Ariz. Senate seeks meeting on county’s election

Arizona’s Senate Republican leaders have backed down for now from their threat to file new subpoenas to Maricopa County related to the ongoing Senate-ordered audit of the county’s general election.

Instead, Arizona Senate President Karen Fann sent a letter on May 12 asking county officials to meet at the Senate building on Tuesday to answer what she calls “serious issues” with the county’s failure to fully respond to its initial subpoenas and the county’s election practices.

Fann has questions for the county about deleted files the Senate’s private contractors say they found on county machines, about why the county won’t hand over images of its routers and certain administrative passwords, and about discrepancies the contractors say they found in the way the county stores and tracks ballots.

Fann said the 1 p.m. meeting, with herself, Sen. Warren Petersen, Senate Liaison Ken Bennett, and others, would be livestreamed for the public.

She said her hope is to “constructively resolve these issues and questions without recourse to additional subpoenas or other compulsory process.”

This request comes after a lawyer for top Senate Republicans threatened last week to file new subpoenas to the county requiring officials’ testimony on the issue of the missing routers and passwords, which the senators had demanded in original subpoenas to

the county that had also asked for all 2.1 million ballots, voting machines, voter rolls and other information.

The county’s Board of Supervisors will meet in an emergency executive session at 4 p.m. Thursday to get legal advice on the topic. The supervisors’ meeting notice called the Senate’s claims “unfounded allegations.”

“These allegations were brought by the inexperienced technology personnel with whom the Senate has contracted to review the election,” the notice says. “These reckless allegations have and are causing confusion and agitation at the State Legislature.”

Fann’s 3 main concerns

Fann’s letter raises three main issues:

● The county’s failure to provide its routers and passwords for vote center ballot tabulation machines, which the Senate had requested in its original subpoenas to the county. The county has said that providing the routers would create security risks and the county provided all of the passwords to voting machines that it has access to.

● Issues the Senate’s contractors say they have identified regarding the county’s handling, organization and storage of ballots.

● Deleted files the Senate’s contractors say they have identified on one of the county’s machines.

Maricopa County Elections Department spokesperson Megan Gilbertson said “much of the letter is a misunderstanding of election operations.”

Gilbertson said she expects to respond with more details after county officials meet Thursday afternoon.

Secretary of state raises question about another router

County officials have balked before at the Senate’s previous requests for information.

In early April, as the Senate’s contractors prepared to do the audit, the Senate asked the county for more information about the way it stores ballots and election files. County officials refused to provide the information, saying that it provided everything it was legally obligated to provide under the subpoenas.

Part of the contractors’ recent confusion and questions over the county’s processes and files might come from the fact that they are missing this information, which they had told the county was important to doing the audit.

Meanwhile, the Arizona Secretary of State’s Office has raised several concerns about the way the contracted auditors are handling, storing and securing the county’s ballots and data. Audit monitors with the Secretary of State’s Office said they spotted a Wi-Fi router in the coliseum attached to the server that is storing data that the contractors download.

Unknown officials handling the audit’s Twitter account responded by saying that the router’s wireless internet was not enabled, but Senate liaison Ken Bennett has been unable to answer questions about why the router was there and how it has been used.

Senate contractors’ concerns over ballot and file storage

The Senate’s contractors told the Senate that they found deleted files on one of the county’s machines that they believe should have been included in the files the county provided under the subpoenas, and they see reference to a missing database that should also have been included.

Some of the contractors’ other concerns, about how the county’s ballots are stored, include:

● Why the number of ballots the county has indicated is in a batch of ballots has, in at least five cases, not been exactly the number of ballots the auditors say they have found in a batch.

● Why some batches of ballots are not clearly separated.

● Why some ballot boxes were not sealed with a tamper-evident seal.

The county has not yet responded to these questions.

Why the county says it can’t provide routers and administrative passwords

The county has responded in detail to the Senate’s concern about why it will not provide its routers, or digital copies of its routers, and administrative passwords.

Routers are hardware that connect local networks to the internet or to other networks.

The routers demanded in the January subpoenas route network traffic across 50 different county departments, not just the Elections Department, said county spokesperson Fields Moseley.

Bennett, the Senate’s liaison, has said the routers are needed to check whether the county’s voting machines were connected to the internet during the election. But a county spokesperson said that the auditors already have information and machines to perform that check, and a previous independent audit commissioned by the county proved they were not.

Cybersecurity and IT consultants told The Arizona Republic that providing the routers creates a risk by giving private firms access to a digital map of the county’s networks, which would make hacking into the system easier.

County Attorney Allister Adel has said that giving access to the routers would risk county residents’ Social Security information and public health information, along with sensitive law enforcement data.

Regarding the passwords for the county’s vote center ballot tabulation machines, the county has said that it has already provided all passwords it has in its custody, since some administrative passwords or keys aren’t necessary to conduct elections.

The county leases its voting machines from Dominion Voting Systems. The company said in a statement Thursday that it provides information to auditors who have been accredited by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission to certify voting machines, but will not provide information to unaccredited auditors.

The company did not specifically say whether it had provided passwords to the two private firms the county hired to do a comprehensive audit of the county’s voting machines in February.

Dominion’s statement accused Cyber Ninjas, the Senate’s main contractor, of demonstrating “bias and incompetence.”

“Releasing Dominion’s intellectual property to an unaccredited, biased, and plainly unreliable actor such as Cyber Ninjas would be reckless, causing irreparable damage to the commercial interests of the company and the election security interests of the country,” company officials wrote. “No company should be compelled to participate in such an irresponsible act.”

Senate leaders back off threat of new subpoenas

By attempting to arrange a meeting with county officials, the Senate backed off its threat to issue new subpoenas this week and force county officials along with each member of the Board of Supervisors to testify before lawmakers.

Kory Langhofer, an attorney for top Republican senators, told the county’s

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lawyers last week that the Senate would issue subpoenas on Monday if the Legislature did not receive the materials it demanded.

But Monday passed without Fann or Petersen, a Gilbert Republican who is the Senate Judiciary chairman, issuing any new subpoenas.

Instead, Fann’s letter invited Board of Supervisors Chairman Jack Sellers to meet Tuesday. It was unclear if the entire Senate Judiciary Committee would be invited.

In many ways, the meeting will resemble a hearing, if the county shows up. Fann said she would attend with Petersen and Bennett and they set aside a hearing room to stream video of the meeting online.

The letter did not demand that each supervisor appear. Rather, Fann asked for “assistance and cooperation” in resolving the Senate’s questions.

County Recorder Stephen Richer noted on social media that the county is running an election for Cave Creek on Tuesday.

Putting political pressure on the county supervisors may satisfy some supporters of Republican senators who, after all, voted just a few months ago to put the supervisors in jail when it fought the Senate’s subpoenas in court. And it is bound to boost the public profiles of some lawmakers among a section of the Republican Party that supports the audit.

Former President Donald Trump, who has fanned the political flames of the audit, weighed in on Fann’s letter calling the claims “devastating” and saying that it pointed out “voting irregularities, and probably fraud.”

Fann’s letter did not mention voting irregularities or fraud.

The Trump campaign and GOP filed several court cases claiming widespread voting fraud in Maricopa County, but all were dismissed by the courts. The county performed multiple postelection audits showing that votes were counted correctly.

But the meeting is likely to only give more attention to the Senate’s recount, even as Fann has sought to underscore the Legislature’s other work in a session that has been dominated by Republican lawmakers’ efforts to relitigate the results of the last election.

At least one Republican senator has publicly aired his reservations about the process. Sen. Paul Boyer, a Republican from Glendale and the only GOP member of the Senate to vote in February against jailing the Board of Supervisors, told the New York Times over the weekend the audit “makes us look like idiots.”