Maricopa County, Senate working to end election fight

PHOENIX – Maricopa County officials and the Republican-controlled Arizona Senate on Wednesday agreed to avoid further court hearings while they work on a deal to get the Senate a raft of data from November’s election.

The move could lead to an end of a bitter dispute over subpoenas issued by the lawmakers, many of whom who question how President Joe Biden won Arizona.

A deal, if it is finalized, would end a three-week fight in which the Republican-majority county board said the Senate’s requests were far out of bounds and likely to expose private voter information for political reasons.

The Senate, led by GOP President Karen Fann, had pressed ahead, saying they needed to audit the election results to ensure the county ran the election correctly and to craft new legislation addressing the concerns of Republicans.

County supervisors had sought court orders to block the subpoenas. They argued that lawmakers sought election information that was illegal to share. The Senate countered by asking a judge to issue orders requiring the county to comply. Last week, a judge urged the two sides to settle the case.

Fann claimed victory on Wednesday, saying the Senate was getting everything it wanted.

“Not only has the Board agreed to turn over all the relevant information we sought in our subpoenas so that we may perform an audit, but they also acknowledge that the Legislature is a sovereign power of the state and that the county is a political subdivision, and as such, the Legislature has the constitutional and statutory authority to issue subpoenas,” Fann said in a statement.

But Tom Liddy, the deputy county attorney representing the Board of Supervisors, said no final agreement has been reached, let alone one that hands over everything the Senate originally sought.

“The only agreement between the board and the Senate is that both have agreed to work together in good faith to get the senators any information that they need to perform their proper constitutional function of writing new laws or amending existing laws,” Liddy said. “What we’re committing to doing is working together .. and try to resolve these issues.”