PHOENIX — Last April, semitrailers hauled 2.1 million presidential ballots out of storage and delivered them to an empty arena at the Arizona State Fairgrounds.
An unprecedented hand recount of every single ballot was supposed to take two weeks. It dragged into midsummer.
"Bamboo ballots" became a thing.
So were death threats against the people who run our elections.
And Arizona became a beacon for Donald Trump supporters who have claimed since last November, without any evidence, that the 2020 election was stolen from him.
Now comes the "show us what you got" moment.
On Friday, Arizona Senate Republicans will reveal the long-delayed findings of their partisan review of the 2020 vote in Maricopa County. It is the most expansive review in the country of any 2020 presidential vote.
On Thursday, however, draft versions of the report were circulated widely in media and government circles showing that Democrat Joe Biden defeated Republican President Donald Trump in the 2020 election.
Notations in the margins of some of the draft documents indicate they are subject to change. 12 News has learned work on the documents is continuing into the evening Thursday.
Joe Biden's victory in Arizona's largest county - the first in more than 70 years by a Democrat - delivered the state to the next president.
The vote was certified in late November by Arizona's Republican governor, Doug Ducey. Nothing that is presented Friday will change the outcome of the vote, although there is a movement among Trump diehards ahead of Friday's event to "decertify" the election.
Friday's proceedings can be watched live here.
Here's what we know - and what we think we know - about Friday's event and the findings:
5 people presenting findings
Five people will make presentations Friday in the Capitol's Senate chamber. The public and the media are allowed to sit in the gallery above the floor.
Here are the presenters:
Doug Logan, the Senate Republicans' lead contractor and the owner of Florida-based Cyber Ninjas.
Logan was brought into the orbit of Trump's leading election deniers within weeks after the November vote, according to the Arizona Republic's Jen Fifield. Fann hired Logan in March to oversee the review.
Ben Cotton, founder of a digital forensics firm called CyFIR. Cotton is best known for having driven copies of the county's voting system data to a lab at his home in Montana.
Randy Pullen, Senate audit spokesman and a former chair of the Arizona Republican Party. Pullen helped raise money for the audit from Republican donors.
Shiva Ayyadurai, also known as "Dr. Shiva," an election and vaccine conspiracy theorist. Ayyadurai was a presenter at a "Stop the Steal" event in Phoenix last November that was led by Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani.
Ken Bennett, Senate audit liaison and a former Arizona secretary of state. Bennett was brought in to give the review team some of the elections experience it lacked. Logan had never reviewed an election before. Maricopa County is the second-largest voting jurisdiction in the country.
News conference and report online Friday
According to the Senate Republicans' spokesman, Senate President Karen Fann will hold a news conference after the meeting.
The Senate Republicans' lawyer tells 12 News that an electronic version of the full report documenting the findings will be released sometime Friday.
The presiding elected officials will be Fann, who authorized the election review without a vote by the full Senate, and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Warren Petersen, who issued subpoenas with Fann for the county's ballots and other election materials.
The duo has presided at two previous public meetings with their contractors.
Not a regular Senate session
The event is not a regular session of the Senate. It's not clear how many Republican members will attend. At least three senators in the 17-member GOP majority have publicly distanced themselves from the review.
None of the chamber's 13 Democrats will attend, but Democratic Leader Rebecca Rios will be watching the livestream, according to Senate Democratic spokeswoman Josselyn Berry.
"They're not interested in being props for political theater, where the only purpose is to boost the careers of Republicans who have willingly encouraged dangerous conspiracy theories about what was a free and fair election," Berry said in a text message.
The five-month-long review has raised many questions about the election and had many of those questions debunked by election experts, review observers, and journalists.
Here are 7 findings to look for on Friday:
Do the vote totals match?
This review started with a livestreamed hand recount of the 2.1 million ballots.
Workers checked ballots spinning on lazy susans at multicolored tables, on the cement floor of Veterans Memorial Coliseum.
The votes were tallied for the presidential election, as well as the U.S. Senate race, won by Democrat Mark Kelly over Republican Martha McSally.
Compare the review's findings Friday to these canvassed Maricopa County votes:
- Biden: 1,040,774
- Trump: 995,665
- Kelly: 1,064,396
- McSally: 984,203
You can check Maricopa County's 2020 canvass here.
How many ballots were cast?
Late in the review process, Fann paid $30,000 for paper-counting machines after the hand recount of ballots didn't match the 2,089,563 ballots cast in Maricopa County.
Elections experts caution that a machine recount of ballots that had already been handled by countless hands and then stacked in counting machines in a humid space (an outbuilding at the fairgrounds) might not yield accurate results.
Pullen will present these results, Bennett told 12 News.
What about logan's claim on early ballots?
At a public meeting with Fann in July, Logan claimed there were 74,000 mail-in ballots that had "no clear record" of having been mailed. Logan's statement went viral in pro-Trump circles as evidence of fraud. Trump himself promoted it.
Logan's statement was easily debunked: He had no idea how Arizona's early ballot system worked. The Cyber Ninjas leader failed to account for the 74,000 ballots that were returned in person at a voting center, not through the mail.
Will Logan correct that error in his findings?
Did they find bamboo?
The election review started in late April with a Democratic deputy liaison, John Brakey of Tucson.
Brakey's assignment was intended to show the review was bipartisan.
Brakey won social media fame with a sound bite revealing that ballot examiners at the coliseum were looking for bamboo fibers in the ballot paper.
A far-right conspiracy theory held that tens of thousands of 2020 ballots were flown into Phoenix's Sky Harbor Airport from Asia on election night.
"I was claiming we are doing a lot of this work because we need to un-gaslight people who are being fed a bunch of crap," Brakey told 12 News this week.
He said he had "absolutely" no doubt that Biden won the election.
The ballot paper was examined for more than subtropical plants.
Inspectors used UV lights and the naked eye to search for "anomalies" like watermarks or folds or a secret printer protocol - all of which could indicate a ballot was counterfeit.
Much of this was from the mind of Jovan Hutton Pulitzer. In recent days, Pulitzer has said on social media that he's concerned that his so-called "kinematic artifact detection" won't be part of the review's findings.
'Dr. Shiva's' signature exam
Are there "anomalies" in voters' signatures on the 1.9 million mail-in ballot envelopes? In Arizona, early voters sign their name under an affidavit on the ballot envelope.
Shiva Ayyadurai, also known as "Dr. Shiva," was brought in late in the review process to review the signatures.
Pullen told the Arizona Republic's Robert Anglen that Ayyadurai did signature reviews for banks.
Ayyadurai appeared at a Nov. 30 "Stop the Steal" event in downtown Phoenix led by Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani. He presented data and graphics purporting to show Biden couldn't have won the vote in Maricopa County.
Pullen said State Rep. Mark Finchem, a candidate for secretary of state who claims the election was stolen from Trump, connected him with Ayyadurai.
Teeing up criminal investigation?
Before the findings' release, Senate President Fann said she would forward them to Republican Attorney General Mark Brnovich for possible criminal investigation.
Fann hasn't said what the alleged criminal activity might be. Nor has any information been publicly disclosed that suggests possible criminal wrongdoing.
One presenter to watch: Bennett told 12 News he will show where Maricopa County failed to comply with state elections statutes and procedures.
The wild card: Voter canvass
Cyber Ninjas' contract with Fann provided for a door-knocking canvass of voters in selected voting precincts.
But the U.S. Justice Department warned Fann away from a canvass. The Civil Rights Division said a canvass could violate federal laws barring voter intimidation.
Fann backed off, but a failed Republican legislative candidate in the East Valley didn't.
Starting in December, Liz Harris recruited volunteer canvassers through her Facebook page and the site ItSmellsFunny.com. She was coming off a narrow defeat in a legislative race in the Chandler area.
Harris' canvassing continued until very recently. She presented a report that journalists found was riddled with falsehoods.
But Harris' canvass has a powerful supporter: Patrick Byrne, the former Overstock.com CEO who is the leading fundraiser for the election review.
On social media, Byrne has downplayed the results of the ballot and vote counts and focused on what the now-discredited canvass purports to show.
Will the canvass work its way into the findings?
