project over
to Look Ahead Arizona, which was formed by Look Ahead America.
So I'm--I'm with Look Ahead Arizona, which is an affiliate
of Look Ahead America. But I have been on leave of absence, as
I've been contributing my time to the audit without pay.
Ms. Speier. All right. So you have been trying to establish
some independence. Is that correct?
Mr. Bennett. Independence from whom?
Ms. Speier. From the organization, since you are on a leave
of absence?
Mr. Bennett. I was already involved in the audit,
Congresswoman, when the AZ51 voter registration project
transitioned to Look Ahead Arizona. So I'm not trying to
establish independence. I already was involved in the audit
when that transition occurred.
Ms. Speier. All right. But in a September 7 Arizona
Republic article, you said, ``I still consult with Matt on, you
know, who does he need to talk to around the state and help
with efforts of Look Ahead Arizona and voter registration.''
Matt, I believe, is the executive director of Look Ahead
America. It seems difficult that you could claim that you are
on a leave of absence from the group but are still consulting
with it and actually recommending who the group's executive
director should be meeting with.
So I really am concerned that, as an elected official, as
someone who you admittedly say you have had death threats, to
all of us and to the Arizona county supervisors who have
experienced death threats, why an engagement with groups like
the Proud Boys, who were part of this effort in Arizona prior
to the election, would somehow not be recognized by you as
antithetical to quelling violence and, in fact, encouraging it?
And with that, Madam Chair, I will yield back.
Chairwoman Maloney. The gentlelady yields back. And I
believe that concludes all of the members that want to ask
questions. I will now proceed with my closing remarks.
I want to thank all of the witnesses today for helping our
committee understand the facts about the so-called audit in
Arizona and all of my colleagues who participated. In
particular, thank you to Mr. Sellers and to Mr. Gates and to
the other elected officials who endured months of abuse,
insults, and threats for simply doing your job. Thank you for
having the courage to speak the truth today and to testify
before the committee.
The committee had also wanted to hear from Cyber Ninjas,
but Doug Logan refused to appear today to testify under oath.
That is probably because the facts about his audit is they are
so damning. This audit was designed to find fraud, but it
didn't find any fraud.
It was backed by millions of dollars, $6.7 million, from
partisan dark money groups, and it spent a year studying the
election. But in the end, Cyber Ninjas came up with absolutely
nothing--no fraud, no missing votes from Trump, no change in
the election outcome.
So now, even after this huge audit, some of my colleagues
are refusing to accept even their own biased audit, claiming
that there is still uncertainty about the election in Arizona.
Donald Trump is even claiming the audit showed he won.
A nonpartisan fact checker rated that claim as absolutely
false and gave him the designation of ``pants on fire,'' and I
ask permission to put the statement and the article about it in
the record.
Chairwoman Maloney. And so let us be clear. Donald Trump
did not win in Arizona, and he did not win the election. He
lost. And in the Cyber Ninjas audit, he lost. But unless Trump
and his admirers are willing to admit this truth and respect
the will of the American voters, our democracy is at serious
risk, as Mr. Sellers and Mr. Gates testified.
The barrage of lies about the 2020 election has inflicted
grave damage already. These lies are undermining public
confidence in our elections. They are fostering efforts across
the country to hold more partisan audits and pass anti-
democratic laws to suppress votes and allow elected officials
to overturn elections when their preferred candidates lose.
Free and fair elections are the foundation of our
democracy, whether you are a Republican or a Democrat. All of
us should care about these threats to our elections.
This committee will use every tool at its disposal to fight
back against the lies and conspiracy theories that have been
allowed to grow for too long in our country. I ask like-minded
Americans, both Democrats and Republicans, to join us in this
fight. We all have an obligation to stand up for the democratic
values that we all hold so dear.
With that, I, in closing, want to thank our panelists for
their remarks. I commend my colleagues for their participation.
And without objection, all members have five legislative
days within which to submit materials and to submit additional
written questions for the witnesses to the chair, which will be
forwarded to the witnesses for their response. I ask our
witnesses to please respond as promptly as you are able.
This meeting is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 1:48 p.m., the committee was adjourned.]
[all]