After this afternoon's decision by the Maricopa Board of Supervisors to get a judge involved in the State Senate's subpoenas for copies of everyone's ballots and most of the election hardware and software, it did not take long for the Maricopa County Attorney's Office to file the Complaint in Superior Court.
State Senate President Karen Fann and Judiciary Committee Chair Eddie Farnsworth had issued the subpoenas on Tuesday and demanded turnover of the information, etc. by this afternoon.
After two meetings and more than 7 1/4 hours of Executive Sessions to receive advice from legal counsel and to discuss the matter, the Supervisors voted 4-1 to ask for clarification from the courts about whether and how to comply.
All five of the Supervisors - the Board is made up of four Republicans and one Democrat - expressed their support for further auditing measures to demonstrate that Maricopa County pulled off a safe, fair and accurate election in November (and the previous two elections with the same process).
Steve Chucri was the sole "nay" vote, and he indicated that he thought the Supervisors should have paired the lawsuit about the subpoenas with a promise of an audit. The County had said that it had independent auditors ready earlier, but had sent them home because litigation was still ongoing. Arizona GOP Chairwoman Kelli Ward has appealed two different court dismissals - one to the 9th Circuit and one to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Board Chairman Clint Hickman said the lawmakers had given him a "slap in the face" when they sent the subpoenas the day after he had testified at their hearing the day before. "There are real constitututional issues with these subpoenas," he said.
Arizona's Law has detailed some of the issues the County faced in deciding whether or not to comply with the subpoenas, and why the discussions were taking a long time. Existing election integrity statutes have very specific provisions about how ballots and records are to be kept safe, for example.
County spokesman Fields Moseley told Arizona's Law that he did not know of any discussions between the two governmental entitities this week, but that individual Supervisors may have spoken with state lawmakers.
Here is the Complaint. It claims that the subpoenas are "unlawful" for a variety of reasons, including that they are invalid, serve no "legitimate legislative purpose", violates "secrecy of the ballot" and ballot security, and other reasons.
Interestingly, for the first time in this post-election war, Maricopa County hired outside legal counsel to collaborate with the team at the Maricopa County Attorney's Office. Stephen Tully from the national law firm Hinshaw & Culbertson is now on the case. He was the State House Majority Leader as a Republican Representative in the early 2000's.
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Maricopa County Election Subpoena Complaint by arizonaspolitics on Scribd
Maricopa County Letter to President Fann and Sen. Farnsworth by arizonaspolitics on Scribd
***(This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.)
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Consternation and anxiety in and by so many people would be reduced and possibly eliminated by increasing knowledge and understanding of how and why elections conducted by Maricopa County were indeed fair and accurate in their processes and results.
ReplyDeleteThe best way to gain that insight, aside from working for many years in the elections process is likely to take a universally available online class taught by acclaimed University of Michigan professor J Alex Halderman. The course is available for no cost except for the time and effort to complete the assignments, read the materials, and listen to the lectures. https://www.coursera.org/learn/digital-democracy