Maricopa County's continued refusal to comply with the state Senate's 2020 election audit subpoena may result in the county losing hundreds of millions of dollars in state funding, Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich warned.
“Maricopa County Board of Supervisors is in violation of state law for failing to comply with the Arizona Senate’s legislative subpoena related to the 2020 election audit. If MCBOS does not change course, the AGO will notify the Arizona Treasurer to withhold Maricopa County’s state-shared funds as required under the law,” Brnovich said.
The state provides about $700 million, over a quarter, of Maricopa County's $2.7 billion budget.
Arizona state Senate President Karen Fann and Judiciary Committee Chairman Warren Petersen have pressed the county and Dominion Voting Systems to produce routers, traffic logs, mail-in ballot envelopes, and other information in their investigation. The county has refused.
Brnovich said that the county is violating state law by not complying with the state Senate’s requests in its 2020 election audit.
Brnovich added: “We are notifying the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors that it must fully comply with the Senate’s subpoena as required by the law. Our courts have spoken. The rule of law must be followed.”
Meanwhile, Fann told the Arizona Daily Independent that she was interviewing a potential contractor to audit another aspect of Maricopa County’s election process – how election workers verified voter signatures on the nearly 1.9 million early 2020 ballot affidavit envelopes.
Fann says whoever she hires to review the procedures and the signatures will start by looking for envelopes which do not contain the required voter signature, the report noted. There will also be a review for unidentifiable signatures, what Fann’s calls “scribbles,” which can be matched up against Maricopa County’s voter database, which includes images of all prior signatures used by a voter during an election.
For those anxiously awaiting the final audit report, Fann said: “I think the important thing to remember, as I’ve said gazillions of times, is that all of this is about election integrity. It has been so disappointing to see the Secretary of State [Katie Hobbs], the Recorder [Stephen Richer], and the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors pushing back on this since even before we selected an auditor.”
Joe Biden reportedly won Arizona by less than 11,000 votes.
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