PHOENIX — A COVID-19 outbreak has sidelined most of the Cyber Ninjas team running Arizona's partisan election review, raising questions about when Senate Republicans will get the team's full draft report that had been expected on Monday.
Senate President Karen Fann revealed Monday that Doug Logan, owner of Cyber Ninjas and the person Fann hired to run the review, was diagnosed with COVID-19 along with two other people on his five-member team.
The three are "quite sick," according to Fann. She told 12 News that one of them was hospitalized with pneumonia.
The Senate spokesman for the review, Ken Bennett, said via text message that he is not among the sick.
Fann said she didn't know the names of the others who were ill.
Timeline for Report Scrambled
The illnesses have shaken up the timeline for an election review that's rarely run according to schedule since its start four months ago:
- Logan was supposed to deliver a draft report of his findings to the Senate on Monday.
Fann said only a portion of the report would be turned in.
- A final public report had been expected within a couple of weeks after a Senate team reviewed the initial findings.
Fann did not update that timeline.
Logan has never overseen a formal election audit.
'Never Seen Travesty Like This'
The unprecedented review and recount of the 2020 presidential and U.S. Senate votes in Maricopa County have made up many of its rules as it goes along, according to election observers.
"I've been doing this work for 30 years. I have never ever seen a travesty like this one," Norm Eisen, founder and executive chair of the States United Democracy Center, told reporters during a virtual news conference Monday.
Eisen made his remarks before Fann disclosed the COVID illnesses.
Before he was hired, Logan promoted the falsehood that Donald Trump won Arizona by 200,000 votes in 2020. Democrat Joe Biden was certified as the winner by 11,000 votes.
Biden was the first Democratic presidential nominee to win Maricopa County in 72 years.
Fund-raising for the Senate Republicans' review has been led by organizations that maintain the 2020 election was stolen from Trump, according to information provided by Cyber Ninjas.
The review's findings won't affect Biden's victory in Arizona.
Here's is Fann's full statement Monday:
"Today we are receiving a portion of the draft report from the election audit analysis team. The team expected to have the full draft ready for the Senate today, but unfortunately, Cyber Ninjas CEO Doug Logan and two other members of the five-person audit team have tested positive for COVID-19 and are quite sick.
"In addition to the illnesses, it wasn't until Thursday that the Senate received the images of the ballot envelopes from Maricopa County and are hoping to have those analyzed as soon as possible to incorporate those results into the final report.
"The Senate legal team will meet Wednesday to start reviewing the draft report, and when the remainder of the draft is submitted, the Senate team will hold another meeting to continue checking for accuracy, clarity, and proof of documentation of findings.
"Once that is complete, the final report will be presented to the Senate Judiciary Committee and findings released to the public."
Squabble Over Data for Senate
Fann's statement about the delay in receiving images of mail-in ballot envelopes triggered yet another squabble with Maricopa County.
A county Elections Department spokeswoman provided documentation that indicated the county sent electronic files with the envelope images to the Senate on April 22.
Spokeswoman Erika Flores confirmed the files were resent last week.
But Fann didn't back off her initial statement.
"We absolutely did not receive the ballot images in April," she said via text message.
"They thought they had sent them and told us which file they were on. We had three IT experts look and they were not there. Perhaps Maricopa thought that had been copied, but that wasn't the case."
Maricopa County election audit
Keep track of the latest developments from the Maricopa County election audit on the 12 News YouTube channel.