Arizona lawmaker seeks probe of claims of election-security gaps

PHOENIX — Senate Majority Leader Sonny Borrelli is asking Maricopa County’s top prosecutor to investigate claims of security gaps in election systems in three counties.

But at a news conference Wednesday at the Capitol, the Lake Havasu City Republican refused to share what he said is a declaration from a “cybersecurity expert’’ — whom he also would not name — claiming data and equipment used in the 2020 and 2022 elections “had been altered.’’ He said all that has been turned over to Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell, a Republican.

Mitchell got what appears to be a declaration delivered to her electronically and will look at the information, said her press aide Jeanine L’Ecuyer.

But L’Ecuyer said Mitchell was “amused’’ by the claims because they suggest problems in the software are “supposedly undetectable.’’

“She wondered how further investigation would allow us to find something that is undetectable,’’ L’Ecuyer said.

Borrelli is undeterred.

“There is probably cause here of a crime,” he said.

“What we have here is a breach in security, cybersecurity on our electronic voting systems in our last two elections,” Borrelli said. “We need to make sure this gets done and is addressed properly before the 2024 election.”

He said any probe would affect Maricopa, Pima and Coconino counties, which he said use the same kind of equipment.

At the news conference, Sen. Wendy Rogers, R-Flagstaff, said there was also evidence the master encryption keys for the electronic voting system were in a database of plain text, “protected by nothing other than a Windows log-in where credentials are easily bypassed.”

If all this sounds familiar, it’s because both issues are carbon copies of claims filed by Kari Lake last week.

Lake asked the U.S. Supreme Court to give her a “do-over’’ of the lawsuit she lost claiming voting machines are inherently untrustworthy and the only way to ensure an accurate tally is with a hand count. Lake told the justices she has new information that was not available when she and Mark Finchem first filed suit in 2022.

“While this breach has the game changing magnitude of the Allies’ deciphering Germany’s ENIGMA machine in World War II, it is far worse,’’ Lake told the court. Rogers on Wednesday repeated that quote word-for-word.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,’’ Borrelli said when told Rogers’ claim is a verbatim copy of Lake’s.

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These kinds of allegations are nothing new for Borrelli and Rogers. They have been proponents of claims — all so far rejected by multiple courts in multiple lawsuits — that the 2020 and 2022 elections were somehow rigged.

But Borrelli, for his part, would not say Wednesday whether he believes the official certifications showing that Donald Trump lost the 2020 presidential election in Arizona and Lake lost to Katie Hobbs in the 2022 gubernatorial race.

“This is not about Biden or Trump,’’ he said, as Rogers called the reporter asking the question “a radical.’’

“It’s not about Lake or Hobbs,’’ Borrelli said. “To me, this is a national security issue, period.’’

He also brushed aside questions of whether there was any actual evidence of a data breach.

“What we do know is over the last three and a half years is that the third-party vendor had full access to MCTEC (Maricopa County Tabulation and Election Center) and workspaces,’’ he said, referring to Dominion Voting Systems, which provides the county with the counting equipment. “And they even got badged in by a county employee into the server room, unsupervised.’’

Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer, a Republican, said there’s a big flaw in all of the claims that the voting system is insecure.

He pointed out that state law requires officials from both major parties to select specific precincts or vote centers after each election as part of a verification process. They then pick out specific races and do a full hand count to ensure that tally matches up within acceptable margins to what the machines tallied.

In no case has there been a finding of a mismatch.

“Why isn’t this revealed in any post-election hand count audits if manipulated?’’ he asked of the allegations.

Richer said alterations to programming also would show up in pre- and post-election tests of each county’s equipment conducted by the Secretary of State’s Office.

He also pointed out there have been multiple lawsuits following both the 2020 and 2022 elections claiming the machines were not properly counting the ballots. In each case the judges who heard the arguments found nothing wrong.

“Are we really still doing this?’’ he asked of the latest round of allegations.