The Arizona Senate, apparently not satisfied with one recount, is close to signing a deal for its second review of Maricopa County’s 2020 general election ballots.
The effort would expand the ongoing audit and is expected to use a new and largely untested technology.
This second recount of all 2.1 million ballots would be done electronically, running the original digital images of ballots through a program that would count all votes cast for every race on the ballot. This is a different approach from the ongoing recount, which is being done by hand.
Senate Republican leaders are negotiating with Citizens Oversight, a California-based election transparency nonprofit, according to Senate liaison Ken Bennett.
Adding a second count is important for comparison purposes, Bennett said. The cost of such a deal is unknown at this point.
The organization’s founder told The Arizona Republic this week that his company has never been hired to audit an election, and the technology has never been used in an official election audit.