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Arizona — 2020 Election Fraud Investigation

State hub page linking all Arizona-related election fraud allegations from the 2020 presidential election.

FieldDetails
StateArizona
2020 WinnerBiden — certified
Margin~10,457 votes
Key CountyMaricopa County (no dedicated Maricopa file yet in this investigation)
Voting SystemDominion Voting Systems — used in Maricopa County
Evidence RatingDEBATED

Overview​

Arizona's 2020 presidential margin of roughly 10,500 votes was the smallest of any state Biden carried, making it a primary focus of post-election legal and audit challenges. Maricopa County — home to Phoenix and approximately 60% of Arizona's population — became the center of the most extensive legislative audit of any 2020 battleground state. A USPS whistleblower account claimed that approximately 300,000 Arizona mail-in ballots were backdated. Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, certified Biden's victory; her certification was upheld by courts including the Arizona Supreme Court. The Arizona Senate subsequently commissioned a full audit of Maricopa County's 2.1 million ballots, conducted by Cyber Ninjas, which produced disputed and in some respects contradictory findings.

Sharpie Voting — Adjudication Abuse in Maricopa County​

Maricopa County is the primary documented location of the Sharpie voting scheme — where election workers distributed Sharpie markers to voters at polling locations. Sharpie ink bleeds through paper ballots and can activate adjacent oval cells, causing the optical scanner to flag the ballot as an overvote. The scanner rejects the ballot. It is then routed to adjudication, where a human operator decides the voter's "intent" — and can change a Trump vote to a Biden vote at the click of a button with no audit trail. An election clerk admitted this on video.

Reports indicate Sharpies were handed specifically — or disproportionately — to voters who appeared to be Trump/Republican voters. Biden's margin in Arizona was approximately 10,457 votes. Maricopa County cast 2.1 million ballots. If even a small percentage of Sharpie-affected Republican ballots were adjudicated in Biden's favor, the scheme would have been sufficient to flip the state.

"No wonder they handed out SHARPIES during the 2020 election, especially if they knew you were a Trump voter. The election clerk admitted that it literally impacts the vote, sending it into adjudication where it can be changed to BIDEN at the click of a button." — @TheSCIF, April 11, 2026

Full analysis: Sharpie Voting — How Marker Bleed-Through Sent Republican Ballots to Adjudication

For the full adjudication mechanism and how ballot changes are made at the click of a button: Adjudication — Vote Changing at the Click of a Button

Key Allegations​

733,000 Mail-In Ballots Alleged Uncounted and Unaccounted For​

A claim circulating in election integrity communities — summarized in an April 7, 2026 X/Twitter post by @its_The_Dr — alleges that over 733,000 mail-in ballots cast in Arizona "vanished into thin air, uncounted for." The figure represents a substantial portion of the approximately 1.9 million mail-in ballots cast in Arizona in 2020.

Attribution: Arizona's total 2020 mail-in ballot count was approximately 1.9 million. The claim that 733,000 — nearly 40% of all mail-in ballots — went uncounted or unaccounted for is not supported by the Cyber Ninjas audit findings, which actually found a net increase in Biden's Maricopa County margin. The specific figure of 733,000 has not been corroborated by any forensic audit, court filing, or official investigation. Arizona conducted a full hand count of Maricopa County's 2.1 million ballots and found no evidence of mass ballot disappearance. The claim may conflate different categories of contested ballots — such as cured ballots, rejected ballots, and signature verification disputes — but a total of 733,000 unaccounted ballots would represent an anomaly of a magnitude that the Cyber Ninjas audit did not document.

Source: @its_The_Dr — 2020 swing state mail-in ballot summary (X/Twitter, April 7, 2026)

  • USPS Ballot Backdating — Arizona — Project Veritas whistleblower accounts alleged that Arizona postal workers were instructed to backdate late-arriving mail-in ballots, with approximately 300,000 Arizona ballots reportedly affected by backdating. This figure is among the largest claimed in any single state. Federal investigators have not publicly confirmed or charged anyone in connection with this alleged conduct in Arizona.

  • Dominion Voting Systems — Dominion Voting Systems equipment was used in Maricopa County, Arizona's largest county, for the 2020 election. Allegations that Dominion equipment was programmed or connected in ways that altered vote totals were a central claim in post-election legal filings. Dominion denies all such allegations and has pursued defamation litigation against media outlets and individuals who repeated them as established fact.

Maricopa Officials Allegedly Deleted 2020 Results Before Senate Audit (April 12, 2021)​

Video surveillance footage and Dominion log files — both reportedly stamped April 12, 2021 — allegedly show Maricopa County election officials Brian Ramirez and Kristi Passarelli deleting the official 2020 election results in the days before the Arizona Senate's Cyber Ninjas audit began. An April 8, 2026 X/Twitter post by @Real_RobN includes two videos showing the audit surveillance footage and Dominion log file evidence.

Separately, Mesa County, Colorado Clerk Tina Peters had independently created forensic backup images of Dominion voting machines before and after a scheduled "Trusted Build" software update (May 2021). When analysts compared the two images, they found that 29,000 election records had been deleted or altered during the update. Peters characterized the "Trusted Build" as a mechanism for nationwide election record destruction disguised as routine maintenance. Peters was convicted in 2024 on charges related to the forensic imaging process.

If confirmed, the deletion of Maricopa records after the Arizona Senate's January 2021 subpoenas were issued would constitute evidence destruction during an active legislative investigation.

See full case details: Maricopa Arizona Audit Deletion

Attribution: No charges have been filed against Ramirez or Passarelli. Maricopa County and Dominion dispute all claims that records were intentionally destroyed. The Cyber Ninjas audit found discrepancies in log files but these are disputed. Peters' forensic images are real but their interpretation and chain of custody are legally contested.

Source: @Real_RobN — Arizona Senate Audit video surveillance and Dominion logs (April 8, 2026)

DOJ Referral: Obstruction and Witness Tampering Allegations (2026)​

On April 7, 2026, Arizona State Senate President Warren Petersen referred both Attorney General Kris Mayes and Secretary of State Adrian Fontes to the U.S. Department of Justice, alleging obstruction of justice and tampering with a witness in connection with an active federal grand jury investigation into Arizona's 2020 election.

The Grand Jury Subpoena​

On March 5, 2026, the FBI's Phoenix Field Office Fraud Investigations unit served Petersen a federal grand jury subpoena seeking virtually all records from the Arizona Senate's 2021 Cyber Ninjas audit of Maricopa County — including ballot images, voter registration databases, and all audit materials. Petersen retained the law firm Snell & Wilmer, complied with the subpoena, and transferred the records to the FBI.

Witness Tampering Allegation​

Four days after the subpoena was served, on March 9, 2026, Mayes and Fontes co-signed a letter to all 15 Arizona county recorders warning them NOT to comply with federal requests for voter data, allegedly claiming compliance would "violate both federal and state law" and urging recorders to "decline any such illegal demands." Petersen's referral characterizes this as witness tampering — pressure on potential witnesses in an active grand jury investigation to refuse cooperation with federal investigators. Snell & Wilmer issued a legal opinion concluding that no such prohibitory law exists and that Mayes and Fontes misstated the law.

Obstruction Allegation​

On March 31, 2026, Mayes sent a letter to Petersen reportedly asking what records the Senate had turned over to the FBI. Petersen characterized this as an attempt to learn what evidence federal investigators had obtained — an improper interference with an ongoing grand jury investigation.

Attribution: AG Mayes characterized the underlying federal investigation as an attempt to "weaponize the federal grand jury process" to circumvent repeated court rulings against Trump administration election-related demands. She described Petersen's referral as "laying groundwork to deny the results of the 2026 election if they don't go their way." Fontes separately framed the March 9 letter as protecting voter privacy from federal overreach. As of this writing, no charges have been filed against either official.

Sources: @votewarren on X (April 7, 2026) | KJZZ | AZ Family | DOJ referral letter PDF | Votebeat — March 9 letter context

See full profiles: Warren Petersen | Kris Mayes | Adrian Fontes

The Cyber Ninjas Audit — Maricopa County (2021)​

The Arizona State Senate contracted Cyber Ninjas, a Florida-based cybersecurity firm with no prior election audit experience, to conduct a full hand count and forensic review of Maricopa County's 2020 ballots. The audit ran from April to September 2021 and was the longest and most controversial state-legislative election audit in modern U.S. history.

The Cyber Ninjas' final report, released September 24, 2021, found that Biden's certified margin in Maricopa County actually increased slightly by the hand count — adding approximately 360 net votes to Biden's total. The audit identified what it described as administrative irregularities, including questions about chain of custody for some ballots and discrepancies in certain tabulator log files. Maricopa County officials disputed the audit's methodology and specific findings. The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, controlled by a Republican majority, declined to accept the audit's conclusions.

Cyber Ninjas subsequently went out of business and was held in contempt by an Arizona court for failing to turn over audit records.

Notable Gap​

No dedicated Maricopa County profile currently exists in this investigation. Maricopa County is the central location for Arizona's 2020 election fraud allegations and warrants a standalone Detail file covering: the Cyber Ninjas audit findings and methodology disputes, signature verification controversies, printer and tabulator failures reported on Election Day 2022, and the Kari Lake litigation.

Official Response​

Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs certified the 2020 election results on November 30, 2020. Governor Doug Ducey, a Republican, signed the certification. The Arizona Supreme Court dismissed election challenges in December 2020. Federal courts, including the Ninth Circuit, similarly dismissed lawsuits contesting Arizona's results on procedural and evidentiary grounds.

Counterarguments​

  • The Cyber Ninjas audit, despite being commissioned by Republican state senators skeptical of the 2020 results, found a net increase in Biden's Maricopa County margin — an outcome that significantly undercut claims that the certified results were fraudulent.
  • Maricopa County conducted its own post-election hand count audit of a sample of ballots, which confirmed the machine count.
  • The 300,000 backdated ballot claim has not been independently verified or corroborated by postal investigators.
  • Arizona election law experts noted that Dominion's tabulation software generates paper ballot records that allow for independent verification, and that no paper audit trail discrepancy was documented by independent observers.

Other Coverage Worth Reading​

Sources​

Last Updated: 2026-04-08 — Added Maricopa Audit Deletion section: video surveillance and Dominion logs (4-12-2021) allegedly show officials Ramirez and Passarelli deleting 2020 election records before Senate audit; Tina Peters backup logs confirmed 29,000 deleted records in CO parallel case. Full case: Maricopa Arizona Audit Deletion.

This information was compiled by Claude AI research.