PHOENIX — The U.S. Department of Justice says the ballot audit in Arizona might violate federal laws, and it wants answers from Senate President Karen Fann, who ordered the recount.
The federal officials are concerned that the nearly 2.1 million ballots from Maricopa County are no longer under the control of state and local election officials, says a letter to Fann from Pamela Karlan, the principal deputy assistant attorney general for civil rights.
Instead, the ballots are at Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Phoenix, which Karlan describes as an “insecure facility.’’
That puts them at risk of being lost, stolen, altered, compromised or destroyed, Karlan said.
A federal law creates a duty to safeguard and preserve federal election records, she wrote. And the ballots have the 2020 votes not just for president but also for U.S. senator and all nine congressional races.
Karlan acknowledged that the state can delegate someone else to preserve the records for the required 22 months after an election. But she said her department believes the state is required to be either in actual physical control or under “direct administrative supervision.’’
A potentially bigger concern stems from a provision in the contract between the Senate and Cyber Ninjas, the private firm Fann hired, to work with others to “identify voter registrations that did not make sense, and then knock on doors or call people to confirm if valid voters actually lived at the stated address.’’
Those door-to-door surveyors are asking people if they voted in the last election and whether they did it in person or by mail.
Ken Bennett, the Senate’s liaison to the audit, has said that no one is going to be asked how they voted. But Karlan said just the activity itself is problematic.
“The description of the proposed work of the audit raises concerns regarding potential intimidation of voters,’’ she wrote.
Karlan said the federal Voting Rights Act specifically prohibits anyone acting in an official capacity from intimidating, threatening or coercing any person in voting or attempting to vote. And sending people who are acting on the government’s behalf, particularly into minority neighborhoods, she said, has the clear danger of crossing that line.
“Past experience with similar investigative efforts around the country has raised concerns that they can be directed at minority voters, which potentially can implicate the anti-intimidation prohibitions of the Voting Rights Act,’’ Karlan told Fann. “Such investigative efforts can have a significant intimidating effect on qualified voters that can deter them from seeking to vote in the future.’’
An aide to Fann, R-Prescott, said he did not know when she will submit a response.
State Senate Republicans ordered the audit after Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump in Maricopa County, where Biden received 45,109 more votes than Trump. That was enough to give the Democrat a 10,457-vote edge statewide and Arizona’s 11 electoral votes. Arizona voted Republican for president every year since 1952 except in 1996 and 2020.
