Maricopa Recount Half Completed as Right-Wing Outlets Spread Fraud Fears
The 2020 election ballot audit currently underway in Maricopa County, Arizona is reportedly more than half-completed.
However, a recent study of social media engagement found that the 10 most popular online articles about the audit have come from right-wing media outlets. Many of the right-wing outlets have also repeated the baseless claim that election fraud kept Republican former President Donald Trump from rightfully winning.
County auditors finished tallying more than 1.2 million of the county's 2.1 million ballots on Tuesday, Senate officials said according to The Washington Post. The officials said the tally, which began April 23, would be complete by the end of June.
"Every time we share a number [of how many ballots have been counted each day], somebody is backing into that number to figure out how many more days it's going to take," Senate liaison Ken Bennett said, according to Arizona Republic reporter Jen Fifield.
Fifield noted that before the audit began, state Senate officials promised to issue daily ballot count updates.
A recent social media analysis of the 10 most popular articles about the audit found that they all came from conservative publications.
Using the online analytics firm NewsWhip, NPR found that these 10 stories had the highest number of likes, comments and shares across Facebook, Pinterest and much of Twitter. The analysis covered social media engagement from April 1 to May 25.
Half of the 10 most popular links came from WesternJournal.com, a conservative site. As of June 3, the site's most recent headlines about the 2020 election mention conservative figures' calls for additional audits and investigations. One headline cites Trump's calling the election the "crime of the century."
The Maricopa County's election results have been audited numerous times by experienced companies with no report of problems, KJZZ reported. The current audit is being conducted by a company called Cyber Ninjas. The company has no experience auditing elections and its CEO has peddled baseless conspiracy theories of election fraud.
The Cyber Ninjas' audit lacks "consistent and transparent procedures," quality checks and other methods to ensure an accurate count, Jennifer Morrell—a former election official and national election auditing expert who observed Arizona's audit in person for a week—told NPR.
However, many of the 10 most popular articles about the audit don't cover the Arizona audits' "technical shortcomings," the national news outlet reported.
Calling the re-tallying process an "audit" also works as a misinformation tactic, Francesca Tripodi, an information studies professor at the University of North Carolina, told the outlet.
"The strategy in calling it an audit to begin with creates the illusion of legality—the illusion of a government-backed agency," Tripodi said. "And when I think of an audit, I think of wrongdoing immediately."
Arizona Senate officials have said that the purpose of the recount is to reassure voters of the election's integrity rather than to overturn state or county results.
However, Republican Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene and Republican Florida Representative Matt Gaetz have both touted the Arizona audit as the first of many to come that will prove Trump's baseless claims of fraud.
Newsweek contacted the Arizona Senate for comment.
