Talk:2021 Maricopa County presidential ballot audit/Archive 6

Incorrect Information, Politically Biased Coverage
With all due respect, the published information has many inaccuracies and strong bias. I thought Wikipedia was a home for facts and truth, not random unsubstantiated opinions and political bias.

The opening line of the page "...contracted by the Arizona Senate Republican caucus and carried out by private firms." is inaccurate: the Arizona State Senate called for the audit, in its entirety. It was not called for by the Republican caucus alone. 

"Several concerns about the audit occurred...": All of the citations provided to substantiate this paragraph are editorial opinions. The Democratic caucus did try to block the audit, however Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Timothy Thomason found their claims to be baseless and directed Maricopa County to comply.

Further controversy ensued when Maricopa County refused to hand over all of the routers, falsely claiming that the routers contain sensitive personal information     

The audit has been hailed as a great success for it's security, clear chain of custody, 24x7 video surveillance of ballots and equipment, transparency, and thoroughness. They are the model for other election security audits in the future 

"Conduct and Concerns" - The conduct of the Maricopa County Elections board is of great concern: In testimony given before the President of the Senate and other members, it was revealed that there was little or no chain of custody documentation of the ballots or machines between the November Election and the time of delivery to the arena for the Senate audit. [RECORDED VIDEO OF THAT HEARING: https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2021/05/18/arizona-senate-hearing-on-maricopa-county-audit-and-2020-election-issues-400pm-et-livestream-links/]

"Conspiracy Theory Issues" - The statement "The auditors later acknowledged they had been examining hard drives the wrong way..." appears to be a completely made up and false statement. A citation from a credible source is needed. Later in that section, regarding the claims of deleted databases, the author uses unrelated facts and a quote taken out of context to bias the reader. In fact, at least one deleted database was recovered by the auditors. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Samofvt (talk • contribs) 18:47, 6 July 2021 (UTC) — Samofvt (talk&#32;• contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.
 * Quickly scanning your edit, it contains several unreliable or otherwise dubious sources. soibangla (talk) 18:54, 6 July 2021 (UTC)
 * The fact that both Democratic and Republican elected officials have panned the audit as poorly conducted and an embarrassment would seem to lift this out of the category of being "politically biased". Are there any examples of politically neutral parties praising the conduct of the audit? The conduct of the Maricopa County Elections board, itself a majority Republican entity, also seems to have little relevance to political bias. The issue raised would merely call into question the accuracy of an audit of ballots for which a chain of custody could not be shown. If the Maricopa County Elections board itself has potentially failed to keep track of substantial numbers of ballots that were cast and counted in the election, then the auditors would be working from faulty information in the first instance. BD2412  T 19:20, 6 July 2021 (UTC)
 * To be fair to the IP, the use of "caucus" doesn't seem to be truly correct and I checked 4-5 sources from the article around that statement and none of them mention caucus. "Republican led/controlled Senate" may be more accurate phrasing here.  I don't know if the caucus by itself, not acting as the Senate (or an official committee of the senate), could issue subpoenas.  The 7-8 sources I've read as I was writing this message refer to the senate as a whole, the Senate President and/or the Senate Judiciary Chair.  Just not caucus.  Ravensfire  (talk) 20:50, 6 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Agree with Ravensfire. The statement "...contracted by the Arizona Senate Republican caucus and carried out by private firms" is partially inaccurate. It's a short stroking of the actual fact. Arizona Senate Republican leaders approved the audit; when brought to a vote every Democrat voted against, ergo only Republicans in the senate approved. For us to use the word caucus without clear citation would be a poor choice and not factual, biased on sources to date. BusterD (talk) 21:13, 6 July 2021 (UTC)
 * I have no objection to that detail being corrected or clarified. It would actually be nice to specify what the vote breakdown was, if we have that. BD2412  T 22:32, 6 July 2021 (UTC)

"Several concerns about the audit occurred" - By Whom? Weasel Words
Section: Several concerns about the audit occurred, such as concerns about how the audit was being conducted, its legality, the conduct of auditors and security issues at the site, among others. Conspiracy theory issues also surfaced as many commentators and Republicans characterized the effort as a sham or "fraudit" that was an element of a big lie that the presidential election had been stolen from Trump.

Need to be re-phrased to include the accusers. Who are these qualified people making such claims? 124.169.155.99 (talk) 15:30, 13 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Please see the nine sources bundled in footnote #3. soibangla (talk) 16:42, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

Trump?
Why all the content about Trump here? As far as I understand, he or his campaign were/are not either indirectly or directly involved, as the writers of the article are suggesting. I thought this audit was the result of hearings and evidence submitted to the AZ Senate after the election. 73.120.83.182 (talk) 17:15, 15 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Can you specify any mentions of Trump in the article that you feel do not belong? It seems rather intuitive that Trump would be mentioned frequently in discussing an election where Trump was one of the candidates, and where various persons involved in the effort have been indicated by the sources (and by themselves) to be either affiliated with or declared supporters of Trump. BD2412  T 18:43, 15 July 2021 (UTC)
 * If it's about Trump's candidacy, why no mention of Biden? 73.120.83.182 (talk) 00:52, 16 July 2021 (UTC)
 * The article does mention Biden. I would suggest reading it more carefully before asking questions such as this. Cheers! BD2412  T 02:22, 16 July 2021 (UTC)
 * I went back through and checked the page. As of this datestamp there are 25 mentions of the word "Trump". Nine times in sources. Five times describing a source connection (ex: Trump attorney, Trump NSA). Six times as object in a prepositional phrase (ex: from Trump, of losing candidate Donald Trump). Twice Trump is used in the possessive. Twice as subject in a clause. Only one use (a source connection) in the largest and best cited section. No. The person Donald Trump is mentioned as a subject of a sentence exactly twice on the page. This doesn't seem like very extensive coverage of the former president at all, considering his words and actions provide the entire context of the page subject here. BusterD (talk) 20:30, 15 July 2021 (UTC)
 * I agree with your assessment, by the way. Cheers! BD2412  T 20:43, 15 July 2021 (UTC)

Article name
Hi all,

Should the article be moved to "Arizona audit" per WP:COMMONNAME.

It would be interesting to see which title gets the most hits when searched.

Many thanks JLo-Watson (talk) 09:31, 17 July 2021 (UTC)


 * I would not support such a pagemove, but am always interested in what wikipedians have to say on such subjects. BusterD (talk) 14:30, 17 July 2021 (UTC)


 * My concern would be that it would give the incorrect impression that there was a statewide audit, when it was restricted to only one of the fifteen counties of the state. Granted, it is by far the largest county, and accounts for well over half the population of the state, but Pima County, Arizona is actually the county where Biden had the largest numerical victory (beating Trump by over 100,000 votes), and has not been audited or proposed for auditing. BD2412  T 19:22, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

Note: It will be interesting to see whether there are more "Audits" for example a "Pennsylvania audit". If that happens then that would perhaps give more credence to renaming to simply the "Arizona audit"JLo-Watson (talk) 20:56, 18 July 2021 (UTC)
 * If there is a statewide audit in Pennsylvania, that would be somewhat distinct from a single-county audit in Arizona. Based on concerns raised by experts with request to this audit, it seems doubtful that another court would authorize an audit without substantially more robust control over the chain of custody of ballots, and substantially more robust supervision by election authorities. This would make it exponentially more difficult for other states to justify the expense of conducting an audit, particularly where the one audit conducted so far appears to have yeilded no definitive evidence of the fraud on which the audit was premised. BD2412  T 01:16, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

Developments this week
Is anyone going to insert the developments of this week? The US Senate Judiciary Committee apparently launched an investigation on Wednesday (yesterday) and sent a 13-page letter to Cyber Ninjas, requesting info about the audit. Today, the AZ Senate released preliminary results of the audit in a live-streamed hearing. The AZ Senate is also conducting another recount this week to verify the number of ballots in the boxes. 73.120.83.182 (talk) 01:01, 16 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Wikipedia has claimed for months that there is "no evidence" that the 2020 election was frauded. Well, we've found some! Thousands of ballots were duplicated, 11,000 were put on the December 2020 voter rolls but not on the November 2020 rolls, etc. Put this information on this article, Wikipedia!
 * Source? soibangla (talk) 01:54, 16 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Right here! https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/07/wow-az-audit-finds-74000-ballots-returned-counted-2020-election-no-record-sent/
 * Unreliable source per WP:RSP:
 * soibangla (talk) 16:36, 16 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Huffington Post, Washington Examiner , Washington Examiner 73.120.83.182 (talk) 18:17, 16 July 2021 (UTC)
 * What do those show that's relevant here? soibangla (talk) 18:20, 16 July 2021 (UTC)
 * See above: "The US Senate Judiciary Committee apparently launched an investigation on Wednesday (yesterday) and sent a 13-page letter to Cyber Ninjas, requesting info about the audit. Today, the AZ Senate released preliminary results of the audit in a live-streamed hearing." Plus, the Examiner discusses the info released in the hearing. 73.120.83.182 (talk) 19:01, 16 July 2021 (UTC)
 * What about this? https://beckernews.com/maricopa-county-audit-reveals-2020-election-disaster-absentee-ballot-records-missing-11000-votes-not-on-november-rolls-40299/?utm_source=BN&utm_medium=PTN
 * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQ8-ZSgcqBc soibangla (talk) 18:28, 16 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Soibangla, I've noticed that your motto is "Truth shall prevail." I'd just like you to know that mine is too.
 * Wikipedia works on the premise of Verifiability, not truth. Find two or three green-light sources from Reliable sources/Perennial sources reporting on these assertions, and they'll be good to go. On a side note, the existence of errors in tabulation of elections is not the same as the existence of fraud, nor does it necessarily affect the outcome of the election if the errors are roughly evenly distributed across ballots of all candidates (as is typical in elections). Even in unreliable sources, all that has been asserted to this point is that there are possible errors. Since there is no report indicating that these favor one candidate or the other, it is more likely that they are randomly distributed between the candidates, and would not affect the overall outcome of the election at all. If there was actually evidence of fraud on the scale being proposed by advocates of that theory, a substantial proportion of the Arizona Republican Party apparatus would need to have been involved in it for it to have proceeded as described, given that the Maricopa County elections office is controlled by members of that party, as is the office of the governor and the state attorney general, both of whom signed off on the outcome. BD2412  T 19:53, 16 July 2021 (UTC)
 * You may want to look at this: https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/07/nobody-trust-wikipedia-co-founder-wikipedia-larry-sanger/
 * I'm aware of Sanger's views, and actually he is correct that people should not "trust Wikipedia". In fact, even Wikipedia does not trust Wikipedia; we have a policy, WP:CIRCULAR, which prohibits Wikipedia articles from citing other Wikipedia articles as sources. Wikipedia is intended to be a collection of reliably sourced information, not a source of information in itself. That said, if you want to find Mae West's birth date or Ty Cobb's career batting average or the gestational period of a water buffalo, you'll find that in Wikipedia and it will probably be easy to confirm that the information in Wikipedia is correct. BD2412  T 20:47, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

Business Insider just reported that so far only 183 ballots have been identified as question able (not confirmed fraudulent) out of the 3m+ counted. https://www.businessinsider.com/arizona-election-audit-only-found-182-cases-potential-fraud-report-2021-7?r=US&IR=T
 * Whoa, I did not know of that article from Business Insider. I will look that up. BD2412, thank you for confirming my suspicions about this site. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2604:cb00:103:9900:6804:82f1:6a84:4bf6 (talk) 21:20, 16 July 2021 (UTC)
 * It's based on this AP article https://apnews.com/article/business-government-and-politics-arizona-election-2020-e6158cd1b0c6442716064e6791b4c6fc?utm_source=Twitter&utm_campaign=SocialFlow&utm_medium=AP SecretName101 (talk) 21:25, 16 July 2021 (UTC)
 * I don't know what to think. The heads of the audit were at a live-streamed meeting yesterday morning and claimed to find "thousands" of ballots with "discrepancies." Associated Press claims to have found but 182 ballots with "potential fraud." I think Wikipedia should put both testimonies in this article and let readers decide who they trust more. What do you all think?
 * I'm working on it:
 * Also, take a scroll through their feed: @maricopacounty soibangla (talk) 23:15, 16 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Thank you. My main goal is to make sure this article sticks to facts, not political bias. I trust that everyone else here has the same goal.
 * It's quite possible the Maricopa County Election Commission can explain a lot of the discrepancies listed in the references above as delayed updates of the voter rolls, poor record-keeping and general carelessness. However, it's clear they need to run a tighter ship, at the least. I gather the Senate's recount is because there was a large discrepancy in the number of ballots reported and the number of ballots the auditors found in the boxes. We should know about that in a week or so. 73.120.83.182 (talk) 02:20, 17 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Who put in the part about "Logan falsely asserted the county had tabulated 74,243 more mail-in ballots than had been sent to voters"? This is not a neutral statement. Wikipedia should not take sides. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Special:Contributions/2604:cb00:103:9900:4d2f:dca2:50c8:63ab (talk) 19:09, 17 July 2021 (UTC)
 * I did. AP:
 * soibangla (talk) 19:18, 17 July 2021 (UTC)
 * This quoted statement from Logan in the article is in error. If you listen to the hearing video, he says the county has no clear record of sending out the ballots. AP has manufactured a statement from him and then debunked it, when actually he may be just pointing out poor record-keeping. This is fairly typical of the biased election/audit coverage. 73.120.83.182 (talk) 19:43, 17 July 2021 (UTC)
 * No, AP noted his qualification that it could be due to an error ("That could be something where documentation wasn’t done right. There’s a clerical issue.") but also noted CN had been looking at the data wrong (again) so his assertion stands as false; AP did not characterize it as a lie. Predictably, some loudly ran with the fraud narrative and ignored Logan's qualification. soibangla (talk) 20:28, 17 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Then that needs to be reflected in the Wikipedia article. How does AP know CN was looking at the data wrong? Because the County said so? What steps did they take to verify this? Do they reveal this in the article so we can be assured they've done an in depth investigation? 73.120.83.182 (talk) 21:00, 17 July 2021 (UTC)
 * I am not aware of any credible source that has characterized CN as experts in election processes, they have never done such work before and have political links to the Trump machine, and reliable sources have reported they've made multiple errors that professionals who do this stuff for a living have demonstrated. soibangla (talk) 21:30, 17 July 2021 (UTC)
 * I think we could change "falsely asserted" to "incorrectly asserted", as "falsely" might be more readily interpreted as imputing knowledge of the falsehood. I am reminded of the popular meme of the girl "putting oil in her engine" by opening the hood and pouring oil all over the engine block. To someone with no experience with autombiles, this might seem like an entirely sensible way to "oil" an engine. To someone with no experience with auditing an election, they might look at ballots cast by those who voted early in person and ask, "where are the envelopes these ballots were mailed in". BD2412  T 21:39, 17 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Your premise leaves the question of why early voting ballots are so easily confused with mail-in ballots. As far as I understand, early ballots should look like ballots submitted on election day. 73.120.83.182 (talk) 01:04, 18 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Still not seeing anything in the article about the US House investigation. This is widely reported. Do you like Politico? 73.120.83.182 (talk) 03:41, 18 July 2021 (UTC)
 * How about just writing, "Logan asserted that 74,000 votes..."? Anything between "Logan" and "asserted" is partisan and is not a neutral statement.
 * I agree. 73.120.83.182 (talk) 12:46, 18 July 2021 (UTC)
 * I wouldn't worry about that, as the assertions that it is incorrect are coming from Republican election officials. BD2412  T 15:40, 18 July 2021 (UTC)
 * BD2412: Are you implying here that the auditors and Republican election officials are one and the same? 185.5.46.3 (talk) 22:32, 18 July 2021 (UTC)
 * That sounds very partisan, and it has no place in an encyclopedia, which is supposed to be neutral. If this is the accepted viewpoint, then Wikipedia is just a collection of propaganda. 73.120.83.182 (talk) 15:54, 18 July 2021 (UTC)
 * There is nothing the least bit partisan about it, and I, for one, will no longer engage any IP editor who cannot be held accountable for their words on this Talk page. Just sayin'. soibangla (talk) 16:21, 18 July 2021 (UTC)
 * 73.120.83.182, I agree with you completely. Soibangla, if you can't understand what the word "partisan" means, I suggest you look it up. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2604:CB00:103:9900:D944:AD6C:DAA0:46F0 (talk • contribs) — 2604:CB00:103:9900:D944:AD6C:DAA0:46F0 (talk) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.
 * If incivility persists in this discussion, IP access to this talk page will have to be cut off. With respect to partisanship, I should clarify that the sources exhibit bipartisan agreement among election officials of all parties that the concern expressed is mistaken, i.e., incorrect. If there is a reliable source stating that it this in fact a correct concern, please provide it. BD2412  T 17:13, 18 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Don't the heads of the audit count as a reliable source? They would know the most of everyone about the audit they created.
 * No they would not, they are a primary source. Quick, Spot the Quetzalcoatl! (talk) 00:14, 19 July 2021 (UTC)
 * These sourcing policies are becoming the bane of Wikipedia. A significant portion of casual Wikipedians obviously do not agree with the forced cherry picking of sources. You can't use primary sources, you can't use sources which disagree with the narrative of large mainstream news outlets (which apparently makes them "unreliable sources" by axiom of presenting information which disproves mainstream news outlets). All you can use are articles from mainstream news outlets, including their clearly biased framing. This is exactly why the American side of Wikipedia is becoming a laughing stock of the internet. 185.5.46.3 (talk) 10:59, 19 July 2021 (UTC) — 185.5.46.3 (talk) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.
 * Wikipedia isn't stopping anyone from going elsewhere to get their information. The interesting thing is that we sometimes have "casual Wikipedians" who resolve to change things, so they become serious about editing Wikipedia in order to develop sufficient credibility within the site to seek to change things. By the time they develop that level of experience, however, they have inevitably come around to thinking that our policies make sense for a general reference work. BD2412  T 15:36, 19 July 2021 (UTC)
 * "Wikipedia isn't stopping anyone from going elsewhere to get their information.", or put in more straightforward terms, "if you don't like it, go somewhere else" is exactly the attitude that's pushing people away from Wikipedia. The more Wikipedians are pushed away the more of an exclusive group it becomes. As for the category of politics, regular people come to Wikipedia to get an overview of a particular issue or newsworthy event and then don't go any further, because they assume Wikipedia is complete enough to cover everything of significance. If they are expected to get information elsewhere in addition to Wikipedia because Wikipedia only covers a subset of the matter, then why visit Wikipedia at all? I used to be a very enthusiastic supporter of Wikipedia; I checked technical articles, filled in and corrected some of them, and I donated money even tough I was on a tight student budget. But now when I read articles here, and try to put in the occasional edit, all I'm hit with is one-sided arguments based on supposed alignment with US Republicans. I'm not American, I'm not even a native English speaker, and yet I can see clear as day how Wikipedia has become very hostile against anything not supported by US mainstream news outlets. It's incredibly depressing to see how Wikipedia has been transformed from something which was so near and dear to my heart, into a discriminatory platform. The same applies to articles in my native language too, because most of them are plain translations of the English ones. What happened to being inclusive and unbiased? How did Wikipedia become a closed space where only a selected elite could edit political articles? These are important philosophical questions we all need to take a step back and consider, including me since I somehow let it happen. 185.5.46.1 (talk) 21:21, 19 July 2021 (UTC)
 * In the specific case of this article, as has been pointed out before, the election in Maricopa County was overseen by a Republican elections board, and some of the most stringent critical evaluations of the ballot audit are from Republican Party officials and Republican election officals. If you have objections to specific statements in the article, or specific sources being included or excluded, please identify them. We limit sources not based on politics, but based on the record for accuracy and fact-checking those sources present. Sources that repeatedly present as factual things discovered through deeper examination to be incorrect are discarded. This is not political, and there are routinely used sources all across the political spectrum. This is not the appropriate forum to raise general grievances against the project. BD2412  T 21:44, 19 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Well for starters, the article has sections for "Origins", "Conduct and concerns", "Conspiracy theory issues" and "Alleged mishandling of employee sexual harassment complaints", but nothing about what their actual findings are. As shown by both the edit history and the talk page, every time someone wants to insert any of those in the article the article gets locked and/or the sources are called unreliable. How come every source which cites their findings is deemed unreliable? Also, who fact checks the fact checkers? To me it seems like "fact checkers" are pretty much just an alias for "the ministry of truth". Either way, having the preliminary findings of an audit visible on the page should be absolutely essential to an article about said audit. Link to the full hearing itself if you have to, here's a mirror of an unedited live stream: https://archive.org/details/az-senate-hearing071521 (10 AM is at 2:58:21 in the archived video). I'm sure we can find plenty of people to extract the facts from there if we give them the chance (and no, this isn't original research, it's just a matter of transcribing their statements verbatim). 185.5.46.1 (talk) 23:13, 19 July 2021 (UTC)
 * BD2412: I think it's time you answer for the above. You are one of the few selected elites who are currently able to edit the article. Where are the preliminary findings from the audit? 185.5.46.1 (talk) 11:19, 21 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Also, to be clear, the opinions of those conducting the audit are being covered in the article, but they are being covered in the context of reporting about their opinions in reliable sources. Outside of that, since they are not, for example, people with many years of expertise in conducting election audits, or recognized experts in conducting election audits, they are not qualified to comment as experts on the matter. BD2412  T 01:10, 19 July 2021 (UTC)
 * This discussion isn't getting anybody anywhere. All this discussion is doing is letting everyone know which political side Wikipedia is on. It's no use talking anymore. I'm leaving. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 185.5.46.1 (talk • contribs) — 185.5.46.1 (talk) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.
 * It is pretty clear that these SPA IPs are not here to engage in any kind of consensus-building process, or even to propose concrete changes to the article. The fact that a number of them all show up here at the same time suggests either sockpuppetry or meatpuppetry is going on. BD2412  T 00:57, 20 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Are you making a "conspiracy theory" about us? I thought this website didn't tolerate those.
 * (Previous commenter, please start signing your comments with four tildes so there's a clear beginning and end to them.) Or maybe, just maybe, this issue has managed to actually tick off multiple people without an account? The assumption that IP comments are from sockpuppets/bots/etc is just a convenient excuse to ignore them. This isn't Google or Facebook or whatever, using anonymous accounts does not invalidate the arguments. Those "single-purpose account" warnings are complete red herrings when VPNs are commonplace as well, I'd vote to remove them if this was the place for that. Separate the argument from the person and answer the question; why is the article so clearly using biased wording? 185.5.46.1 (talk) 11:15, 21 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Are you making a "conspiracy theory" about us? I thought this website didn't tolerate those.
 * (Previous commenter, please start signing your comments with four tildes so there's a clear beginning and end to them.) Or maybe, just maybe, this issue has managed to actually tick off multiple people without an account? The assumption that IP comments are from sockpuppets/bots/etc is just a convenient excuse to ignore them. This isn't Google or Facebook or whatever, using anonymous accounts does not invalidate the arguments. Those "single-purpose account" warnings are complete red herrings when VPNs are commonplace as well, I'd vote to remove them if this was the place for that. Separate the argument from the person and answer the question; why is the article so clearly using biased wording? 185.5.46.1 (talk) 11:15, 21 July 2021 (UTC)

SPA notices are not "warnings", they are notices, and their use accords entirely with the tendency of people new to Wikipedia or its processes to comment on specific issues, without obtaining useful experience in other areas of the encyclopedia. Wikipedia has well over a million regular editors with well-established accounts, with opinions across all spectrums of politics and society, who have no problem voicing concerns at length on contentious political matters. As noted before, the wording of this article reflects the bipartisan consensus of coverage in reliable sources. BD2412 T 17:30, 21 July 2021 (UTC)
 * IPs aren't SPAs, they aren't accounts at all. The article only reflects the narrative available from mainstream sources not deemed "inreliable". If you look at the list of "reliable" sources, pretty much all of the ones generally in line with Republican views are deemed "unreliable". Meanwhile sites like BuzzFeed News is noted as "Generally reliable" with a green check mark despite having lots of disguised opinion pieces and anti-Republican views. They are about as reliable as Breitbart News, but they align with the same anti-Republican/anti-Trump perspective as most other articles here these days. Given that I have watched a large portion of US politics recently I can tell you with certainty that this article does not reflect the bipartisan consensus on the audit, because there is'nt one. I also note that you also haven't answered my question further up either; where are the actual reported preliminary findings in the article? 185.5.46.1 (talk) 18:28, 21 July 2021 (UTC)
 * General complaints about Wikipedia sourcing policies developed over two decades of experience are beyond the scope of this talk page. With respect to "preliminary findings", I have added a header to the article at 2021 Maricopa County presidential ballot audit, where the claims, and their errors, are discussed. BD2412  T 19:11, 21 July 2021 (UTC)
 * There still isn't a heading for findings, "Conduct and concerns" isn't an appropriate heading for presenting the findings as it reads more like a "Criticism" heading. Also the claims and potential errors aren't discussed, they're flat out asserted to be incorrect. If the findings are disputed, say they are disputed instead of incorrect. Incorrect is a statement of fact, and disputed is a counterclaim, which is what some mainstream news outlets are claiming. Speaking of which, reference #47, which is cited as a source for the claim that the 74k vote mismatch was incorrect, points to a 404. Reference #48 mentions it but, is directly quoting a Tweet as a source for the counterclaim, and last time I checked Tweets weren't allowed as a reliable source for Wikipedia. The discrepancy between EV32 (sent ballots) records and EV33 (received ballots) records still holds, what it means is open to interpretation and as stated during the hearing they have been trying to reach Maricopa election officials for an explanation, but there is still a 74k difference. The Wikipedia article should make that clear, since there is an obvious conflict of interest between AP and the auditors since AP is the selected partner for verifying US election results, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Associated_Press#AP_election_polls . In fact, that conflict of interest should probably be made clear in the article itself. 185.5.46.1 (talk) 22:12, 21 July 2021 (UTC)
 * I see the article references I mentioned have been updated slightly, but they still reference AP as a source. As stated above this is highly inappropriate given the obvious conflict of interest. Of course AP is going to defend their verification of the election results and throw accusations at the auditors, they are in an active conflict. Using AP as a source here is akin to using one of the two people in bar fight as a source for who threw the first punch; of course it's the other guy. 185.5.46.6 (talk) 01:37, 23 July 2021 (UTC)
 * BD2412 & Soibangla: This still needs to be corrected. AP is NOT a reliable source for this article and statements from election officials go under THISORTHAT. 185.5.46.6 (talk) 10:41, 23 July 2021 (UTC)
 * This still needs to be fixed, AP and election officials clearly have a conflict of interest here. SinglePorpoiseAccount (talk) 13:04, 23 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Has anyone noticed that about all the recent edits of this article are from two people? And is it just a coincidence that those same two people are constantly coming on here to defend this partisan article? We are only asking that Logan's claims be called just that: claims. Not true claims, not false claims: just claims. What is so wrong with that idea? 2604:CB00:103:9900:4882:8A57:14B1:AEF (talk) 21:04, 21 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Perhaps other editors find this topic boring. I can't speak to why others are not editing here, but the incorrect claims are described as incorrect because the Republican election officials have explained precisely why they are incorrect. BD2412  T 21:12, 21 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Other editors are avoiding this article because it's so clearly partisan. Try to edit it and 1) your edit is immediately reverted and 2) you'll get put on a black list to have your "incorrect" thinking corrected. 73.120.83.182 (talk) 03:55, 22 July 2021 (UTC)
 * I think you hit the nail on the head here, the status quo of US mainstream news outlets is so well established that any conflicting information is seen as wrong or trolling. However, the admins blacklisting users are not doing it out of malice, they just don't know any better. Unfortunately that's a downwards spiral; the more they keep the conflicting information out, the less they know about the truth. It's the same exact issue as with fact checkers, they don't know the truth so they just pick a side instead. 185.5.46.6 (talk) 10:31, 22 July 2021 (UTC)
 * What Republican election officials say doesn't matter, just like Democratic election officials they have a vested interest in the audit not finding any errors, a.k.a. a conflict of interest. Of course they're not going to discredit their own methods during an open investigation, that would guarantee an unfavorable ruling in a court of law. It's absolutely essential to keep in mind that the election officials are the opposing party in this matter. 185.5.46.1 (talk) 22:21, 21 July 2021 (UTC)
 * It's a highly divisive issue. Just say that "Logan claims..." and be done! Putting any adjectives between "Logan" and "claims" means that you have an opinion about his claims, which is fine except that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. It tells facts and facts only. Why is that so hard for everyone to understand? 98.20.149.245 (talk) 22:52, 21 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Just saying. We are not looking to be "equally kind" to any two political parties. Objective facts can be unkind to a politician or political party. We are looking to report verifiable facts. Whether or not they are kind to the narrative desired by a political party or a politician does not matter at all. SecretName101 (talk)
 * When verifiably false statements are described as false, there is no "opinion" involved. We'd be doing an injustice if we did not note that falsehoods are falsehoods. SecretName101 (talk) 02:17, 24 July 2021 (UTC)
 * This is simply not true. What Logan said during the hearing wasn't that there was 74,243 more tabulated than sent ballots, what he said was "we have 74,243 mail-in ballots, where there is no clear record of them being sent.". He went on further to clarify he meant there were more EV33 (received) records than EV32 (sent) records. Furthermore, he himself suggested this may be a simple clerical error but it gives merit to the need for further investigation. The statement about mismatching EV32 and EV33 has not been proven false, it has simply been dismissed by the people being investigated. SinglePorpoiseAccount (talk) 12:46, 24 July 2021 (UTC)

Allegations made but not yet addressed in reliable secondary sources
These Logan allegations have gone viral with the assistance of Trump chief spokeswoman Liz Harrington:

ALLEGED: 3,981 people voted despite registering to vote AFTER the court-ordered Oct 15th deadline

The Maricopa Recorder's office states on their new website:

So between the original October 5 deadline and the October 15 deadline, they got lots of registrations that took them until October 23 to process, apparently creating the impression they'd missed the deadline.

ALLEGED: 18,000 voted and then showed that they were removed from the voter rolls AFTER the election

The Maricopa Recorder's office states:

Since I do not yet see these items addressed by reliable secondary sources, I will refrain from adding them to the article for now, although maybe others might find that an authoritative primary source can be used here. soibangla (talk) 23:46, 23 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Just out of curiosity, is there any data on party affiliation of these categories of registrants/voters? BD2412  T 00:33, 24 July 2021 (UTC)
 * To my knowledge, neither the auditors nor the county have provided such breakdowns, but I'd be interested to see them. soibangla (talk) 00:41, 24 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Interesting. To date, then, it does not appear that any indication has been given that proposed errors or issues were not evenly distributed between the candidates. BD2412  T 00:58, 24 July 2021 (UTC)


 * I've found this transcript of the actual hearing to be a much more accurate source than Twitter for quoting the audit officials. As far as I can tell it's a pure word-for-word transcript. Users on Twitter use paraphrasing and twist words with their own sensational interpretations. Unfortunately the URL timestamp feature is a bit buggy but you can use the blog style formatted page to somewhat reliably generate timestamped links. SinglePorpoiseAccount (talk) 10:50, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

Ken Bennett reportedly locked out
According to this article, "The Republican overseeing the controversial GOP-backed election audit in Arizona has reportedly been banned from entering the building where the recount process is ongoing, after he shared some data with experts that showed the results match the officially certified numbers in Maricopa County". This is quite remarkable, if it is true that the audit has locked out their own handpicked Republican oversight person for sharing data supporting the election outcome. BD2412 T 22:22, 24 July 2021 (UTC)
 * I think we should include that. It was an exclusive published yesterday by Arizona Republic, which paywalled it, but one of the authors summarized it on Twitter and now another source has it. Newsweek isn't the best of sources post-2013, but it seems adequate here. soibangla (talk) 22:33, 24 July 2021 (UTC)
 * This is absolutely stunning if it's true. SinglePorpoiseAccount (talk) 10:50, 25 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Would AZ Central work as a source? It seems they did more investigation into why he was blocked from entering the building. SinglePorpoiseAccount (talk) 10:58, 25 July 2021 (UTC)
 * This source is also paywalled. What does it say? BD2412  T 18:08, 25 July 2021 (UTC)
 * That's very strange, I don't get any hint of a paywall? I noticed the subdomain is "eu.azcentral.com" for me, could that be it? SinglePorpoiseAccount (talk) 18:55, 25 July 2021 (UTC)
 * The website is generally accessible, but this story is paywalled as "for subscribers". I can see the headline, "Senate liaison Ken Bennett blocked from entering Arizona election audit as tension with contractors boils over", but can not read the article. What does the article say about it? BD2412  T 19:48, 25 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Not sure how much of it I can paste here for copyright reasons, but I think some key parts are these:
 * "John Brakey, a Tucson election-transparency activist who serves as a consultant for the audit team, said Bennett told him Friday that Bennett was not let into the building that morning."
 * "Bennett did not directly answer a question from The Republic about whether he was not let in. He said he was tending to unrelated business in Prescott."
 * "This development comes a day after The Arizona Republic learned that Bennett had provided initial results from the new machine count to a trio of outside election analysts who have been critical of the Senate-run audit."
 * "Cyber Ninjas spokesperson Rod Thomson said that any decision to not let Bennett into the building was made by Fann's office, not by the Cyber Ninjas."
 * "Fann did not reply when asked about Thomson's statement."
 * I've had run-ins with US copyright before and I think that's about as much as I can quote. The rest of the article goes on about seemingly unrelated topics like repeating claims about vote counts, the financing of Cyber Ninjas, supposed tension between some auditors on a personal level, etc. More or less what I'd expect of rumor-oriented reporting rather than the research-oriented reporting in the first part of the article. My guess is they wanted to pad the article a bit for their subscribers but ran out of content.
 * I think the TL;DR is John Brakey is the source, AZ Central speculates it's related to earlier news of a possible leak, neither Bennett nor Fann has commented on it. SinglePorpoiseAccount (talk) 20:35, 25 July 2021 (UTC)
 * This is seeming more like a minor squabble, then. BD2412  T 20:39, 25 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Indeed. Unless it gets confirmed with a statement next week, I'm writing it off as yet another insignificant rumor that got blown out of proportion. SinglePorpoiseAccount (talk) 22:36, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

"Senate liaison Ken Bennett is banned from the audit building permanently, says Randy Pullen, the Senate rep who is overseeing activity in the building. Says the decision to block Bennett on Friday was made by the Senate & Pullen was the one not to let him in...Pullen repeats to me that Bennett is still the Senate liaison. I ask him how repeatedly you can liaison something without being let into the building. He will be around, Pullen says, will review the draft report...More about what this all means in a story soon..." soibangla (talk) 01:26, 27 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Presumably this being tweeted by a journalist signals that journalism is forthcoming. Obviously we can do nothing off of tweets, though I suppose it is good to have the head's up. BD2412  T 01:49, 27 July 2021 (UTC)