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Aug. 3, 2021 - Epoch Times
16:55
Election Audit Resumes with 1.6M Ballots Left; Lawyer Demands All Docs Preserved | Facts Matter
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Good evening.
Over the weekend, the Arizona election auditors, they moved back into the Phoenix Coliseum so that they can restart the hand recount.
And it looks like they actually nearly doubled the number of tables for both counting as well as inspection.
However, the legal challenges going on in the background have never stopped.
In fact, over the weekend, a lawyer representing Maricopa County actually sent this letter To the Senate president out in Arizona demanding that all documents pertaining to the audit be preserved, which implies that Maricopa County might be filing a lawsuit very soon.
And lastly, three days ago, over in Oregon, they became the first state in the entire nation to actually require people to show proof of vaccination if they want to take off their masks in businesses, in their workplaces, or at church.
Let's go through these stories together.
This is your daily Facts Matter update, and I'm your host, Roman, from the Epoch Times.
Now let's begin today's discussion out in Arizona.
And actually, just before we do, as a quick aside, right there at the top of the description box, you will find a link to Epic TV, our brand new no-censorship video platform where you can find all of the awesome Epoch Times programs, like the Larry Elder Show, Crossroads with Joshua Phillip, American Thought Leaders,
China in Focus, Life and Times, and And now let's really move on over to Arizona.
Over the last several days, there have been some developments in the ongoing audit that's happening over in Maricopa County of the 2020 election.
To start with, after a nine-day pause, the election auditors have moved back into the Phoenix Coliseum in order to restart the hand recount of the ballots.
According to the new contract that the Arizona State Senate signed with the venue, which is the Veterans Memorial Coliseum, they have until the end of June to complete the hand recount.
So that's a little bit over a month in order to do it.
Now, in their first month of the audit, prior to taking a break, the auditors were able to recount nearly 500,000 ballots.
And so, in order for them to finish the nearly 1.6 million ballots within a month, they will have to speed up.
They will have to either increase the number of workers or increase the number of hours that they work per day or some combination thereof.
And if you look at their new setup, which you can do over at azaudit.org, then you'll see that it appears that the auditors have increased their capacity a bit.
On the left is what the counting floor looked like before the auditors took a break.
Back then, they had between 16 and 20 tables being used for counting at a given time.
But on the right side, you will see the new setup.
And it appears that the auditors now have 44 tables set up for ballot counting and 32 tables for ballot inspection, which is far more than they had before the break.
Now, according to Ken Bennett, who is the audit liaison, the major reason for the slow pace in the recount was not necessarily the lack of tables, but rather it was the lack of people.
Prior to taking the break, he told media that the need to conduct extensive background checks on all new ballot counters was the reason that the process was being slowed down.
But also prior to going on break, he told reporters this.
Hopefully within a few days or when we come back after the graduations, we'll be fully stocked at the tables and ready to go.
And it looks like that is indeed the case, judging by the number of tables that they have set up.
Now, in terms of the legal drama that's happening in the background, well, that never stopped.
In fact, over the weekend, the lawyer representing Maricopa County sent this letter to the Arizona Senate president, who is, of course, Ms.
Karen Phan.
She's a Republican.
And in this letter, the lawyer is demanding that the Senate preserve all documents relating to the election audit.
Why?
Well, it looks like the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors might be threatening to file a lawsuit.
In fact, here's what Jack Sellers, who is the chairman of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, here's what he said in connection with this letter from the lawyer.
It is clear the Arizona Senate and its contractors do not intend to retract false allegations defaming the county and its employees.
For that reason, Maricopa County is formally requesting Senate President Phan, Senator Peterson, Senate liaison Ken Bennett, and contractors involved in the audit preserve documents and evidence as they may be subject to future legal claims.
And by the way, just for your reference, these types of letters are fairly common.
Typically what happens is that when lawyers are getting a lawsuit ready, they will issue this type of hold order in order to preserve documents that might be pertinent to the case.
Now, in regards to what false claims he's exactly referring to in that statement, this letter makes mention of a statement made on May 13th by the Arizona Senate president who wrote this.
We have recently discovered that the entire database directory from the D drive of the machine EMS primary has been deleted.
This removes election-related details that appear to have been covered by the subpoena.
This suggests that the main database for all election-related data for the November 2020 general election has been removed.
So again, that was a statement made by Karen Phan, who is the Arizona Senate president, and it was soon followed up by a tweet from the official Twitter account of the Senate audit, and it wrote this.
Breaking update.
Maricopa County deleted a directory full of election databases from the 2020 election days before the election equipment was delivered to the audit.
This is spoilation of evidence.
However, this letter, which again was sent by the lawyer representing Maricopa County officials, it goes on to deny these claims, deny the claims that the officials deleted any data, and it says that instead these officials delivered the server exactly as it was kept by the Maricopa County Elections Department.
And then the letter goes on to say this,"...because of the wrongful accusations that the county destroyed evidence, the county or its elected officers may now be subject to or have legal claims." And so, it looks like what happened was that, first of all, the company that was conducting the election audit discovered that some data was deleted,
then they went public with this information, then the Maricopa County officials denied deleting anything, and then soon afterwards, the audit company was able to recover the deleted data, and then, now, it looks like the Maricopa County officials are threatening to sue for defamation.
Now, one of the factors that is muddying the waters here is the way that the legacy news outlets in this country are covering what happened here.
Because after Ben Cotton, who is the founder of one of the firms conducting this audit, after he said that he was able to recover the deleted files, legacy news outlets like CNN and the Associated Press, they published reports which allege that the auditors have backtracked or reversed their allegations that the files were deleted from the machine.
However, that is not necessarily the case.
The fact that he was able to recover the files does not necessarily mean that they were never deleted in the first place.
It just means that he was able to recover them after they were deleted.
In fact, here's what Ben Cotton himself said.
My testimony on May 19th, before the Arizona Senate, is being taken out of context by some media outlets.
To confirm, the databases directory on the EMS primary server was deleted, containing the voting databases.
I was able to recover the deleted databases through forensic data recovery processes.
Likewise, we here at the Epoch Times reached out to the Arizona Senate president, and here's what she emailed back to us.
The file was deleted, but Cypher, and Cypher, by the way, is Ben Cotton's company, Cypher was able to recover it from other areas.
But yes, the file had been deleted on that portion of the drive.
Now, as to whether this recovered data will actually be usable, well, that's still to be determined.
Ben Cotton said that his team is actively trying to figure out whether the files that have been recovered can actually be analyzed, and he added this.
We are performing data continuity checks to ensure that the recovered databases are usable.
And so, we'll just have to wait and see whether this data will actually be usable, whether it'll be able to be analyzed, and we'll have to wait and see what ultimately happens with this lawsuit.
Now, in terms of the audit itself, you can always watch it for yourself over at azaudit.org, which is the website that the Arizona Senate set up where you can watch the audit in real time from nine different camera angles.
Also, if you would like to read this letter from the lawyer representing the Maricopa County officials, or if you would like to read anything related to the Arizona audit, all those links will be in the description box below this video for you to check out.
And now, before we move on over to Oregon, I would like to quickly introduce our channel sponsor for today's episode, and it is the Like Button.
That's right, this episode is brought to you by that Like Button right there.
Just like an election ballot, that like button is your ability to vote with your finger for videos that you find helpful, informative, and the videos that you think should be shared out to the rest of the world.
Because even though I found that generally the YouTube algorithm suppresses videos and channels like ours, which discuss current events honestly, it is still the case that when you smash that like button, it forces the YouTube algorithm to share videos like this out to potentially thousands of more people, letting the truth be known far and wide.
And now let's really move on over to Oregon.
So, as you might have noticed, there is a bit of a divide in this country with how to move forward with things like mask mandates and vaccination passports.
For starters, states like Florida have banned vaccine passports altogether.
On the flip side, three days ago, Oregon became the first state in the entire nation to actually require proof of vaccination in order to take off your masks in businesses, in workplaces, as well as in church.
That was, by the way, according to new guidelines issued by the Oregon Health Authority.
Here's what they said as a part of their statement.
Businesses, employers, and faith institutions now have the option to adjust their masking guidance to allow fully vaccinated individuals to no longer wear a mask in their establishments.
In doing so, they must have a policy in place to check the vaccination status of all individuals before they enter their establishment.
That statement then goes on to say that if these institutions don't check vaccination status, then they have to abide by the previous guidelines, meaning that everyone must keep their masks on.
Now this is the first rule of its kind in America, and as you can imagine, business owners in Oregon are not taking it so well.
In fact, here's what a spokesperson for a group called Oregon Business and Industry told media.
We have serious concerns about the practicality of requiring business owners and workers to be the enforcer.
We are hearing from retailers and small businesses who are concerned about putting their frontline workers in a potentially untenable position when dealing with customers.
Now, even though it's the first in the nation, this decision by Oregon does actually seem to be in line with a statement made last week by the head of the CDC.
Here's what she told NBC during an interview.
Now, again, while Oregon is the first in the nation to implement a system which actually requires people to show proof of vaccination, New York, New York State, has the groundwork laid for something similar as well.
A few months back, the state of New York released an app called the Excelsior Pass, which acts pretty much like a digital vaccine passport.
At the moment, it's not required, like it is in Oregon, but it looks like the infrastructure is falling into place.
Here's what Andrew Cuomo said in regards to this new app.
Now again, this is one of the issues that is starkly juxtaposing different states against one another.
Because while states like Oregon are requiring people to show proof of vaccination in order to take off their masks, and states like New York are building the infrastructure to do possibly the same thing in the future, red states, meaning states controlled by Republicans, are going a totally different route.
For instance, five days ago, the governor of Iowa signed into law a new bill which ended mask mandates in school throughout the entire state.
In a statement she made upon signing the bill, here's what Kim Reynolds, the governor of Iowa, had to say.
The state of Iowa is putting parents back in control of their child's education and taking greater steps to protect the rights of all Iowans to make their own health care decisions.
That bill then went into effect immediately, which allowed the students over in Iowa to take off their masks during the last week of the school year.
And likewise, the state legislature out in Utah, they passed a bill which would ban public schools as well as public universities from enforcing mask mandates on campus.
Now, Val Peterson, who is a Utah representative, one of the people who actually sponsored the bill, he said that, at some point, this has to end.
Meanwhile, the governor of Texas, he actually went one step further.
He issued an executive order which banned local governments, as well as schools, from requiring face masks.
Saying additionally that local governments which continue to enforce mask mandates could actually be fined up to $1,000.
Here's what he wrote as a part of that order.
Texans, not government, should decide their best health practices, which is why masks will not be mandated by public school districts or government entities.
And so, moving forward, it looks like mask mandates as well as vaccine passports might be some of the great dividers among the different state legislatures.
And it looks like it might be falling squarely down red versus blue political party lines.
Regardless, if you'd like to read more about the new vaccine mandate over in Oregon, the link to that will be right there in the description box below this video for you to check out.
And now lastly, I would like to mention something.
I've been making videos and putting them on these giant tech platforms for the last about two years now.
Besides videos on this channel on Facts Matter, you might have seen some of the other videos that I've produced.
They usually run as pre-roll commercials.
But to be honest, making these videos, making these types of videos on these giant tech platforms, quite frankly, it feels like working behind enemy lines in some kind of a technocratic dictatorship.
I constantly, as I'm doing my research, I have to consider what the sensors, what the big tech sensors, will think about my approach and the words that I use.
It's a process of constantly having to run through mental gymnastics.
Even if what I find is accurate, even if I know the source and I know that it is factual, I still have to consider what some young kid, some young kid sitting in Silicon Valley reviewing my videos, I have to think about what he thinks about it.
Because ultimately, it's the combination of the algorithm as well as that kid in Silicon Valley's judgment that decides whether my videos can be on this platform.
And sometimes, as you might have noticed, I have had some of my videos outright deleted without notice.
In fact, on the very same day that Joe Biden was sworn into office, so already four months ago, YouTube demonetized the show altogether, which you might have noticed.
There are no ads running before our program.
And they never gave us an actual reason for that, by the way.
They just sent us a generic statement saying that we broke some policy.
And we appealed that decision of theirs, but they have never given us clarification as to what we actually did.
And it's already been four months now.
And frankly, if they can censor the sitting president of the United States, as they did with Donald Trump, what hope is there for some reporter like me?
However, as a possible solution to this, we here at the Epoch Times have launched something very cool.
It's called Epic TV.
It's our brand new no censorship video platform where you can find all of our awesome programs, like the Larry Elder Show, Crossroads with Joshua Phillip, American Thought Leaders, China in Focus, Life and Times, and our show Facts Matter.
And on there, you will find exclusive programs that you will only find over on Epic TV.
In fact, this weekend, I produced an episode exclusively for Epic TV.
And it felt so great because as I was doing my research, I could just do it.
I didn't have to think about what some young kid in Silicon Valley had to think about it.
I didn't have to think about the big tech overlords and their algorithms combing through my text.
I just put together what I wanted.
And in fact, here's a trailer for that episode.
Yeah, Roman, it's me.
I just wanted to make mention how awesome it feels to make episodes here on Epic TV. I didn't have to go through this mental process of wondering, hey, is this too sensitive to talk about on YouTube?
Will I get censored?
Earlier this week, during some local elections out in Pennsylvania, a number of ballots, mostly Republican ballots, were not able to be scanned properly, which, naturally enough, triggered another round of concerns about the integrity of our elections.
The governor of Texas just announced that for the first time since March of last year, since March of 2020, Texas has reached zero COVID deaths.
Despite getting very heavy criticism for lifting their mask mandate early, including from Joe Biden, who called their decision Neanderthal thinking, according to new data released from the CDC, over 1,100 people in the US have been hospitalized with COVID after being fully vaccinated.
Making episodes on Epic TV feels like making episodes in America again.
Let's go through these stories together.
Let's go through these stories together.
Hope you check it out.
I hope you subscribe.
And I hope that you join us on this journey of exploring this beautiful world through honest journalism that is based in truth and tradition.
Now, lastly, if you haven't already, smash that like button for the YouTube algorithm.
Subscribe to this YouTube channel if you haven't already in order to get this type of honest news content delivered directly into your YouTube feed while you still can.
And until next time, I'm your host, Roman from the Epic Times.
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