PHOENIX — Maricopa County supervisors were served Tuesday with subpoenas from the state Senate demanding access to copies of the more than 2 million ballots cast by Maricopa County voters in the Nov. 3 election.

The subpoenas also call for access to the equipment used to tabulate those ballots and the software that ran the equipment.

They tell Maricopa County to deliver the information to Sen. Eddie Farnsworth, R-Gilbert, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, before 5 p.m. on Friday, Dec. 18.

Farnsworth, whose subpoenas were issued with consent of the Senate president, said there needs to be an audit of the votes to determine if the results reported match the votes marked on the ballots. And the only way that can happen, he said, is if forensic examiners have access to everything.

President-elect Joe Biden on Tuesday thanked Georgians for delivering him the state in last month's election and urged them to follow up to deliver two Democratic Senate runoff victories in January.

Farnsworth said that doesn’t mean he expects the county to haul the equipment to his Senate offices. Instead, he said, it means the county must provide full access to auditors who can take a look at not just the equipment but also the programming.

Those auditors have yet to be selected, he said.

The subpoenas are a direct result of a six-hour hearing of the Judiciary Committee on Monday, Dec. 14, where lawmakers raised a series of questions about the conduct of the election.

Some of those dealt with procedural matters, like the level of access given to political party observers during the process of opening early ballots, comparing signatures and counting.

But the biggest questions surrounded the use of Dominion Voting Systems hardware and software and whether it could be counted on to deliver accurate results.

Farnsworth compared his effort to an audit done of voting equipment in Michigan.

“I don’t believe they ended up going into the proprietary ‘base code,’ ” he said. “But those things can be adjusted or manipulated by introducing (changes), either through a USB or some other kind of card.”

He said that requires that auditors have access “to whatever they need” to determine if the programming was in any way altered or whether it might just be flawed.

“These are the experts who do this,” he said.

The senator, who is leaving the Legislature at the end of the year, said he’s not suggesting there is fraud.

“There may be fraud,” he said. “But what I’m suggesting is if there are irregularities because of some flaw in the code or somebody tampered with the code by adding a USB drive or anything else, I just want them to have access to the information so they can do a full forensic audit.”

And if no fraud is found, given that a federal judge in Arizona found no evidence of fraud?

“Well, that goes a long way to restore confidence in our election process,” Farnsworth said. “And if we do find fraud, that’s what we need to do is somehow identify it and see what we can do to stop it.”

Farnsworth said while he wants digital copies of all 2 million ballots, that doesn’t mean the auditors will need to review all of them to determine if the results reported match what was marked on the ballots.

He said it will be up to auditors to determine how many they need to make them comfortable with the results.

That move comes despite statements by Scott Jarrett, the county’s elections director, who pointed out that such a hand-count audit already was conducted by reviewing more than 47,000 ballots that were selected by officials from both political parties.

He told lawmakers that there was a 100% match between what reviewers found by looking at the ballots with what the machines tallied.

Become a #ThisIsTucson member! Your contribution helps our team bring you stories that keep you connected to the community. Become a member today.