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Arizona Senate GOP’s 2020 election report delayed again

PHOENIX (AP) — The delivery of a report on the 2020 vote count to Arizona state Senate Republicans was delayed yet again Monday after the Donald Trump supporter hired to lead the effort and several others involved contracted COVID-19 “and are quite sick,” the Senate GOP leader said.

Republican Senate President Karen Fann said she still expected to receive a portion of the report Monday. She did not give a date for delivery of the full draft. It’s the latest delay for the unprecedented partisan review, which has so far taken more than double the 60 days it was originally supposed to take.

The report was commissioned by Senate Republicans and funded mostly by Trump allies promoting his unsupported election fraud narrative. It will not immediately be made public. Rather, two senior Republican senators will review it along with their lawyers and advisers to decide whether the findings are supported by evidence. Fann said anything lacking sufficient backing will be removed.

“We want to see their proof, their documentation, everything to make sure that the report that goes out is fully accurate,” he said.

Cyber Ninjas, the small cybersecurity consultant with no election experience that Fann hired to run the review, was originally supposed to deliver its findings in May but has pushed back the timeline several times.

Election experts have been highly critical of the review, which Fann launched late last year as Trump and his allies hunted unsuccessfully for reasons to block the certification of Democrat Joe Biden’s victory on Jan. 6. Election experts say Cyber Ninjas and its subcontracts are biased and incompetent, and they’re using bizarre, ever-changing procedures that could not produce reliable results. Cyber Ninjas owner Doug Logan has spread false conspiracy theories about the election, and his review has been funded almost entirely by Trump allies active in the “stop the steal” movement.

“Real audits, legitimate audits are done under a time frame,” Jennifer Morrell, an expert in post-election auditing and a consultant to elections officials, said Monday. “There is a defined start time and stop time. They’re done publicly.”

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