Maricopa County refutes Arizona election audit's "faulty and inaccurate conclusions"

The Republican-led Maricopa County released a report on Wednesday that is a near point-by-point rebuttal of the faulty analysis, inaccurate claims and misleading conclusions that they say appear in an Arizona Senate audit of the 2020 election.

Why it matters: Fueled by former President Trump's baseless claims of election fraud, the GOP-led audit escalated into a fiasco last year. Despite no evidence of fraud and objections from the GOP-backed Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, the Arizona Senate refused to call it off.

Details: Florida-based Cyber Ninjas made "faulty and inaccurate conclusions" about over 53,000 ballots in its hand count of 2.1 million paper ballots, according to the 93-page report, prepared by the Maricopa County Elections Department. These include claims about voters who moved, voter registration and ballot duplication.

• "In total, we found fewer than 100 potentially questionable ballots cast out of 2.1 million. This is the very definition of exceptionally rare."
• "None of these instances impacted the outcome of races and a thorough review by our election professionals confirmed there were no systemic issues related to ballot counting and processing in the November 2020 General Election," the authors noted in the report, entitled: "Correcting the Record: Maricopa County’s In-Depth Analysis of the Senate Inquiry."
• An analysis of "anomalies" from EchoMail, another contractor that reviewed early ballot affidavit images, was based on a "flawed understanding of signature verification laws and practices."
• The report also invalidated accusations from CyFIR, which reviewed election equipment and claimed county staff intentionally deleted files and logs.

The big picture: Wisconsin, Georgia, Pennsylvania and Michigan launched their own election audits but found few fraudulent votes, per the Brennan Center for Justice.