Canvass report of Maricopa County’s election is out and it is, indeed, SHOCKING

Well, the so-called evidence from a door-to-door canvass of Maricopa County voters is in and conspiracy crowd is abuzz with excitement.

“173,104 Lost Votes,” the canvass report proclaims, in bold, red letters.

“96,389 Ghost Votes.”

This, after talking to not even 5,000 voters.

Goodness.

This canvass isn’t part of the Senate’s long-awaited, thus-far unproduced audit. It was conducted by Liz Harris, an unsuccessful Republican legislative candidate who decided to launch her own “Voter Integrity Project” last December, assembling volunteers to knock on doors.

Her SHOCKING conclusions – hey, that’s the way the far-right gossip rags are portraying it — were enough to prompt a Republican legislator who is hoping to become Arizona’s next secretary of state to call for decertifying Arizona’s 2020 election.

“I am calling it,” Rep. Mark Finchem, R-Oro Valley, tweeted on Wednesday. “Between the preliminary audit results and the private canvass, I call on Arizona to decertify the election of 2020 and recall the electors. There is already enough evidence to show clear and convincing fraud. We have a duty to act.”

This is the guy who wants to run Arizona’s future elections.

Before we charge off to toss out the votes of 3.4 million Arizonans, let’s take a look at the “evidence” provided by Harris’ canvass, starting with the cover on her 11-page report released Wednesday.

AHA! Votes cast from ‘vacant’ lots…or not

The original cover pictured a vacant lot in Goodyear with caption that said it “cast two mail-in votes.”

But an aerial map of the property, available online at the Maricopa County Assessor’s website, shows a house with a pool on the 4.3-acre property. Looks like a pretty nice house, too. According to realtor.com, it has five bedrooms, 3.5 bathrooms and upgraded maple cabinets in the kitchen. It was last sold in 2010.

It also has two registered voters, according to county records.

When ABC15 reporter and former elections official Garrett Archer pointed this out, the cover of the canvass report was quickly changed to a vacant lot in Tempe “that cast a mail-in vote”.

But Archer reports that property was a mobile home park in December 2019 and a person was properly registered to vote at that address. That voter had his mail forwarded to another address within the county, which the county has confirmed can be done legally for a year.

Those are the only two actual examples of “fraud” offered in the report.

Let me repeat that. The only two hard pieces of information that could be verified both were shown to be bogus in a matter of minutes.

They canvassed how many voters?

So, no evidence but plenty of blockbuster conclusions in the report, based upon information Harris claims was gathered on 4,570 voters.

Harris’ Conclusion No. 1: 173,104 people voted but their votes were never counted.

How does she know that? Harris reports that her canvassers talked to 964 people who were registered to vote but did not cast ballots in the 2020 election. Of those, 330 of them, or 34%, claimed they actually did vote but there is no record of their votes being counted.

Therefore with a little extrapolation to all voters who didn’t vote last year, abracadabera, ipso facto and aHA, Harris concludes that 173,104 votes were not counted.

All this based on 330 people who claimed that they voted when someone showed up at their front door.

Harris’ Conclusion No. 2: 96,389 “ghost votes” were counted – mail-in ballots “cast under the names of registered voters who were either unknown to the residents of the registration address or who were verified as having moved away prior tCo October 2020.”  

She knows this because canvassers talked to 164 people who said mail-in ballots from their address were cast by people they either didn’t know or who had moved.

From those 164, she concludes there were 96,389 bogus ballots in Maricopa County’s election.

“These results are a travesty to our democracy and our voting rights,” Harris concludes.

There’s a travesty to our democracy in all this, all right.

Is this really a smoking gun?

Every far-right propaganda sheet reported Harris’ findings as the smoking gun that proves election fraud.

Trump loyalist Steve Bannon proclaimed it to the heavens on his podcast and of course, state Rep. Wendy Rogers, who now travels the country preaching the need for election audits, used her own blowhorn.

“Do we need any more evidence to finally recall the electors and decertify the election?” she tweeted.  

Republican frontrunner Kari Lake, who is hoping all things Trump will catapult her into the Governor’s Office, is all over it. 

“Lets save our country by fixing our broken, corrupt elections. If you care about honest elections, read this,” she tweeted, along with a link to the canvass report.

Naturally, Arizona Republican Party Chairwoman Kelli Ward is promoting it, too. 

“FYI: a group of grassroots activists led by @LizHarrisMBA has uncovered compelling information by canvassing voters in Maricopa County. No wonder the Dems are terrified,” she tweeted.

I didn’t talk to any terrified Democrats. But I did talk to one rational Republican. Maricopa County Elections Director Stephen Richer was appalled by the lack of any substance in the report, starting with the fact that the only two actual examples offered were flat-out wrong.

“I asked for sample concerns from Liz Harris on March 18 to forestall against such misinformation and clear up any questions,” he told me. “I never got any data. Assessor Eddie Cook later made the same request from Harris. It is irresponsible and silly to claim 200,000+ errors and offer only two alleged inaccuracies as hard data points, both of which are easily debunked. 0 for 2 is not a great start.”

Maybe no, but it’ll be trumpeted from coast-to-coast as bona-fide evidence that the fix was in and the reason why we need to end mail-in voting. 

“BREAKING – HUGE: Results of Canvassing in Arizona Released – ELECTION STEAL IS NOW CONFIRMED,” screams one gossip rag that is a Bible of sorts to far-right conspiracy kooks.

Senate President Karen Fann continues to claim that her election audit is necessary because voters no longer have confidence in our elections. Perhaps she should audit what prompted them to feel that way.

Could it be because they’ve been pummeled with bogus information and wildly unscientific reports endlessly promoted by a bunch of grifters and ambitious politicians with an agenda?

I will agree with them on one thing: A wholesale assault on democracy is, indeed, underway.

It started on Nov. 4.

Reach Roberts at laurie.roberts@arizonarepublic.com. Follow her on Twitter at @LaurieRoberts.

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