In September 2021, Senate President Karen Fann sent a referral to Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich with information about more than 280 ballots cast in Maricopa County during the 2020 General Election by voters who allegedly had been deceased at least a month.
But on Monday, Brnovich sent Fann a stunning rebuke of the list compiled as part of the Cyber Ninjas’ controversial audit into how Maricopa County conducted that election.
“After spending hundreds of hours reviewing these allegations, our investigators were able to determine that only one of the 282 individuals on the list was deceased at the time of the election,” Brnovich advised Fann. “Our agents investigated all individuals that Cyber Ninjas reported as dead, and many were very surprised to learn they were allegedly deceased.”
But the AGO’s Election Integrity Unit (EIU) did not stop at the 282 suspect names provided to Fann by Cyber Ninjas. Another 409 names of voters who supposedly cast ballots during the 2020 General Election were submitted to Brnovich’s office from other sources.
And then there was a list of 5,943 questionable Maricopa County voters submitted to the EIU by a group affiliated with Jovan Pulitzer. Brnovich told Fann the list made “no distinction” between dead registered voters and voters who allegedly cast a ballot after dying.
“Once again, these claims were thoroughly investigated and resulted in only a handful of potential cases,” Brnovich noted. “Some were so absurd the names and birthdates didn’t even match the deceased, and others included dates of death after the election.”
More than 3.42 million ballots were cast across Arizona during the 2020 General Election. A dozen other ballots were submitted by persons other than the named voters, but those were discovered by county recorders without the ballots ever making it to tabulation.
Brnovich’s office has successfully prosecuted some instances involving dead voters, but “these cases were ultimately determined to be isolated instances,” he told Fann.
The attorney general also took a hit at those Republicans who continue to allege there was election fraud in Maricopa County during the 2020 election cycle which cost Donald Trump a second term as president. All that was revealed by Cyber Ninjas, Brnovich noted, was “certain vulnerabilities” which should be addressed.
“We supported the Arizona Senate’s ability to conduct an audit of Maricopa County’s elections and understand the importance of reviewing the results,” Brnovich wrote at the end of his letter. “However, allegations of widespread deceased voters from the Senate Audit and other complaints received by the EIU are insufficient and not corroborated.”
In response to Brnovich’s letter, Fann described the AGO’s now completed criminal investigation as “critical to restoring the diminished confidence our constituents expressed following the last election.”
