Experts warn against ‘sham audits’ movement

Experts for three different organizations came together this week to discuss the latest in the undermining democracy trend: illegitimate election recounts. They warned that conspiracy theories, disinformation and outright lies can spread through more than just social media, undermining legitimate elections. Those spreading the disinformation also prey upon people who may not be familiar with the process of government, they warn.

Officials from the Protect Democracy, Fair Fight Action and States United Action have launched a new website with toolkits to help people understand the differences between real election audits and “fake” or “sham” audits. All three groups agree that the audit taking in place in Arizona’s Maricopa County is not credible — because of the lack of experience of the company conducting it, the methods that are being used, and the lack of transparency. Experts who spoke as part of the panel also said that other auditing, recounting and canvassing done through the State of Arizona long ago proved the election’s legitimacy.

The new website, Notanaudit.com, is the joint project of the three groups.

They say the Arizona “audit” is just the beginning of what is likely going to be a growing trend that will pit career election officials against politicians and start-up companies claiming to be able to do forensic and large-scale audits. They warn that without better public education, people could become more confused and lose confidence in what is otherwise a very safe, secure and — above all — accurate election process.

Moreover, the “spillover” effect from the recount in Arizona is giving some momentum to groups in Georgia, Michigan and Wisconsin to begin audit election results that were certified and validated months ago. Four Wisconsin legislators were among Republicans from various states who took a field trip to Arizona to observe the ballot counting.

Wisconsin’s audit extravaganza

It is difficult to accurately count the number of “audits” and “investigations” already taking place in the Badger State. Still, some of the state’s audit tourist legislators returned from Arizona requesting Wisconsin begin a forensic-level audit to look for fake of suspicious ballots despite the plethora of investigations already conducted or in process.

As is standard procedure for accuracy, the Wisconsin Elections Commission oversaw three thorough levels of canvassing of the election to ensure accuracy and performed an audit of the voting machines and other equipment and posted all of that information and results on its website. It found no serious issues and the Elections Commission leader declared the election to have been conducted in a safe and accurate manner.

At the beginning of the legislative session in January, Speaker Robin Vos ordered the Assembly election committee perform its own investigation, and voted to allow it subpoena powers to compel people to testify. The vast majority of those testifying were Republicans and conspiracy theorists making sometimes outlandish accusations against election and local government officials at invitation-only hearings.

In February, the Legislative Audit Bureau, a nonpartisan arm of the Legislature, began conducting an audit at legislators’ request, with Republicans voting for the audit, while Democrats opposed it out of a concern that it would become a vehicle for more disinformation and mistrust regarding an election that has repeatedly been found to be fair and accurate.

Further audits became even more partisan, and still have failed to turn up any evidence of widespread fraud or irregularities.

Joanna Lydgate, founder and chief executive of States United Action, said that the Arizona Senate audit, which is being led by the private company Cyber Ninjas, is not accredited and the company lacks experience in election audits. Moreover, the audit is only focused on Maricopa County, not other counties, and there’s no examination of the entire ballot — for example state races — just an evaluation of the presidential tallies.

“The voters have spoken, it’s just that these politicians don’t like what the voters said,” Lydgate said.

The concern among officials is that as fear and disinformation spreads, it will lead others to take action not unlike the U.S. Capitol insurrection on Jan. 6.

“The specifics differ from state to state but they are all based on the lie,” Lydgate said. That lie has been that the elections were unsafe or even riddled with fraud.

The new website also has tools that trace what individuals and groups are behind the audit efforts in the different states and the money organizations are raising.

“This is an intentional disinformation strategy to undermine democracy,” said Erosa Osa, the research and policy director for Fair Fight Action. “They’re weaponizing sham election reviews.”

From those concerns, lawmakers in Arizona have also passed more restrictive voter laws in the face of no evidence of fraud. The Arizona legislature has also taken power away from the Secretary of State’s Office, which has supervision of statewide elections.

“Not since the Jim Crow era have we seen such blatant tactics,” Osa said. “The more times we hear something, even those things that have been debunked, the more likely we are to believe it. That’s why we have to repeatedly push back and debunk these.”

She said the challenge for media is to debunk the disinformation without also unintentionally amplifying the message.

“The use of even the term ‘audit’ is an attempt to make it seem legitimate,” said Gowri Ramachandran, counsel for Election Security at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law. The Brennan Center joined the other three organizations to discuss the “audit” trend.

She said that industry-accepted audits look much different, including a wide sampling of ballots, setting out a transparent list of auditing characteristics, like how many ballots will be sampled and from where they are taken. Also, observers and participants from many different organizations and political affiliations are asked to participate.

“This firm already claimed the 2020 election was stolen before it started conducting the audit,” Ramachandran said. “It’s totally lacking in competence and legitimacy. This doesn’t look anything like a real audit.”