In Arizona recount fight, Maricopa County and Dominion Voting Systems defy new subpoenas by state Senate
- Board chair: “The board has real work to do and little time to entertain this adventure in never-never land.”
- It’s unlikely a judge would force the supervisors and the company to comply.
Maricopa County, Arizona, supervisors and Dominion Voting Systems refused to produce additional election material on Monday in response to new subpoenas filed by the Arizona Senate in the state’s contentious, ongoing audit of the 2020 presidential election.
The subpoenas, issued July 26 by Republican Senate leaders, demanded that representatives for the county Board of Supervisors and Dominion appear and produce the materials by 1 p.m. Monday at the state Capitol.
Instead, county officials and a Dominion attorney sent Senate President Karen Fann a letter outlining why they will not comply. However, county officials said they will work with the Senate to provide some documents sought via a public-records request.
After three months, the audit of Arizona’s 2020 election results has surfaced no evidence of widespread voter fraud, even as former president Donald Trump and his supporters say otherwise and misinformation circulates on social media.
That vote failed in February.
And it’s unlikely a judge would force the supervisors and the company to comply.
While Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Timothy Thomason ruled in February that the initial subpoenas to the county were valid, he did not order the county to produce the materials. Thomason left enforcement of the subpoenas up to the Senate — which wasn’t required because the county complied with the subpoenas shortly after the court ruling.
hearing in July that they need more information from the county to complete the election review.
Fann and Petersen’s latest subpoena demanded:
- Information about data breaches to the county’s election systems.
- Ballot envelopes with voter signatures, or images of the envelopes.
- Information about changes to the county’s voter records.
- Routers and network data, some of which the senators had requested in original subpoenas to the county this past winter.
- Usernames, passwords, tokens and pins to the ballot tabulation machines the county rents from Dominion, including all that would provide administrative access. This was also a repeat from the original subpoenas.
The subpoena to Dominion made the same request for usernames, passwords, tokens and pins to their machines.
What the county and Dominion say they won’t provide
The supervisors sent the letter after meeting Monday morning in a closed-door session to discuss how to respond to the subpoena, among other topics.
gave back the machines on July 29, after getting them under the initial subpoenas.
Dominion said the subpoena “violates (the company’s) constitutional rights and … exceeds the Legislature’s constitutional and statutory authority.”
More on the audit:Maricopa County’s 2.1M ballots returned home
Supervisors attempted to block original subpoenas
The supervisors sued over the Senate’s original subpoenas in January, leading to the February court ruling that prompted county leaders to turn over all 2.1 million ballots, voting machines and other election materials.
pushed back against the election review by inexperienced contractors who aren’t accredited to handle voting machines.
Cyber Ninjas, a small cyber security firm out of Florida, had no background auditing elections.
GOP Senate leaders agreed to pay Cyber Ninjas $150,000 for the audit, which experts said was far less than such an undertaking would typically cost. A list of donors contributing more than $5.6 million for the work was released July 29, more than three months into the audit. Organizations led by “Stop the Steal” advocates and allies of Trump have bankrolled the effort.
Sellers and other supervisors have become increasingly outspoken about what they say is a lack of integrity in the audit and have emphasized the confidence they have in the county’s election results.
While Senate leaders have said that the audit has gone months past its original end date of May 14 because of county obstruction, Gates said on Monday that was not the case — the county has provided everything it can provide, he said, and the rest of it has a “rational basis for not turning over.”
Sellers said the supervisors hope they can eventually get past these “distractions,” because they have other important work to do.
Reach the reporter at jen.fifield@azcentral.com or at 602-444-8763. Follow her on Twitter @JenAFifield.