Arizona Election Audit: Voting System Data Sent To Montana Lab Run By Official Who Claimed Voter Data ‘Deleted’
Voting system data from Maricopa County, Arizona, has been sent to a Montana-based lab by Florida cybersecurity company CyberNinjas, the group contracted by Senate Republicans to conduct the 2020 election audit in the county.
The lab in question is part of Cyber Technology Services, or CyTech, an affiliate of CyFIR LLC, which is owned by Ben Cotton. NBC Montana reports that Senate Liaison Ken Bennett confirmed that the lab site is run by Cotton.
Cotton, who has over 25 years experience in computer forensics, made headlines last month when he said a voting database was “deleted” by county officials. Some news stations have claimed that Cotton has since “recanted” his “accusations” about the deleted data, though Cotton told officials in mid-May that he was able to “recover all of those deleted files.”
“I’ve been able to recover all of those deleted files, and I have access to that data,” Cotton told officials.
Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, a critic of the audit, posted notes to her website about potential problems in the ongoing review that included the confirmation of the data being transferred to a lab in Montana. Among her series of observations about the ongoing audit — which she described as plagued by “problematic practices, changing policies, and security threats” — Hobbs wrote:
Observation: On May 24, 2021, Senate Liaison Ken Bennett confirmed that copies of voting system data was sent to a lab in Montana. He did not specify what security measures were in place, or what the lab in Montana will do with the data or how long it will be in possession of the copies.
“Bennett said the lab has data downloaded from the hard drives Maricopa County used in the election, which he says they physically picked up and drove to Montana,” NBC Montana reported. “He said it may or may not include voter registration data, and some of it could be sensitive. He says Cyber Ninjas picked CyFIR to review the data.”
“The original evidence was left completely intact,” Bennett told 12 News. “A copy was taken to do whatever evaluation they are doing for Cyber Ninjas.”
Sec. Hobbs is displeased that the lab now has the data. “They’re making it up as they go along,” she told 12 News. “These things are all very concerning, and really undermine whatever results they might come up with.”
The Secretary of State has also complained that her observers were made to wear pink t-shirts during the auditing procedures and has alleged they were made fun of over the shirts, a claim Bennett dismissed.
“What we’ve noticed is they are using these shirts to label our observers as pinko-commies, that the shirt made him look like a ‘transgender,’ which I don’t even know what that means,” Hobbs said, according to CNN. “I mean, I think this whole thing is a joke.”
Bennett said he “laughed out loud” when he saw Hobb’s report, which he slammed as “untrue,” “inconsequential” and “a bunch of B.S.,” CNN reports. He also “called the observers biased, saying no one picked on them for the pink shirts,” the network notes.
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