Did the Maricopa County Audit Find 17,322 Duplicate Ballots?

No.

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After the results of Maricopa County’s unofficial election review were released last week, baseless rumors about alleged election fraud have been circulating on social media. A popular Instagram post, for example, claims that “over 17,000 duplicate ballots were found JUST in Maricopa county. Trump won.”

https://www.instagram.com/p/CUOACTYFxd0

This is a false claim. 

The claim comes from Dr. Shiva Ayyadurai, a known conspiracy theorist and promoter of baseless voter fraud claims, who also appeared as an expert panelist at Mike Lindell’s failed cyber forensic symposium. Ayyadurai was hired by Arizona Senate Republicans to work on the Maricopa County election “audit” conducted by Cyber Ninjas. At last Friday’s presentation of the Cyber Ninjas’ report, Ayyadurai claimed that there were 17,322 duplicate ballots in the Maricopa County election dataset. The claim was soon promoted on Twitter by Arizona Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake and Arizona state Sen. Wendy Rogers.

The confusion appears to surround affidavit envelopes used for mail-in ballots and not the ballots themselves. Ayyadurai incorrectly based his analysis on images of affidavit envelopes, as opposed to actual ballots. 

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  1. Avatar photo
    DougAz

    Correct - no fraud in Maricopa Voting.
    Factual - All the Fraud is here in Arizona's insane, irresponsible, authority and Putin loving mendacious Republican Party. And for the Record - Every deplorable here in Arizona voting for these miscreants intent on destroying American Democracy.

    It will not stand and it will not happen here in Arizona.

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  2. Alex DeLarge

    " . . . both the original and duplicate ballot image were included. But, the fact remains that only a single ballot was counted."

    Okay. So you actually admit that each of these instances did involve multiple ballots. One ballot came in an original signed envelope, and at least one other ballot came (allegedly) from the same person that was supposed to be a "cure" because workers didn't like the looks of the first envelope. So two ballots were submitted.

    But you claim this issue is debunked because you assert "without evidence" (which is how fact checkers label such naked assertions that they don't like), that none of the duplicate ballots were counted more than once.

    The claim of 17,000 multiple ballots is thus true. And you haven't proved that anything in particular keeps the original votes from being used (where are the ballots? Still in the unopened envelopes as you claim they should be?). You thus haven't debunked the multiple ballot concern. You've just said, "don't worry 'election workers' claim nothing bad would ever happen with multiple ballots around for the same person."

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    1. Avatar photo
      rlritt

      No, the envelopes that had a problem was not opened. Only the corrected envelope was opened and counted. He clearly stated that in the article. Also, this affected both Dems and Repub. You cannot tell party just from the envelope.

      Besides Ninja said that they counted all the ballots in Maricopa cnty and there were more for Biden than for Trump. It was not in their best interest to lie about this since they working for Republicans.

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      1. Alex DeLarge

        The problem is this trashy fact check column's refusal to use language precisely or to stick to the terms of the claim at issue. Which in this case was the claim: “over 17,000 duplicate ballots were found JUST in Maricopa county."

        The duplicate ballots were found. But someone **asserts** without evidence that half of them were kept in envelopes and never used. But anyone can see the potential abuse of having two sets of ballots from the same person.

        The fact checking sloppiness wouldn't be so bad if it weren't also so slanted to always support the FB/corporate media agenda.

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  3. Avatar photo
    Israel Bigelow

    Keep up the great work Khaya!

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  4. Avatar photo
    Victor Clairmont

    The lies….

    The lies are everywhere!

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  5. Jake Winters

    Has Dominion turned over any servers or explain what the March widespread download was for ? Resulting in numerous deleted files?
    Has anyone fact checking this info?
    Please fact check Col Phil Waldren’s
    2010 census algorithm claims?
    Fact check ...dominion machines were connected to the internet.
    These are the questions which, if answered truthfully, would end a lot of angst for me and likely others.

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    1. Avatar photo
      rlritt

      Give it a rest. Every close result was counted multiple times.

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    2. Avatar photo
      Pat Riot

      Oh sure just like the comically wrong AZ audit did.

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  6. Counterpoint

    Here's a look at the Arizona audit search for evidence. "Q: Have you found anything yet? A: We ain't found $%#$."

    https://youtu.be/g4OBUupicWg

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  7. Avatar photo
    Pat Riot

    78% of Republicans believe Trump won the 2020 election. The dangerous implications of this cannot be overstated.

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    1. Avatar photo
      rlritt

      Is it really that high? The Republicans in government surely don't believe that, do they?

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      1. Avatar photo
        Frank Lee

        Nope. It is about the same number as Democrats that thought Trump stole the 2016 election. https://www.reuters.com/world/us/53-republicans-view-trump-true-us-president-reutersipsos-2021-05-24/

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      2. Avatar photo
        Pat Riot

        Yes, it's really that high.

        And even more ominous, this number as *increased* since 1/6 from 71%, which shows that Republican efforts to reinforce this with their base is *working*.

        Republicans in government believe that their base believes this, and everything else is irrelevant to them.

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        1. Avatar photo
          rlritt

          That's shocking!

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    2. Avatar photo
      Frank Lee

      And why we need stronger election laws in these states. A majority of Democrats thought and still think that Russia tampered with the election and gave the win to Trump instead of Hillary.

      So a lack of faith in our election system spans both parties.

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      1. Polimom

        I have not found anything to support your statement that “a majority of Democrats” think / thought that 2016 was “given to Trump”. I do find various polls showing that some percentage of Dems thought something went wrong, but results varied widely depending on the specific question/s asked.

        Are you saying the “majority of Dems” thought Russia tampered directly and changed votes?? And if that was the poll question that was asked that produced “a majority”, could you pretty please give a link, since I can’t find such a thing?

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        1. Avatar photo
          MatthewRobin

          Here is a poll from yougov in 2018.
          https://today.yougov.com/topics/politics/articles-reports/2018/03/09/russias-impact-election-seen-through-partisan-eyes

          "Two out of three Democrats also claim Russia tampered with vote tallies on Election Day to help the President – something for which there has been no credible evidence."

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      2. Avatar photo
        rlritt

        I think that there was a lot Russian bots spreading anti Clinton propaganda, but I don't remember anyone saying there was actual fraudulent election results.

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        1. Avatar photo
          Frank Lee

          There were actually more Chinese bots and Russian bots spreading anti-Trump propaganda in the 2020 election. Some of the Chinese bots work at CNN and play for the NBA.

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            rlritt

            Really.

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      3. Avatar photo
        Pat Riot

        Paul Manafort gave Russian agents internal Trump campaign data why exactly?

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        1. Avatar photo
          rlritt

          Facts are meaningless.

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        2. Avatar photo
          Frank Lee

          Hillary Clinton's campaign hired a Fusion GPS British spook who gave the FBI a fake dossier on Trump so the FBI could get a FISA warrant to illegally spy on the Trump campaign. Why exactly?

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