Arizona state Senate President Karen Fann criticized Maricopa County officials after they announced they would replace all the voting machines that were subpoenaed in the audit of the county’s 2020 election results.
“Maricopa County hired firms to perform audits after the 2020 election and relied on their Logic & Accuracy tests (L & A) to declare equipment safe to use and tamper free,” Fann said in a statement on Tuesday.
“The County can now use those same L & A tests after the Senate audit. If it can’t, their L & A tests are invalid,” she continued. “And if their machines can’t undergo a forensic audit to verify what happened in an election, then it never should have approved those machines to be used in an election in the first place.”
Maricopa County claimed it could not reliably use its voting machines after the audit because their security might have been compromised.
The state’s Democratic Secretary of State Katie Hobbs even suggested she would issue her own subpoena for the voting machines if Maricopa County tried to reuse them.
“If the County intends to re-deploy the subpoenaed equipment, over which the County lost custody and control, for use in future Arizona elections, please notify my Office as soon as possible … so that we may properly consider decertification proceedings pursuant to A.R.S. § 16-442 as to the subpoenaed equipment,” Hobbs wrote in a letter to officials back in May.
But Fann said Maricopa County’s sudden concern for election integrity is ironic given the way it dealt with the state Senate’s audit.
“Remember, the Senate asked numerous times for the audit to be conducted with the county, at their facilities, with a mutual auditor. Maricopa County refused, loading up pallets of ballots on a truck, sending out pictures on social media and asking, ‘Where do you want them delivered?’” Fann said.
“Hardly the behavior of an entity truly concerned about election security,” she added.
