Arizona poll review: Maricopa County and Arizona GOP-led Senate reach deal after months of partisan fighting

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The state Senate fought with Maricopa County officials who failed to comply with subpoenas to disclose certain information relating to its voting system after the presidential election.
Fueled by former President Donald Trump’s claims of widespread fraud in the 2020 election, Republicans in the Arizona State Senate have demanded a manual third party tally of Maricopa County results which started in April.

The Maricopa County Supervisory Board on Friday agreed to provide the documents in question to a “special master,” who will hire experts to review the files and provide information to the state Senate. Former Arizona Republican Congressman John Shadegg will fill that role.

Florida-based company Cyber ​​Ninjas, head of election auditing, has no election auditing experience, and its chief executive has promoted Trump’s election conspiracy theories on the media. social.

The regulations “essentially keep county routers and other sensitive materials out of the hands of Senate contractor Cyber ​​Ninjas,” the board said in a press release Friday. “The deal also protects taxpayers and ends a legal dispute over the Senate’s current election review by bringing the county into full compliance with outstanding subpoenas.”

“Cyber ​​Ninjas will never be able to touch routers or access our data,†Maricopa County Board Chairman Jack Sellers said in a written statement. “An independent third party can confirm what we have always said: Election equipment was not connected to the Internet and no vote switching took place.”

The hands of the board were tied when the Arizona attorney general imposed a Sept. 27 deadline to meet state Senate subpoena requirements or risk losing $ 676 million in revenue from sales tax shared by the state, the council said in the statement.

“Under threat of losing hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue sharing, Maricopa County settled today with the State Senate, a victory for the integrity of the elections and the taxpayer of the Arizona, “State Senate President Karen Fann said in a statement.

Fann, a Republican, added the county will cover Shadegg’s costs for conducting the review. Shadegg can hire one to three computer experts to answer questions from the state Senate, depending on the agreement.

Additionally, the agreement limits Arizona Senate questions to county routers and splunk logs related to the November general election.

The Arizona Senate had issued subpoenas asking Maricopa County for a plethora of information, including documents, passwords, security information, changes to voter registration records, envelopes or signed ballot images, documents relating to any violation of the electoral system, information on changes to voting records. , county routers and IP addresses and computer logs from two months before and three months after the election.

But the county had refused to share some documents due to security concerns.

“The Senate will finally get the answers to the questions posed in the subpoenas issued to the county months ago,” Fann said.

CNN’s Aya Elamroussi contributed to this report.

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