Matt York/AP
- A GOP official has slammed the election recount under way in Arizona's Maricopa County.
- He said that the effort, run by Cyber Ninjas, was "insane just from a competence standpoint."
- The state party backed the much-criticized audit, but some now regret doing so.
- See more stories on Insider's business page.
The ongoing ballot audit in Arizona run by Cyber Ninjas is "insane just from a competence standpoint," according to a local GOP elections official.
Stephen Richer, the Maricopa County Recorder, blasted the ongoing effort in an interview with CNN's Anderson Cooper on Monday.
The recount aims to review 2.1 million ballots from the 2020 presidential election cast in Maricopa County, which President Joe Biden won. It was initiated by the GOP-led Arizona Senate in April.
Since then, the company running the audit, Cyber Ninjas, has come under significant criticism from Democrats and several GOP officials in the county, including Richer.
CNN
Observers have raised security and equipment concerns, while the volunteers appear to be pursuing far-fetched theories about votes having been flown in from Asia.
Prior to the audit, Cyber Ninjas - a digital security firm - had no experience of running election processes. Its CEO Doug Logan has publicly expressed support for conspiracy theories about the election.
"This is not the audit you want," Richer told CNN. "This is far from the gold standard of audits."
"You're looking for the Ernst & Young of accounting, or the Latham & Watkins of law firms. You're not looking for a newbie company who has never done this before."
He added that he had been given little sense of what exactly Cyber Ninjas aimed to produce, beyond "some sort of report" that might come back in July or later.
He also said that the process will have little weight with anyone other than "the Stop the Steal crowd," referring to people who believe that the 2020 election was subject to mass voter fraud which prevented Donald Trump from winning.
Despite dozens of court cases, no evidence has yet been found that such fraud took place.
"Let's be honest, this Arizona audit isn't going to convince anyone outside of the crowd that already believes the election was stolen," Richer told CNN.
Richer has been outspoken in his criticism of the effort on several occasions, such as in May when he called Trump "unhinged" over his claims about the election.
"We think that the Arizona Senate boarded this train without knowledge of where it was going and I don't think it's going to a good place," he said Monday.
Cyber Ninjas did not immediately reply to Insider's request for comment.
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