Arizona

Arizona Republicans propose major changes to elections after GOP review finds no fraud | Jane C. Timm/NBC

Arizona Republicans have put forth two dozen bills this month that would significantly change the state’s electoral processes after the GOP’s unorthodox review of millions of ballots affirmed President Joe Biden’s victory and turned up no proof of fraud. Proposals introduced in the state House or the Senate would add an additional layer to the state’s voter ID requirement, such as fingerprints, and stipulate the hand counting of all ballots by default. Other legislation would require that paper ballots be printed with holograms and watermarks. Republican legislators argue that the proposals, part an ongoing surge of GOP-led election changes enacted or under consideration across the country, are necessary to enhance election security and prevent fraud. Official counts, audits and accuracy tests have confirmed the election results in Arizona and elsewhere without finding evidence of widespread fraud, and states with Republican and Democratic leaders have certified the results as accurate. Former President Donald Trump, who continues to promote the lie that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him, was unable to prove any of the claims in court. A coalition of federal agencies involved in election security, alongside representatives of election officials from each state, said the election was “the most secure in American history.”

Full Article: Arizona Republicans propose major changes to elections after GOP review finds no fraud

Arizona Senate asks Cyber Ninjas if audit files stored in data center | Robert Anglen/Arizona Republic

Arizona Senate President Karen Fann is asking contractors who led the largely discredited audit of Maricopa County’s election results if public records are being stored at a data center. In a two-sentence letter Thursday, sent to lead contractor Cyber Ninjas and three other companies that worked on the audit, Fann said Senate lawyers learned the company might have leased a data center. “We recently learned that a data center, possibly leased to Cyber Ninjas, Inc, or StratTech Solutions, may be housing records concerning the Arizona State Senate’s audit of the 2020 election in Maricopa County,” Fann wrote. “Please confirm as soon as possible whether this information is correct and, if so, when and on what terms the Senate may access the facility or its resources.” Fann said Thursday she has little information about the data center. She said it’s unknown where it is located, why it might have been leased or what records could be stored there. “There’s not a lot I can say,” she said. “I received info that possible records were stored in a data center.” Fann’s inquiry comes as the Senate defends itself from two lawsuits, now combined, over access to records in the partisan election review. The Arizona Republic and a Washington, D.C.-based watchdog group called American Oversight both sued the Senate to make the records public. The Republic also sued Cyber Ninjas.

Full Article: Arizona Senate asks Cyber Ninjas if audit files stored in data center

Arizona: Cyber Ninjas, firm that led ballot review, is closed | Derek Gilliam/Sarasota Herald-Tribune

The CEO of the Florida cybersecurity company that conducted a highly contested election review in Arizona confirmed Friday that his company has closed and laid off its employees. News of the closure had reached Arizona on Thursday shortly before a judge issued an order finding the company in contempt of court and imposing a fine of $50,000 a day for its failure to produce records requested by The Arizona Republic. Company founder Doug Logan on Friday confirmed the shutdown to the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, but said it wasn’t because of the fines, pointing instead to cash flow issues. He notified the remaining four employees — down from eight when the audit started last year in Maricopa County — of the decision to close the business the first week of December. “Yes, we closed our doors and laid off our employees,” he said. “No. It did not have anything to do with what happened yesterday.” The employees were laid off Jan. 1 and will have health insurance through the month, he said. Part of Cyber Ninjas’ cash flow problems, Logan said, stemmed from the Arizona Senate not adhering to the contract signed when it hired the company to conduct the audit. Logan said the company was never fully paid for the audit, nor did the Senate indemnify the company as was required by the company’s contract.

Full Article: Cyber Ninjas, firm that led Arizona ballot review, is closed

Arizona GOP officials in Maricopa County affirm 2020 election was secure in rebuttal to Trump claims | Rosalind S. Helderman(The Washington Post

Full Article: GOP officials in Arizona’s largest county affirm 2020 election was secure in rebuttal to Trump claims – The Washington Post

Arizona: ‘You’ll get nothing out of this’: Partisans with limited experience stumble through gaffe-prone ‘audit’ | Ronald J. Hansen, Yvonne Wingett Sanchez and Jen Fifield/Arizona Republic

On the day in March that Ken Bennett joined the state Senate’s ballot review team, he wanted a Democrat to join him. Bennett, the Republican former state Senate president and secretary of state, was well known in conservative circles. But he wanted to add bipartisan credibility to a Republican-led effort cast as a forensic audit of Maricopa County’s election results. He called his friend, F. Ann Rodriguez, the recently retired Pima County recorder. Rodriguez, a Democrat, oversaw more than 280 elections over 28 years in office. She laughed. “Ken, you don’t have enough money to pay me to do that,” she remembered telling him on March 23. “There is a no-win situation in that one. No matter what comes out, we know in politics there’s a fall person. You’ll get nothing out of this, Ken. Absolutely nothing.” That same day, Helen Purcell, the former Republican Maricopa County recorder, told Bennett why she had turned down the job as liaison to the ballot review that he had just taken. “I just don’t think any good can come of this,” she told him. Three days later, Bennett contacted the Arizona Democratic Party, whose leaders were roundly skeptical the review would be fair or boost public confidence. They declined to participate. On March 28, Bennett began reaching out to Pete Rios, the former Democratic state senator from Pinal County, who is a former county supervisor there. “I need your help,” Rios remembered Bennett saying when they finally spoke on April 1. “You’re the first one I thought of.” Rios said he needed several days to consider the offer. In truth, he doubted he would do it; only his respect for Bennett kept him from turning it down flat. After consulting three fellow Democrats, all of whom warned against joining a “fiasco,” Rios told Bennett he couldn’t take the job. “Ken, my D’s will hang me if there is some question at the end of this audit that says that there was fraud when there really wasn’t,” Rios told Bennett in April.

Full Article: Arizona audit: Partisans stumble through gaffe-prone election review

Arizona Election Audit Reinforced Doubt About 2020 Election Results | Erin Snodgrass/Business Insider

When organizers of the troubled GOP-led election audit in Maricopa County, Arizona, finally released results from the months-long, oft-delayed recount in September, the findings confirmed that President Joe Biden beat former President Donald Trump fairly in the largest county in the once-solidly red state. But despite the additional proof of Biden’s success, the controversial “audit” actually played a role in increasing the level of doubt surrounding the historic presidential election, according to a new Monmouth University poll. Earlier this year, the state’s GOP-controlled Senate chose Cyber Ninjas, a private firm, to carry out another count of the 2.1 million ballots in Maricopa County, where Biden beat Trump by more than 45,000 votes. Billed by Senate Republicans as a mechanism to instill faith in US elections, the controversial audit was funded by right-wing donors and widely criticized, even by other local Republicans in the state. Maricopa County’s GOP-led Board of Supervisors said the recount’s draft reports were “littered with errors and faulty conclusions.” Even still, the effort found that Biden did beat Trump, resulting in an additional 99 votes for Biden and a loss of 261 votes for Trump. In a Monmouth University poll of 811 adults in the US by telephone from November 4 to 8 of this year, the majority of Americans, 36% said the review proved that Biden won the county fairly and another 21% said they aren’t sure about the report but guess that it probably showed Biden’s legitimate victory.

Full Article: Arizona Election Audit Reinforced Doubt About 2020 Election Results

Arizona: Election experts warn Chandler not to adopt mobile voting because it’s ‘dangerously insecure’ | Ben Giles/KJZZ

As Chandler runs a mock election using blockchain technology for mobile voting, an election advocacy group urged the city not to adopt what they called a “dangerously insecure” voting method. Verified Voting, a non-partisan organization that advocates for paper ballots, issued a statement warning that “there is simply no secure way to electronically return voted ballots while protecting voter privacy, maintaining ballot secrecy and still providing a verifiable record of the voter’s intent.” … C.Jay Coles, a senior policy analyst with Verified Voting, doesn’t deny that blockchain tech is designed to keep information secure. But there’s no way of knowing whether the voter’s personal device — in this case, a cellphone — is secure. “So is there anything on the voter’s device that is malicious, that can alter what the voter is inputting in their own device before it is entered into the blockchain?” Coles said. Once the vote has been cast and is secured using blockchain, “the voter has no idea if it was entered correctly, and the elections office has no way of knowing whether or not the voter’s intent is accurately captured in that record, because you can’t go back to the voter and ask them because that violates the right of a secret ballot,” Coles added.

Full Article: Officials warn Chandler not to adopt mobile voting | KJZZ

Arizona Court to Rule on Contempt Charge Against State Senate | Charles Davis/Business Insider

An Arizona court is set to decide early next month whether to hold the Republican-led state Senate in contempt for failing to hand over documents related to the partisan, Cyber Ninjas review of ballots cast in the 2020 election. On Tuesday, Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Michael Kemp set a hearing for December 2 to address the lack of compliance with his earlier ruling that the documents should be handed over. Attorneys for the state Senate, which commissioned the review of Maricopa County’s 2.1 million ballots, have said some of the documents are protected by “legislative privilege,” an argument the court rejected last month. “[I]t is hard to imagine more serious litigation than the disclosure of documents underlying an audit of the election of the President of the United States and a United States Senator,” Judge Kemp wrote at the time. “This goes to the heart of our democracy and this audit was done in response to allegations of fraud and corruption.” The controversial, GOP-led audit of Arizona’s election results further confirmed President Joe Biden’s 2020 victory over Donald Trump. Republicans in Arizona’s state Senate commissioned Cyber Ninjas to helm the audit in April 2021 after Biden became the first Democrat to win in Maricopa County since 1948.

Full Article: Arizona Audit: Court to Rule on Contempt Charge Against State Senate

Arizona Attorney General questions former Maricopa County election offical | Jonathan J. Cooper/Associated Press

Former Maricopa County Recorder Adrian Fontes said Monday he was questioned by investigators from Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich’s office about the 2020 election. The questioning of Fontes, a Democrat who oversaw mail-in balloting last year but lost his own re-election bid, suggests Brnovich is pressing ahead with his pledge to review the findings of the state Senate Republicans’ partisan review of the 2020 election. That review, led and almost entirely funded by supporters of former President Donald Trump, confirmed President Joe Biden’s victory in Maricopa County but spread falsehoods about alleged malfeasance. Brnovich is seeking the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate but could be weighed down by sharp criticism from Trump, who retains considerable sway with the GOP base. Trump repeatedly attacked Brnovich earlier this year as “lackluster,” claiming the attorney general wasn’t doing enough to advance the false claim that Trump’s loss in Arizona was the result of fraud. Fontes, who is running in a contested Democratic primary for secretary of state, said he spoke for about an hour Monday morning with two special agents from Brnovich’s office. He said the discussion was “professional and collegial,” but he said the agents did not seem to know much about election systems. “If they were trying to build an actual case, they would’ve been prepared before they asked me any questions,” Fontes told The Associated Press. “This is nothing more than political box-checking and an abuse of power by a desperate Republican Senate nominee.”

Full Article: Arizona AG questions former Maricopa County election offical

Arizona GOP Senate President Says Cyber Ninjas in Breach of Contract Following Audit | Daniel Villareal/Newsweek

Karen Fann, the Republican leader of the Arizona state Senate, has said that Cyber Ninjas, the private company commissioned to conduct an audit of Maricopa County’s election results, is now in “breach of contract” with the state for not providing audit-related documentation. In an October 26 letter to Cyber Ninjas and CEO Doug Logan, Fann said that she had previously sent Logan a September 14 letter. In that letter, Fann told the company to submit all its audit-related records to her in order to comply with a court order. Cyber Ninjas only provided 300 records, “an insubstantial percentage of all existing responsive records,” Fann wrote. “Accordingly, Cyber Ninjas’ inadequate response to my September 14 request places it in material breach of the (contract) as construed by the court,” her letter continued. “The Senate reserves its rights to pursue any and every applicable claim or reemit to enforce the agreement’s provisions.”

Full Article: GOP Arizona Senate President Says Cyber Ninjas in Breach of Contract Following Audit

Arizona GOP Chair Kelli Ward Pushes for Election Audits in Each of State’s 15 Counties | Andrew Stanton/Newsweek

Arizona Republican Party Chair Kelli Ward is calling for election audits in every county in the state, even after an audit of Maricopa County upheld the results of the 2020 presidential election. Some Republicans have insisted that former President Donald Trump lost the 2020 presidential election due to widespread voter fraud in battleground states like Arizona, even though no substantive evidence has been presented to support the allegations. Audits have also been called in several other states over such unproven claims. In a new video entitled “Special Update,” Ward claims an analysis of election results in Pima County found inconsistencies. Pima is the state’s second-largest county and home to Tucson, a Democratic stronghold. Ward said there should be an audit of not only Pima County but every county in the state. “I’ve been asking for full audits of all 15 of Arizona’s counties,” she said. “We the people will not back down. We will not waver.” The push for more audits comes days after Trump also called for a review in Pima County. In a statement released October 15, the former president claimed that an analysis of mail-in ballots indicates there were “fictitious votes” cast in the county.

Full Article: Arizona GOP Chair Kelli Ward Pushes for Election Audits in Each of State’s 15 Counties

Arizona: Trump now claims voter fraud in Pima County; officials say he’s wrong | Sam Kmack/Arizona Daily Star

Full Article: Trump now claims voter fraud in Pima County; officials say he’s wrong | Local news | tucson.com

Arizona audit review shows Cyber Ninjas didn’t count 312K ballots, double counted 23K | Robert Anglen/The Arizona Republic

The hand count in Maricopa County was off by hundreds of thousands of ballots, according to a review of newly released Arizona audit records. Election analysts say Cyber Ninjas’ count was off by about 312,000 and it also double counted almost 23,000 ballots in its months-long review of 2020 election results. The numbers represent the latest challenge to the Arizona Senate’s audit, which was led by Cyber Ninjas, involved more than a thousand volunteers and cost millions of dollars. A 695-page report, produced by former Arizona GOP chair and audit spokesperson Randy Pullen, was supposed to provide a snapshot of all the counts of the 2.1 million ballots cast in the county’s general election. The Arizona Senate released the report late Friday after The Arizona Republic filed a request under the state’s Public Records Law. But Cyber Ninjas didn’t tally as many as 167,000 Maricopa County ballots, according to analysts who reviewed the report for The Republic. The hand-count numbers in the report reflect a 15% error rate when compared with a separate machine count of ballots authorized by the Arizona Senate, they said.

Full Article: Arizona audit review shows Cyber Ninjas didn’t count 312K ballots

Arizona: Judge rejects Senate claim some election audit records are private | Howard Fischer/Arizona Daily Star

Full Article: Judge rejects Arizona Senate’s claim some election audit records are private | Local news | tucson.com

Arizona: Maricopa County officials blast election review’s ‘spread of disinformation’ | Diannie Chavez/Cronkite News

Maricopa County supervisors told a congressional committee Thursday that the state Senate’s review of the county’s 2020 election results amounted to a “staggering refusal to follow the will of the voters.” The remarks came during a House Oversight and Reform Committee that asked whether the Arizona election probe and copycats springing up in other states are a threat to American democracy. The four-hour hearing was sometimes tedious, sometimes fiery, but it did not appear to change any minds. Democrats on the committee called the six-month, multimillion-dollar Cyber Ninjas’ “audit” of the election little more than an attempt to erode confidence in the electoral process by raising multiple conspiratorial questions. And Republicans insisted that more questions need to be asked. “We have identified there are some things we can do better in our elections in Arizona,” said Ken Bennett, the former Arizona secretary of state who was the Senate’s liaison to Cyber Ninjas. “I hope the Legislature and the governor will follow through and … introduce bills to tighten things up.” Bennett said people on both sides of the issue should “understand that there’s nothing wrong with auditing elections.”

Full Article: Maricopa officials blast election review’s ‘spread of disinformation’ – Cronkite News – Arizona PBS

Arizona Vote Review ‘Made Up the Numbers,’ Election Experts Say | Michael Wines and Nick Corasaniti/The New York Times

The circuslike review of the 2020 vote commissioned by Arizona Republicans took another wild turn on Friday when veteran election experts charged that the very foundation of its findings — the results of a hand count of 2.1 million ballots — was based on numbers so unreliable that they appear to be guesswork rather than tabulations. The organizers of the review “made up the numbers,” the headline of the experts’ report reads. The experts, a data analyst for the Arizona Republican Party and two retired executives of an election consulting firm in Boston, said in their report that workers for the investigators failed to count thousands of ballots in a pallet of 40 ballot-filled boxes delivered to them in the spring. The final report by the Republican investigators concluded that President Biden actually won 99 more votes than were reported, and that former President Donald J. Trump tallied 261 fewer votes. But given the large undercount found in just a sliver of the 2.1 million ballots, it would effectively be impossible for the Republican investigators to arrive at such precise numbers, the experts said.

Source: Arizona Vote Review ‘Made Up the Numbers,’ Election Experts Say – The New York Times

Arizona Audit Backers Turn on Each Other After Recount Flop | Will Sommer/The Daily Beast

Supporters of Republicans’ controversial “audit” of 2020 presidential election ballots have turned on each other after the partisan investigation failed to find proof of election malfeasance, with disaffected backers even circulating a fabricated rival report they claim shows interference by the “deep state.” The audit report landed with a thud on Friday, only proving, if anything, that Joe Biden won Arizona by more votes than previously realized. On this week’s episode of The Daily Beast’s Fever Dreams podcast, hosts Asawin Suebsaeng and Will Sommer are joined by Arizona Mirror reporter Jerod MacDonald-Evoy to discuss the audit’s fractious aftermath. “Some people who were involved in the report say the deep state kept the real truth out,” Sommer said on this week’s episode. “The deep state and the politically correct lawyers and RINOs of the GOP suppressed this,” said MacDonald-Evoy, summarizing right-wing critics’ complaints about the anti-climactic audit report. Among the audit report’s new detractors: Jovan Hutton Pulitzer, the controversial inventor whose supposed technology analyzing folds in ballot paper had promised, according to audit supporters, to detect some kind of voter fraud. Instead, the final audit report contained no mention of Pulitzer’s imaging technology, a change Pulitzer attributed on Twitter to “deep state” malfeasance. Asked over email who in the “deep state” supposedly sabotaged his contribution to the report, Pulitzer remained vague. “That’s the big question — is it not?” Pulitzer wrote in an email to The Daily Beast.

Full Article: Arizona Audit Backers Turn on Each Other After Recount Flop

Arizona: ‘We won’: Trump and his allies barrel ahead with election lies despite review confirming his loss | Jeremy Herb and Fredreka Schouten/CNN

Full Article: Arizona election audit: Trump and his allies barrel ahead with election lies despite review confirming his loss – CNNPolitics

Arizona Secretary of State’s Ability to Defend Election Laws Restored By Judge’s Ruling | Mary Ellen Cagnassola/Newsweek

Republican-passed laws in Arizona that ban schools form requiring masks and restrict the ability of local governments to enact COVID-19 requirements were dismantled by a judge Monday, a devastating blow to a nationwide GOP effort to limit pandemic rules. The decision by Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Katherine Cooper could create a path for Arizona cities and countries to enact mask requirements, if it withstands an impending appeal. Nearly 30 public school systems ignored the laws and required masks for students and staff. Republican Governor Doug Ducey‘s office called the ruling “clearly an example of judicial overreach.” “Arizona’s state government operates with three branches, and it’s the duty and authority of only the legislative branch to organize itself and to make laws,” C.J. Karamargin said in a statement. “Unfortunately, today’s decision is the result of a rogue judge interfering with the authority and processes of another branch of government.”

Full Article: Arizona Secretary of State’s Ability to Defend Election Laws Restored By Judge’s Ruling

Arizona Senate leaders confirm Biden win but call for further review of election procedures | Mary Jo Pitzl and Jen Fifield/Arizona Republic

The Maricopa County election review hit a crescendo Friday when its results were presented to the Arizona Senate Republicans who ordered it in the heated aftermath of last year’s presidential election. It was a major milestone — if not the end — of the nearly 10-month odyssey pushed largely by election conspiracists loyal to former President Donald Trump, who believed a thorough review would show county elections officials didn’t get it right. But any hopes for such a conclusion were dashed early by Senate President Karen Fann, R-Prescott, who confirmed in her opening remarks what draft versions of the reports leaked to journalists the day before said: The hand recount of ballots showed Joe Biden won the election in Maricopa County, cementing his win in Arizona. “That is a true statement. Truth is truth, numbers are numbers,” Fann said as a packed audience in the Senate gallery listened quietly. She added, though, that she believed there were “broken statutes” and flawed election procedures — issues that she would turn over to Attorney General Mark Brnovich to investigate.

Full Article: Arizona audit: Senate confirms Biden win, but more review to come

Arizona Republican Review of Vote Fails to Show Stolen Election | Jack Healy, Michael Wines and Nick Corasaniti/The New York Times

Full Article: Republican Review of Arizona Vote Fails to Show Stolen Election – The New York Times

Arizona ballot review undermined election security, new Center for Internet Security leaders say | Benjamin Freed/StateScoop

Two of the former statewide election officials recently hired to lead the Center for Internet Security’s election security efforts said Friday that the partisan ballot review in Maricopa County, Arizona, undermined the work that election officials have done to secure elections over the past few years. “It’s the very opposite of what election officials around the country have been working to do,” said former Pennsylvania Secretary of the Commonwealth Kathy Boockvar, who started earlier this month as CIS’s new vice president of election operations and support. “There’s no need to make up stuff because we have practices that exist that dedicated officials at the state and local level have been carrying out.” Boockvar’s comments came the same day the Arizona Senate is due to hold a hearing on the results of a five-month inspection of more than 2.1 million ballots from Maricopa County, a process that was ordered up by supporters of former President Donald Trump who objected to his loss last year to Joe Biden. A draft of the report by Cyber Ninjas, the third-party company that was hired to conduct the ballot inspection — which was so fraught that Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs decertified the county’s entire inventory of voting equipment — once again confirmed President Biden’s win, though it continued to push claims about election officials’ conduct that Maricopa County officials have said are false.

Full Article: Arizona ballot review undermined election security, new EI-ISAC leaders say

The Arizona Election Audit Is Still Unraveling in Chaos | David A. Graham/The Atlantic

If you’ve forgotten about the Arizona “audit” of Maricopa County’s votes in the 2020 election, you can be forgiven. At times, it seems like the audits’ backers have forgotten about it too. Arizona state-Senate Republicans launched the process this spring as a response to false claims of election fraud spread by several of themselves, as well as former President Donald Trump. The Senate hired Cyber Ninjas, a firm run by a “Stop the Steal” backer that has repeatedly declined to offer any evidence it is qualified for the job. The process was originally expected to conclude by May 14. This was a hard deadline, because the coliseum rented for the count was due to hold another event. But the count missed that deadline, and the process resumed later in May. May turned to June, and Donald Trump was reportedly telling people that he expected to be reinstated to the presidency in August, once the audit proved that fraud had tainted the election results. (Never mind that there remains no evidence of widespread fraud, and that there’s no mechanism for a former president to be reinstated mid-term.) By July, the due date was mid-August.

Full Article: The Arizona Election Audit Is Still Unraveling in Chaos – The Atlantic

Arizona: Cyber Ninjas, flouting court order, refuse to turn over public records to the Senate | Jeremy Duda/Arizona Mirror

Cyber Ninjas won’t hand over all of the documents that Senate President Karen Fann requested from the review it conducted of the 2020 election in Maricopa County, despite an order by the Arizona Court of Appeals that all such records be made public. Attorney Jack Wilenchik, who represents the Florida-based company that led the election review that Fann ordered, argued to the Senate’s lawyer that the staffing records and internal communications are not public records, and said Cyber Ninjas will not turn them over as the Senate president requested. The company will provide “full financial statements” about the audit, either as part of the report that will become public on Sept. 24, or shortly thereafter, Wilenchik wrote in an email to Senate attorney Kory Langhofer on Friday. And it will provide its communications with the Senate, which have not been made public, and any updated policies and procedures its subcontractors have used during the audit. But staffing records, as well as internal communications and communications with subcontractors, are private records, Wilenchik wrote. For example, Wilenchik said it would not be “practical, workable, fair or legal” for the company to be forced to turn over internal company emails about staffing and Cyber Ninjas’ performance of its contract with the Senate. “If the case were otherwise, then it would set an extremely unsettling precedent for all government contractors in this state and make it impossible for the State to do business,” Wilenchik wrote. Furthermore, Wilenchik said Fann’s request for all records that have “a substantial nexus to the audit” — a phrase that the Arizona Court of Appeals used to describe documents that the Senate must obtain and publicly release under the state’s public records law — is vague and difficult to define.

Full Article: Cyber Ninjas, flouting court order, refuse to turn over public records to the Senate

Arizona Supreme Court allows release of Senate audit records | Bob Christie/Associated Press

The Arizona Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected an effort by the state Senate to keep secret records of its ongoing review of the 2020 election in Maricopa County that are in the possession of the contractors conducting the recount. The high court without comment rejected the appeal filed after an appeals court and trial court both ruled the documents are public records that must be released. The court also dissolved a stay on the appeals court ruling it put in place on Aug. 24 so it could review the record and decide whether to accept the appeal. The Arizona Court of Appeals had ruled that the documents sought by the watchdog group American Oversight detailing how the recount and audit are being conducted are public and must be turned over. Republicans who control the Senate have tried for months to keep secret how their contractors are conducting the recount. They argued that because the records are maintained by Senate contractors, they were not subject to public records law and that legislative immunity applies. But the appeals court in its Aug. 19 ruling rejected that argument. The court said the main contractor, Florida company Cyber Ninjas, was subject to the records law because it was performing a core government function that the Senate farmed out.

Full Article: Arizona Supreme Court allows release of Senate audit records

Arizona: 42% of Maricopa County budget on the line as officials discuss next move on senators’ election subpoenas | Jen Fifield/Arizona Republic

Maricopa County stands to lose hundreds of millions in state funding — an estimated 42% of the money it uses to run the county’s day-to-day operations such as public safety, the court system and public health — if officials don’t act soon. Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich said last month that, by not fully responding to subpoenas for election information issued by a few state Senate leaders, the county had violated state law and would lose state money, amounting to about $676 million of the $1.6 billion in general fund revenue the county expects this fiscal year. Key among the Senate’s demands: access to the county’s routers. Brnovich gave the county 30 days to respond, with a deadline of Sept. 27. The supervisors are considering how to move forward. They met in a closed-door session to discuss the issue on Thursday, but didn’t come to any decision. Supervisors were not immediately available for comment. “Productive talks today,” county spokesperson Jason Berry said. “We’ll act before the deadline.” Among the various options, he said, are further responding to the subpoenas, attempting to negotiate with the Senate or filing a lawsuit. The fight continues to pit county Republicans — four of five supervisors and Recorder Stephen Richer are Republican — against state Republicans, including Brnovich and the two senators who issued the subpoenas, Senate President Karen Fann and Senate Judiciary Chairman Warren Petersen.

Full Article: Maricopa County supervisors debate compliance with Senate subpoenas

Arizona canvass report draws nonsensical conclusions | Ali Swenson/Associated Press

A report released this week in Arizona’s largest county falsely claims to have uncovered some 173,000 “lost” votes and 96,000 “ghost votes” in a private door-to-door canvassing effort, supposedly rendering the 2020 election in Maricopa County “uncertifiable.” But its conclusions aren’t supported by any evidence, according to county election officials and outside election experts, who called the report’s methods “quasi-science” and its findings inaccurate. Still, the 11-page document ⁠— which is separate from an ongoing partisan audit in the county ⁠— has been shared widely in conservative media and by Republican politicians, including state Rep. Mark Finchem, who is campaigning to be Arizona’s secretary of state — the state’s top election official. Report author Liz Harris, an unsuccessful Republican legislative candidate and a real estate agent in the Phoenix suburb of Chandler, declined to respond to specific questions but said a more comprehensive version of the report would be released soon. Here’s a closer look at the facts.

CLAIM: An estimated 173,104 “missing or lost” votes and an estimated 96,389 “ghost” votes cast by people who didn’t appear to live at their voter registration addresses indicate that the 2020 election in Maricopa County included irregularities and is “uncertifiable.”

THE FACTS: The report doesn’t provide evidence for these far-fetched claims, and the county’s election results have been certified for months.

Source: FACT FOCUS: AZ canvass report draws nonsensical conclusions

Arizona Senate releases more records of 2020 election review | Bob Christie/Associated Press

Lawyers representing the Republican-controlled Arizona Senate in a review of 2020 election results in the state’s most populous county released a slew of communications between GOP lawmakers, their audit liasions and others under a court order obtained by a watchdog group that is fighting for transparency in the election recount. Among the communications were text messages from a top campaign official of former President Donald Trump to Senate liaison Randy Pullen asking where to send $175,000 to help pay for the partisan recount. Former Trump campaign chief operating officer and ex-Arizona state Treasurer Jeff DeWit also asked Pullen if another group raising funds for the audit was legitimate, saying “Trump asking.” The Senate records were not complete. Senate attorney Kory Langhofer told a judge Wednesday that it withheld nearly 3,000 records because they contained legislative or attorney-client communications he says are privileged. Other records sought by American Oversight remain the subject of a court battle. A judge had also ordered the Senate’s contractor, including the Florida company that is overseeing the audit, to produce its records.

Full Article: Arizona Senate releases more records of 2020 election review

Arizona Attorney General: County must comply with 2020 election subpoena | Bob Christie/Associated Press

An Arizona county that has resisted parts of a subpoena issued by the state Senate as it reviews how it handled the 2020 election must turn over everything the Senate wants or lose all its state funding, the state attorney general said Thursday. Attorney General Mark Brnovich issued the decision after a Republican senator asked him if Maricopa County’s refusal to hand over routers, passwords and other items the Senate says it needs to complete the unprecedented partisan review violated state law. The county has turned over its vote-counting machines, servers and huge amounts of data but balked at handing over routers it uses county-wide and passwords it says it does not control. But the county board of supervisors has said the routers were never connected to election tabulation equipment but were used by every county department, including the sheriff’s office, and that turning them over would compromise sensitive law enforcement information. Brnovich, also a Republican, said that refusal to comply with the Senate’s subpoena violates state law and triggers another law that penalizes counties, cities or towns that have policies in conflict with laws enacted by the Legislature. The county has until Sept. 27 to comply or it will lose all the revenue it gets from the state — about 25% of its budget, which was $2.8 billion in 2020.

Full Article: Arizona AG: County must comply with 2020 election subpoena

Arizona: Covid Outbreak Delays Report on G.O.P.’s Election Review | Michael Wines/The New York Times

Full Article: Covid Outbreak Delays Report on Arizona G.O.P.’s Election Review – The New York Times