Was the Voter Database ‘Deleted’ in Maricopa County, Arizona?

No.

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On March 15, Donald Trump released a statement claiming that the voter database in Maricopa County, Arizona had been “deleted.”

Arizona Republicans, recycling familiar voter fraud claims, last month initiated an audit of ballots from Maricopa County, claiming that Trump won the state. The new, partisan audit has not uncovered evidence of widespread fraud or, as some have claimed, produced new votes.

Trump’s statement continues with further unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud: “[S]eals were broken on the boxes that hold the votes, ballots are missing, and worse. Mark Brnovich, the Attorney General of Arizona, will now be forced to look into this unbelievable Election crime.”

Trump’s accusations stem from a May 12 letter written by Arizona Senate President Karen Fann to Maricopa County officials claiming, among other things, that auditors identified deleted files on a county machine, according to an Arizona Republic story reprinted in USA Today. 

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  1. Alex DeLarge

    Ms. Himmelman obviously has no clue about the technicalities and nomenclature of the data recovery issue. But knowing anything is irrelevant to being a fake fact checker. You just have to know which side you want to be right. Then you just recite their press release and declare them the winner. Easy peasy. Fake journalism 101.

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      Jack

      Also, why is citing the ACTUAL county that’s conducting the recount (run by Republicans FYI) another example of “Fake journalism?”

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      Jack

      Each and every Dispatch fact check is loaded with sources and carefully reasoned-through logical conclusions. Just because this piece didn’t conclude that bamboo fibers were in the ballots and North Korean frogmen landed on the coast of Maine like a scene out of a WW2 documentary doesn’t mean that it’s “fake journalism.” Cheeto Jesus lost a close election to a guy with the personality of wet cement. And you know why he lost? Because he was a jerk. Not because Venezuelan hackers and the CCP deleted ballot files in Arizona. How many recounts and fact checks will it take to convince your brain cells that they are deluding themselves?

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    3. Gabej1989

      Hey Alex, once again thanks for financially supporting an unbiased, thoughtful, insightful conservative news organization! It means a lot to the rest of us.

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  2. Stephen Nielson

    So I've been following this pretty closely. I'm not a forensic computer expert but I do know a thing or two about hard drives, and I am a software engineer. From my own knowledge and also following ACTUAL Information Technology Forensic experts, the Arizona Auditing team screwed up on making copies of the data that they are doing their forensic audit on.

    Computer hard drive systems can be set up in a way that prevents data from being lost if one of the individual hard drives die. This is called a RAID setup. The county's election databases were stored in such a system. The GOP's forensic auditors made a copy of these drives and then ran their forensic tool against this copy. However, because they did not construct the copied drives in the exact setup as the county had their system the data 'appeared' to be lost. The screenshots that GOP auditors posted as 'evidence' even illustrate the fact as it shows the errors that parts of the hard drive are not being created 'properly' at the bottom of the screenshot. 1) These experts should have seen the errors in the tool and realize 'oh I guess we created the hard drives wrong and should start over again' which is exactly what the county's searing letter pointed out to them, and 2) if they couldn't figure out how to reconstruct the drives, they should have ASKED the county instead of publicly accusing them of a crime. you know something that standard auditors would do. All this shows is complete gross incompetence on the part of the GOP auditors.

    We know this is actually what happened as the GOP auditors once they received the letter from the county 'magically' recovered the data and they even admitted to it during the GOP senate hearing. They are now backtracking that statement in the public relations campaign. What a mess.

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    1. Gabej1989

      Thank you for the breakdown, that’s interesting!

      I would say it shows incompetence and an obvious confirmation bias…

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    Kevin Lanik

    Please edit the post to correct: "March 15" should read "May 15" in the opening sentence.

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    rlritt

    The purpose is to claim fraud or deleted data bases. This gets repeated on conservative news. But the proof that these statements are false will never be published on conservative news. Nothing will happen, and Trump supporters will continue to believe that "the deep state" is covering up evidence of a stolen election.

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    Bada Bing

    So many clowns.

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  6. Daniel

    Fact check breaking the seal. I hear it is an urban legend, but my experience tells me otherwise.

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    Adam Bridge

    "Forensic data recover processes" means looking in the right place. It's also a butt-covering for a lie. But, hey, it's the Arizona GOP. What do you expect. Anything to perpetuate the Big Lie.

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