Republican Arizona state senators warned Maricopa County that they would continue to fight for access to the county’s election equipment and materials after officials once again announced they would not cooperate with a state Senate subpoena.
The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, joined by Dominion Voting Systems, said on Monday that the county would not provide the information requested by state Republicans in subpoenas.
Arizona Senate President Karen Fann issued the subpoenas on July 26, seeking access to the routers used in the elections, security information for accessing tabulating machines, network data logs, mail-ballot envelopes, and more.
However, Maricopa County refused to turn over its routers, claiming without evidence that doing so would pose a security risk.
Thomas Liddy, an attorney for the county, claimed past reviews of the county’s election process proves that access to the routers is not necessary because they were never connected to the Internet during the voting process.
“Anyone with sufficient knowledge and understanding of elections is able to confirm, through a review of these logs or through an inspection of the tabulators, that the equipment was not connected to the internet and had no wifi devices installed,” Liddy wrote in a response to Fann’s subpoena request.
The Republican chair of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors defended the county’s noncompliance, calling the continued audit an “adventure in never-never land.”
“It is now August of 2021. The election of November 2020 is over. If you haven’t figured out that the election in Maricopa County was free, fair, and accurate yet, I’m not sure you ever will,” Jack Sellers wrote in a letter to state Republicans. “Please finish whatever it is that you are doing and release whatever it is you are going to release. I am confident that our staff and volunteers ran the election as prescribed by federal and state law.”
State Republican senator Sonny Borrelli responded:
Stand by. https://t.co/K2KOYEbMBO
— Sonny Borrelli (@SonnyBorrelli) August 2, 2021
The full report from the audit is expected to be released some time in September.
But in order for the report to be thorough, members of the audit team said it is “critically important” that they obtain the routers owned by the county in order to clarify specific vulnerabilities found in Maricopa’s digital election system.
“If we don’t get them, it will be an incomplete report, it will be an incomplete audit, and that’s what the findings will reflect,” said Doug Logan, CEO of Cyber Ninjas, the cybersecurity firm conducting the audit.
Dominion Voting Systems is also fighting the subpoena request, calling it “illegal and unenforceable.”
The company argued it would only provide its security keys and confidential passwords to “authorized recipients” that are “specifically approved by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission.”
Fann said the state Senate is prepared to go back to court to gain access to the election materials needed.
“It is unfortunate the noncompliance by the County and Dominion continues to delay the results and breeds distrust,” she said.
