Aug. 15, 2021 - Epoch Times
16:42
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| Good evening. | |
| Over in Arizona, the audit of the 2020 election is wrapping up with the audit team having completed the hand recount part of the process. | |
| They are now working remotely to complete the forensic aspect of the audit. | |
| And amidst all this, the Arizona State Legislature, they just passed a bill which will weaken Katie Hobbs, who is Arizona's Secretary of State, she's a Democrat, and this new bill will strip her of all election lawsuit-related powers. | |
| Meanwhile, over in New York City, it was just revealed that the Board of Elections made a bit of a mistake. | |
| It found that there was a discrepancy of 135,000 ballots in the vote count. | |
| What exactly happened? | |
| Well, let's go through that 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 over in Arizona. | |
| But actually, just before we do, as a quick aside, I wanted to mention that our previous episode, which discussed the warning that the FDA added to the mRNA vaccines, it was doing fairly well, but on the back end, I see that it's being suppressed by YouTube. | |
| Basically, about 95 to 96 of the people who are watching that episode are already subscribers. | |
| Basically, the episode is just not being shared out to new people. | |
| And this is not anything new. | |
| I mean, if you've been on YouTube for any period of time, you know that they suppress videos which talk honestly about what is happening in this world. | |
| Which is why we here at the Epoch Times, we took action and we created something very cool. | |
| It's called Epic TV. It's our brand new no-censorship video platform where you can find all of the awesome Epoch Times video programs like The Larry Elder Show, American Thought Leaders, Crossroads with Joshua Phillip, China in Focus, Life and Times, and our show Facts Matter. | |
| And on there, we publish exclusive episodes that we just don't put here on YouTube. | |
| That link will be right there at the top of the description box. | |
| I hope you check it out. | |
| And now let's really move on over to Arizona. | |
| Now, as we've already covered in several previous episodes, the large-scale audit of the 2020 election over in Maricopa County is wrapping up. | |
| And as a part of that audit, the Arizona State Senate, they conducted a hand recount of 2.1 million ballots, they are looking for any possible IT breaches that might have occurred, and they are also examining close to 400 tabulation machines which were used during the previous election. | |
| Now, to start with, on Friday of last week, the recount portion of the paper ballots was concluded. | |
| Here's what the official Twitter account for the audit, here's what it announced five days ago. | |
| Since then, over the last couple of days now, the auditors have been moving out of the Veterans Memorial Coliseum, wrapping up all of the ballots and moving all of the chain of custody, all of the evidence, back into the hands of Maricopa County officials. | |
| If you go on over to azaudit.org, which is of course the website that was set up by the Arizona State Senate, which allows you to see what's happening in real time over at the Coliseum, you will see that there are very few people left walking around and everything seems to be packed up. | |
| Today, which is Wednesday, is in fact the last day that the Coliseum is booked by the Arizona Senate. | |
| And so, they have to vacate the premises by tonight. | |
| So what exactly happens now that the manual portion of the audit is complete? | |
| Well, here's what Ken Bennett, who is the audit liaison, here's what he had to say. | |
| But these are not the only two tasks of the audit. | |
| So in terms of what those other tasks are, as we already mentioned in a previous episode, now that the hand recount portion of the audit is finished, the auditors will conduct the forensic part of the audit remotely. | |
| One team will be over in Washington and one team will be down in Florida. | |
| Now, one team will be focusing on the scan ballots. | |
| They will be examining the scan ballot images to look for any indications of possible fraud. | |
| Things like ballots having been possibly photocopied, or manipulated, or potentially the paper not being the official stock that was supposed to be used. | |
| And then the other team will be finishing up the IT portion of the audit. | |
| They're looking at the hardware and the software on these machines. | |
| They are checking to see if any of the votes were flipped, checking to see whether any thumb drives were used, and so on. | |
| Now, in terms of a concrete timeline, over the weekend, we here at the Epoch Times, we spoke with Karen Phan, who is the Arizona Senate president, and she told us that over the next several days, Republican senators will meet and... | |
| Now, according to Ken Bennett, this final portion of the audit, which is being done remotely, will take another few weeks. | |
| And then afterwards, the auditors will take another several weeks to complete the final report, which the Arizona Senate can expect to receive sometime in August. | |
| Now, outside of this ongoing audit, there have been some other election-related developments over in Arizona. | |
| To start with, the Arizona State Legislature has just voted to strip Katie Hobbs, who is the Secretary of State, of all her election lawsuit-related powers. | |
| Those powers will now be handed over to the Arizona Attorney General. | |
| Now, for your reference, Katie Hobbs, who is both the Secretary of State as well as a Democrat running for Arizona governor, she has been a vocal critic of the Maricopa County election audit. | |
| And so this new bill, it works to stop Katie Hobbs from playing any role in lawsuits related to Arizona's election rules. | |
| And instead, it gives the Arizona Attorney General, Mark Brunovich, the sole authority to defend Arizona's election laws and election procedures. | |
| Here's specifically what the bill says. | |
| The Attorney General has sole authority in all election litigation to direct the defense of election laws, to appeal or petition any decision, and to intervene on behalf of this state at any stage. | |
| Now this move stems largely from the fact that Katie Hobbs, as well as Republican state lawmakers, they have clashed repeatedly over the last several months in regards to the election audit. | |
| For instance, while Katie Hobbs has continually denounced the Maricopa County audit, state lawmakers say that it is crucial to restoring voters' confidence in the entire election system. | |
| Furthermore, in passing this measure, the lawmakers also cited how Katie Hobbs has filed complaints Here's what one Republican lawmaker said in this regards. | |
| Now, what he's exactly referring to here is that Katie Hobbs filed an official complaint with the Arizona Bar Association However, critics say that this type of complaint was politically motivated, and that it basically crossed the line. | |
| For instance, the spokeswoman for the Attorney General issued a statement saying this, Now, | |
| in response to this weakening of her power, Katie Hobbs issued a statement accusing the Republicans of retaliating against her and saying that,"...this was prompted by my efforts to protect the freedom to vote and because they did not like the outcome of the presidential election." Now, besides this new bill, which limits Katie Hobbs' power, there was another development over in Arizona. | |
| Yesterday, officials over in Maricopa County announced that they will replace all of their voting machines after this audit. | |
| Now, to give you a bit of background here, about a month ago, Katie Hobbs wrote this letter right here, addressed to Maricopa County officials, saying in part that the voting machines which are currently being audited are no longer safe for use in future elections. | |
| We were actually able to get a copy of this letter, and here's what it says in part. | |
| Quote, Now, as to whether she actually has the power to do this or not, it looks like she does. | |
| In the state of Arizona, the Secretary of State can decertify machinery as long as she does it in consultation with the state's Election Equipment Certification Committee, which is a three-person panel appointed to And so, as long as she consults with this panel that she herself appointed, she can decertify machinery. | |
| And that appears to be exactly what she did, because in this letter, she stated that she consulted with the election technology experts, and she determined that, quote,"...after a loss of physical custody and control, no comprehensive methods exist to fully rehabilitate the compromised equipment or provide adequate assurance that they remain safe to use." So, this letter was issued about a month ago from Katie Hobbs. | |
| However, just yesterday, Maricopa County officials sent this response letter saying that they shared the concerns that these machines might have been possibly compromised. | |
| Here's what part of this response letter says. | |
| Accordingly, I write to notify you that Maricopa County will not use the subpoenaed election equipment in any future election. | |
| Then, in a separate news release, Maricopa County officials pledged to never use equipment that could pose a risk to free and fair elections. | |
| Now, within that pledge is a suggestion that the auditors may have somehow compromised the election machines. | |
| In fact, according to Karen Fann, who is again the Arizona Senate president, she said that this statement from Maricopa County officials, this letter as well as that statement, is yet another attack on the election audit. | |
| And then she went on to say that the machines were not tampered with during the process. | |
| Here's specifically what she said. | |
| If their experts can't prove the machines have not been tampered with, then how does the Secretary of State's office or county elections certify the machines before every audit to make sure the machines haven't been tampered with? | |
| She then went on to say that the reason that this audit was conducted separate from Maricopa County was because officials there refused to comply. | |
| Here's what she said. | |
| We asked numerous times for this audit to be performed jointly with Maricopa County at their facility, selecting a mutual auditor, and did not want the ballots or machines moved from their facilities. | |
| However, she added, they refused. | |
| Now, several Republican lawmakers praised the move to do away with these machines, but for different reasons than these Maricopa County officials. | |
| For instance, Wendy Rogers, who is a Republican Arizona senator, she wrote this on Twitter. | |
| No more machines. | |
| And then in another tweet, she wrote that... | |
| Now, in terms of the possible audits that might be happening in other states, we should discuss what's happening over in Wisconsin, where... | |
| Oh, sorry. | |
| Hello? | |
| Hey, Roman, it's me. | |
| No, I'm just kidding. | |
| I wanted to take a quick moment and introduce our sponsor for today's episode, which is an awesome company called AMAC or A-M-A-C, and it stands for the Association of Mature American Citizens. | |
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| Again, you can go over to amac.us forward slash facts matter or just click in the link in the description box below. | |
| And AMAC, thank you so much for sponsoring our episode. | |
| Now Roman in the studio, back to you. | |
| And now let's move on over to Wisconsin, where I have a bit of a clarification to make. | |
| On a previous episode, I mentioned that two Republican lawmakers over in Wisconsin, Robin Voss, who is the Speaker of the House, and Chris Kapinga, who is the President of the Senate, I said that they were against the idea of conducting an election audit. | |
| However, that appears to have possibly been incorrect. | |
| Because although President Trump issued a very scathing statement saying that they were against conducting an audit, that does not appear to be the case. | |
| For instance, here is a letter from Chris Kopinga, who is the president of the Wisconsin Senate, and it's addressed to President Trump. | |
| And here's what it says, quote, Long before your press release, I called the auditor in charge of the election audit that is taking place in Wisconsin and requested a forensic component to the audit. | |
| Prior to owning several businesses, I was an auditor, so I understand the importance of this being done to determine what took place in the last election. | |
| This will help guide us as legislators to put fixes in place for any issues found, and more importantly, to ensure the integrity of elections moving forward. | |
| Now, besides that, four days ago, Robin Voss, who is Wisconsin's Speaker of the House, he announced that a former state Supreme Court justice would oversee an investigation of the 2020 election. | |
| Now, besides Wisconsin, it looks like New York City might be in need of an election audit in the very near future as well. | |
| That's because the New York City Board of Elections, they just voided the Democrat mayoral primary results after finding a discrepancy of 135,000 ballots. | |
| Now, to give you a bit of background on what happened, about a week ago, New York City held their primary elections for mayor. | |
| And when the preliminary results came in, they showed that Eric Adams, who is currently the Brooklyn Borough president, that he had a 10-point lead. | |
| However, that 10-point lead began to shrink all the way down to only two points by Tuesday, which was yesterday. | |
| Now, that in and of itself is not so surprising because New York City now uses something called rank choice voting. | |
| And so basically, you choose your top five candidates in order. | |
| And as the candidates get eliminated, your vote gets appropriated to the second, third, and fourth choice. | |
| It's actually the first time that New York City has used the system. | |
| However, after the votes were released, the campaign staffers for Eric Adams, they noticed that there was about 135,000 vote discrepancy between the votes that were counted and the votes that were reported on election night. | |
| And so Eric Adams, he released this statement, which said this in part, quote,"...the vote total just released by the Board of Elections is 100,000 plus more than the total announced on election night, raising serious questions. | |
| We have asked the Board of Elections to explain such a massive increase in other irregularities." And after he released that statement, there was quite a bit of backlash on the internet, with many people comparing his statement to what Donald Trump said about the 2020 election. | |
| Here's just one example of the feedback Eric Adams received. | |
| This is some Donald Trump stuff. | |
| However, within just a few hours, the New York City Board of Elections, they came out and they said that indeed, there was a mistake. | |
| They said that 135,000 test ballots were accidentally included in the vote tally. | |
| Here's what they said as a part of their statement. | |
| When the cast vote records were extracted for the first poll of the RCV results, it included both test and election night results, producing approximately 135,000 additional records. | |
| They then apologized and added this. | |
| The cast vote records will be regenerated and the ranked choice voting rounds will be retabulated. | |
| Now this error drew very sharp criticisms from the other mayoral candidates as well, such as Maya Wiley who said this. | |
| This error by the Board of Elections is not just failure to count votes properly today, It is the result of generations of failures that have gone unaddressed. | |
| Sadly, it is impossible to be surprised. | |
| Likewise, even President Trump weighed in on this matter, and he released a statement saying this in part: Now, there was more to President Trump's statement, there was more to President Trump's statement, but I can't read statement, but I can't read it here due to | |
| Now, in terms of the results for the New York City primary race, they are expected to be announced sometime in July. | |
| If you would like to read more about what is happening over in New York or about all of the developments with the ongoing audit over in Arizona, those links will be down in the description box below this video for you to check out. | |
| And now lastly, as we already mentioned on several previous episodes, on the very same day that Joe Biden was sworn into office, YouTube, they decided to demonetize our program. | |
| Now we can no longer run any ads before, during, or after episodes, and the Super Chat feature has just been disabled. | |
| They're essentially snuffing out our ability to monetize our program. | |
| However, we here at the Epoch Times, we took action and we created something very cool. | |
| It's called Epic TV. | |
| It's a brand new no-censorship video platform where you can find all of the awesome Epoch Times video programs like The Larry Elder Show, American Thought Leaders, China in Focus, Life and Times, and our show, Facts Matter. | |
| And on there you will find exclusive episodes that you will not find here on YouTube. | |
| The link to Epic TV will be right there at the top of the description box. | |
| I hope you click on it, hope you check it out, 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. | |
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| And until next time, I'm your host, Roman from the Epoch Times. |
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