Arizona Senate Audit Liaison Considers Stepping Down After Being Barred From Review

The liaison for the Arizona Senate audit, Ken Bennett, has considered stepping down from his role after he was denied access to the audit last week.

Why? Bennett said he was blocked from entering the audit because he provided third parties with data from the review. He gave the information, which was then leaked to the press, to election analysts who were critical of the audit and have repeatedly taken aim at auditors, The Epoch Times reports.

“I shared some box counts of how many ballots were in each box and that got leaked to the press,” Bennett said. “That’s how I got barred from the audit.”

Larry Moore, who is one of the analysis, told The Arizona Republic that the current numbers are close to the county’s tally.

Bennett said he apologized to Senate President Karen Fann because he made a promise that the data would not end up in the media.

“I had promised that information would not be leaked to the press but that indirectly got done,” he said.

Who blocked him? A spokesperson for Cyber Ninjas, the company that the Arizona Senate hired to conduct the audit, said Fann’s office said Bennett could not enter the audit.

Fann said that Bennett “is a valuable asset to the senate audit and will continue to be so” and that he would be part of the review of the auditors’ draft report.

“Regarding access to information: our Senate members nor I have access to the numbers of the ongoing audit except for the information we were provided at the public hearing a week and a half ago. You know what we know,” she said. “The auditors were hired to do a job. We should not be looking over their shoulder, telling them how to do their job or asking for premature information. When the audit is complete then they will need to provide us with all their proof and documentation of their results.”

Bennett additionally revealed that there were issues with the counting of duplicate ballots because some of them did not have serial numbers.

“I asked the auditors, when we’re done with the duplicates, please give me a comprehensive reconciliation of: were we able to identify one of these for every one of those. And that has not been forthcoming now for two months,” Bennett said.