$150,000 audit of Pinal County, Ariz., primary returns clean

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

County supervisors, all Republicans, ordered the audit in August to prove the election was fair after one of them, Kevin Cavanaugh, blamed his loss in the sheriff’s race on malfeasance and voted to 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 and said the firm and the three technical experts hired to conduct the audit found no evidence of fraud or had found data manipulation.

The auditors “express confidence to the citizens of Pinal County that their vote is secure and that 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 called his “half-truths and brazen lies,” said he hopes the results will help restore public confidence in the county’s elections. But he also indicated that he felt the weeks-long audit was a waste of time.

The county has spent time and money on staff in recent years “for things like this, which is, I’m sorry, quite honestly, ridiculous,” Goodman said, referring to previous incidents and investigations involving Cavanaugh.

As of Thursday morning, the cost of the audit had not been finalized, but county spokesman James Daniels said it was at least $150,000. That’s enough money to pay almost all of the county’s poll workers, said County Recorder Dana Lewis.

Before the audit results were made public, Cavanaugh’s office sent a press release criticizing the auditors, saying they had not interviewed him during their investigation and had not contacted “key witnesses.”

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

Cavanaugh lost his race for sheriff 2-1. Arizona law allows candidates to challenge the outcome of their election in court within five days after the result is certified, but Cavanaugh did not do so. Instead, he said he filed a complaint with the prosecutor’s office and other law enforcement agencies.

Among Cavanaugh’s claims: that his own analysis had found an unlikely pattern in the results of his race and five others, in which candidates received almost exactly the same percentage of early votes as they did on Election Day.

Johnson said the statistician who reviewed Cavanaugh’s findings found they were riddled with “fundamental mathematical errors” and that the analysis had been done incorrectly. Cavanaugh’s claims about 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 to program election equipment, 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 log files 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 [email protected].