Pinal County’s $150,000 audit confirms that its primary election was accurate and secure

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Pinal County spent at least $150,000 on an independent audit of its primary election after a losing candidate claimed fraud, a county spokesperson said Thursday, and the audit came back completely clean.

The county’s supervisors, all Republicans, commissioned the audit in August to prove that the election was fair after one of them, Kevin Cavanaugh, blamed his loss in the sheriff’s race on malfeasance and voted to certify the results “under duress.”

Brett Johnson of Snell & Wilmer, the law firm hired to lead the audit, presented the findings at a public meeting Wednesday afternoon, saying that the firm and the three technical experts hired to conduct the audit found no evidence of fraud or data manipulation.

The auditors “express confidence to the citizens of Pinal County that their vote is secure and the results of the 2024 primary election are accurate,” Johnson said.

Supervisor Mike Goodman, who has been outspoken about his disdain for Cavanaugh and what he has called his “half-truths and bold-faced lies,” said he hopes the results help restore the public’s confidence in the county’s elections. But he also indicated he believed the weekslong audit was a waste of time.

The county has spent staff time and money in recent years “for stuff like this, that is, I’m sorry, quite honestly, ridiculous,” Goodman said, alluding to past incidents and investigations related to Cavanaugh .

As of Thursday morning, the cost of the audit was not yet final, but county spokesperson James Daniels said it was at least $150,000. That is enough money to pay nearly all the county’s Election Day poll workers, County Recorder Dana Lewis said.

Before the audit results were made public, Cavanaugh’s office sent out a news release criticizing the auditors, saying they did not interview him during their investigation and failed to contact “important witnesses.”

Cavanaugh “is not certain that the public can have confidence in its findings,” the release said.

Cavanaugh lost his race for sheriff by a 2-1 margin. Arizona law allows candidates to challenge the results of their election in court within five days of the results being certified, but Cavanaugh did not do that. Instead, he said he filed a complaint to the state Attorney General’s Office and other law enforcement agencies.

Among Cavanaugh’s claims: that his own analysis had found an implausible pattern in the results in his race and five others, in which candidates received nearly the exact same percentage of early votes as they did election day votes.

Johnson said the statistician who reviewed Cavanaugh’s findings found that they were riddled with “basic math errors” and that the analysis was done incorrectly. Cavanaugh’s claims on this, Johnson said, were “completely unsupported.”

One of Cavanaugh’s main claims was that someone had inserted incorrect results, raising concerns about the county’s laptops used for programming election devices, USB drives used to transfer election results, and a tabulator that was outside the tabulation room.

To investigate that claim, technical experts examined the software and logs on the laptops, USB drives, election management system, and tabulators, Johnson explained.

They found nothing.

Jen Fifield is a reporter for Votebeat based in Arizona. Contact Jen at jfifield@votebeat.org .