As you know, on Monday –- after huddling with lawyers over the previous weekend –- the Maricopa County, Arizona, Board of Supervisors called a “special” meeting to rant about how hard they had worked and how proud they were of the job they and their colleagues had done to oversee the 2020 election.  One member even angrily accused those who question their election process of simply being upset that their candidate lost.

It really was quite something; I was going to link to the YouTube video again, in case you haven't seen this spectacle, but am sorry to say that you haven't, it's too late now.  They've restricted access to it.

The Board announced during this meeting that they would not be cooperating further with Arizona state Senate President Karen Fann and the audit she had authorized, going so far as to announce their refusal to show up for the meeting Sen. Fann had called for the following day.

The Maricopa County recorder denied claims that any records whatsoever had been deleted from the voting machines, saying he had witnessed, with his “own eyes,” all data files delivered intact. If the auditors hadn’t been able to locate files, the Board maintained, it was because they had no experience with elections and “didn’t know what they were doing.” (This is also the excuse Dominion Voting Systems is using to keep from handing over administrative passwords to the auditors.)

We said in our original report that since there was a discrepancy about whether or not the records had actually been deleted, we would do more checking and try to find out what had really happened with them. It helped that Sen. Fann’s meeting was held on Tuesday as scheduled, without the shining presence of the Board but with the auditors. Afterwards, some news reports, such as those from CNN and the Associated Press, said the auditors had “backtracked” or even “reversed” their claim that files had been deleted from one of the machines.

But that isn’t true.

On Wednesday, May 20, after these stories appeared, Ben Cotton, the founder of audit firm CyFir, sent an emailed statement to THE EPOCH TIMES saying, “My testimony on May 19^th before the Arizona Senate is being taken out of context by some media outlets. To confirm: the ‘Databases’ directory on the EMS Primary Server WAS deleted containing the voting databases. I was able to recover the deleted databases through forensic recovery processes.” (Note:  It sounds as though they do know what they're doing.)

At Tuesday’s hearing, Cotton said that during his examination of one of the voting machines, he discovered a master file table that “clearly indicated that the database directory was deleted from that server.”

Also on May 20, Sen. Fann emailed THE EPOCH TIMES to say there had been no backtracking. “The file was deleted but CyFir was able to recover it from other areas,” she clarified.

As ET reports, Fann said in her letter to the Board that besides the database directory apparently being deleted, the main database for the election management system software was not found anywhere in the machine. “This suggests that the main database for all election-related data for the November 2020 General Election has been removed,” she told the Board.

(In response, the Maricopa County officials tweeted that deleting the files “would be a crime” and that “a day after our technical letter explained they were just looking in the wrong place - all of a sudden ‘auditors’ have recovered the files.”)

Either way, with Cotton saying the allegedly deleted database directory has been “recovered,” will they be able to tell what was on them? Well, we don’t know – the team of auditors is trying to ascertain whether or not these files can be analyzed. “We are performing data continuity checks to ensure the recovered databases are usable,” he said. He stands by the audit’s preliminary findings.

I suppose the auditors may continue working at this while they’re on hiatus. Until May 24, Phoenix’s Veterans Memorial Coliseum will be busy with school graduation events. Once those are over, all the ballots will be moved back to the coliseum and the audit will resume. There's no rush --- it will take as long as it takes.  Right now, the ballots are stored in a separate nearby building that's kept under 24-hour guard.

So, the main take-away at this point is that major media reports about “backtracking” by the audit team are WRONG. I know it’s hard to believe that CNN might have gotten something wrong, but there you go. The county officials deny that the files were deleted, but the auditors are apparently standing by what they have said about files being deleted.

THE EPOCH TIMES reported this in a premium story.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_breakingnews/arizona-auditor-did-not-backtrack-on-election-database-deletion-allegation_3823855.html?utm_source=newsnoe&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=breaking-2021-05-20-2&mktids=2c38e0f4f0d6d0027605ee303c615b0d&est=xEHlzZbCdmLw18kIdy80g7DBy1vPs5zGPzrNGo3pFch3u1miBnvuYoQKv9kgBiFqnOR8Jw%3D%3D

Here’s another write-up at PJ MEDIA.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2021/05/20/media-falsely-reports-arizona-election-auditors-walked-back-deleted-election-databases-claim-n1448408

Meanwhile, on Tuesday another election took place, this one in Pennsylvania, and there were some concerning glitches. Ballots cast by mostly-Republican voters in Fayette County failed to scan because they didn’t have the printed bar codes.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_breakingnews/mostly-republican-ballots-fail-to-scan-in-pennsylvania-county-election-stoking-concerns_3823795.html?utm_source=newsnoe&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=breaking-2021-05-20-3&mktids=c32b663cd11296269957cebb1398f6ec&est=YbKJkl7IYgA1P0UNR6RcNWChdgeZ59fUXj4JpudVkntdtwh5%2B5%2BqwCTusez2ViP1OSbqxw%3D%3D

Officials started noticing this late in the day. On Thursday, they were doing a hand recount of all unscanned ballots, after Republican county officials helped obtain a judicial order to that effect. The county issued a statement reassuring voters that the issue was being dealt with through “alternative solutions.”

The county hasn’t yet explained why the barcode was missing on some ballots. “I’m assuming there was nothing nefarious,” said Republican State Rep. Matthew Dowling, “although I think that does have to be investigated to see why this happened.” The Fayette County Republican Party chairman said he thinks this was “an honest mistake” by the printing company.

The county uses Dominion voting machines, but local officials say this problem was just with the ballots themselves and had nothing to do with Dominion. The printing was done by another company.

Reportedly, some voters in Fayette County are so fed up with the process that they don’t want to vote again. This is exactly the wrong response – just the way those with the wrong agenda for America are hoping they’ll react. What could be better for their desired outcome than for conservatives to give up and stay home?

What needs to happen –- for starters –- is exactly the opposite: for Republicans to turn out in droves for every election and for many thousands in precincts across the country to become poll workers and volunteer as new poll watchers. We also need to ditch the electronic voting, which has proven itself to be a disaster, and go back to the classic way of hand-marking and hand-counting paper ballots, with voter ID, signature matching, a carefully monitored chain of custody and more video cameras than they have in the typical Vegas casino.

There is nothing remotely racist about insisting that elections be honest and auditable. In fact, it would be racist NOT to insist this, because every one of us deserves honest elections.