PHOENIX — A bid by Senate Republicans to hold Maricopa County supervisors in contempt faltered Monday as one GOP lawmaker balked.
Sen. Paul Boyer, R-Glendale, said he believes the Senate does have the power to use its subpoena power to demand access to the county’s voting machines and ballots from the Nov. 3 election.
“That authority is clear, and it will be used if necessary,” Boyer said. But he said he believes that power should be used “sparingly and reluctantly.”
More to the point, Boyer said he believes the county is willing to conduct an additional audit of the presidential election results to answer questions about whether the reported results giving the edge to Joe Biden were accurate. What’s needed, he said, is a judge to issue an order clearing the way for the access that senators seek, rather than a contempt citation.
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“I believe the board (of supervisors) genuinely seeks the confidence and clarity of a court order to legally proceed,” Boyer said. And once that happens, he said, there will be no legal reason for the supervisors to claim that giving the Senate what it wants would violate the law.
That drew derision from Sen. Warren Petersen, R-Phoenix, who walked colleagues through a timeline of what he said has been an ever-changing stance by the supervisors over whether there would or would not be an audit; who has access to the ballots; and some apparently conflicting arguments about whether courts have authority over the enforcement of legislative subpoenas.
Senate President Karen Fann, R-Prescott, detailed for colleagues her own attempts to resolve the issue with the supervisors. In fact, Fann said she originally planned a contempt vote for 2½ weeks ago but held off in hopes it wouldn’t come to that.
Every effort to get a resolution, she said, was met with objections from the board.
“So I’m sorry to say, this is why we’re at where we’re at right now,” Fann said.
Sen. J.D. Mesnard, R-Chandler, said claims by the supervisors that they want this resolved ring hollow. He cited a filing Monday morning that sought a court order to block the Senate from voting on the contempt resolution.
In that filing, board attorney John Doran told a Maricopa County judge the scheduled contempt vote was part of “politically charged paranoia” and a bid by the Senate to “press ahead with a false narrative belied by the actual facts and evidence.”
Mesnard called that filing “beyond outrageous. Their actions show they are dripping with contempt.”
With the 30-member Senate having just 16 Republicans and the Democrats opposed, Boyer’s decision left the majority one vote short of approving the contempt resolution.
A spokesman for the board said late Monday the supervisors had no comment.
What happens next is unclear.
There is still a Senate subpoena demanding access to the machines and the ballots.
The supervisors, four Republicans and one Democrat, have a pending lawsuit asking a judge to void the subpoena as invalid, saying state law prohibits the county from surrendering access.
Much of the dispute is over a section of state law that says after the post-election canvass, an envelope with the ballots is placed in a secure facility managed by the county treasurer “who shall keep it unopened and unaltered for 24 months for elections for a federal office.” Tully contends the only exception is when there is a legal challenge by a candidate or a recount, neither of which is at play here.
Petersen said he doesn’t read the law as precluding the supervisors from allowing legislators — or their designated agents — from looking at the ballots. But even if that were true, he said, another section of Arizona law says any evidence produced to comply with a legislative subpoena cannot be used against anyone to prosecute them.
“And just think about it practically,” Petersen told colleagues. “Who’s going to prosecute them? The county attorney? I doubt it.”
But the bottom line is about who ultimately is in charge.
“We issued a subpoena, and they have given us the finger,” Petersen said. He said that undermines the authority of lawmakers to issue subpoenas presumably backed by the power to enforce them.
“When we were given the authority under the state constitution to be lawmakers, we need to be able to collect facts, we need to be able to investigate,” he said.
“Otherwise, how are we going to know how to change the laws?” Petersen continued. “How are we going to know how to make a law to fix something if we can never know what to fix?”
That presumes something went wrong with the election, despite the fact that not a single legal challenge to it was upheld.
Fann said she’s not starting from that premise. But she said there are enough questions from constituents to require an inquiry.
The Senate president also said supervisors promised to do two independent audits of their own. But instead, she said, they hired firms that certify machines, not companies capable of doing the “forensic audit” senators want.
“I’ve gotten tens of thousands of emails from people, voters in our county, that don’t believe the system is working,” said Sen. Rick Gray, R-Sun City. “I think it’s egregious that we just blow them off.”
Sen. Kelly Townsend, R-Mesa, questioned why the supervisors are expending energy trying to deny the Senate has absolute power to demand an audit and access to equipment and ballots.
“It leads the public to believe they are hiding something,” she said.
The issue of the subpoena aside, the next bit of fallout could be political.
Fann made it clear she would not have brought the resolution up for a vote had Boyer told her ahead of time he wouldn’t go along.
“I think all my bills are now dead,” Boyer told Capitol Media Services, predicting his GOP colleagues who control both the Senate and House won’t provide the votes.
Townsend all but confirmed that.
“If you say you’re going to vote along with your caucus and then you do not, your word is never going to be trusted again,” she said.
Photos: 2020 General Election in Pima County and Arizona
Ballot processing in Pima County
Ballot processing in Pima County
Ballot processing in Pima County
Ballot processing in Pima County
Ballot processing in PIma County
Ballot processing in PIma County
Ballot processing in PIma County
Ballot processing in PIma County
Ballot processing, Pima County
Ballot processing, Pima County
Ballot processing, Pima County
Election Day, Pima County and Arizona, 2020
Election Day, Pima County and Arizona, 2020
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Election Day, Pima County and Arizona, 2020
Election 2020 Senate Kelly
Election 2020 Senate Kelly
Election Day, Pima County and Arizona, 2020
Election Day, Pima County and Arizona, 2020
Election Day, Pima County and Arizona, 2020
Election Day, Pima County and Arizona, 2020
Election Day, Pima County and Arizona, 2020
Election Day, Pima County and Arizona, 2020
Election Day, Pima County and Arizona, 2020
Election Day, Pima County and Arizona, 2020
Election Day, Pima County and Arizona, 2020
Election 2020 Arizona Voting
Election 2020 Arizona Voting
Election 2020 Arizona Voting
Election Day, Pima County and Arizona, 2020
Election Day, Pima County and Arizona, 2020
Election Day, Pima County and Arizona, 2020
Election Day, Pima County and Arizona, 2020
Election 2020 Arizona Voting
Election 2020 Arizona Voting
Election Day, Pima County and Arizona, 2020
Election Day, Pima County and Arizona, 2020
Election Day, Pima County and Arizona, 2020
Election Day, Pima County and Arizona, 2020
Election 2020 Arizona Voting
Election 2020 Arizona Voting
Election 2020 Arizona Voting
Election Day, Pima County and Arizona, 2020
Election Day, Pima County and Arizona, 2020
Election Day, Pima County and Arizona, 2020
Election Day, Pima County and Arizona, 2020
Election Day, Pima County and Arizona, 2020
Election Day, Pima County and Arizona, 2020
Election Day, Pima County and Arizona, 2020
Election Day, Pima County and Arizona, 2020
Election 2020 Arizona Voting
Election 2020 Arizona Voting
Election 2020 Arizona Voting
Election 2020 Arizona Voting
Election 2020 Arizona Voting
Election Day, Pima County and Arizona, 2020
Election Day, Pima County and Arizona, 2020
Election Day, Pima County and Arizona, 2020
Election Day, Pima County and Arizona, 2020
Judge throws out lawsuit, finds no fraud or misconduct in Arizona election
PHOENIX — A judge tossed out a bid by the head of the Arizona Republican Party to void the election results that awarded the state’s 11 electoral votes to Democrat Joe Biden.
The two days of testimony produced in the case brought by GOP Chairwoman Kelli Ward produced no evidence of fraud or misconduct in how the vote was conducted in Maricopa County, said Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Randall Warner in his Friday ruling.
Warner acknowledged that there were some human errors made when ballots that could not be read by machines due to marks or other problems were duplicated by hand.
But he said that a random sample of those duplicated ballots showed an accuracy rate of 99.45%.
Warner said there was no evidence that the error rate, even if extrapolated to all the 27,869 duplicated ballots, would change the fact that Biden beat President Trump.
The judge also threw out charges that there were illegal votes based on claims that the signatures on the envelopes containing early ballots were not properly compared with those already on file.
He pointed out that a forensic document examiner hired by Ward’s attorney reviewed 100 of those envelopes.
And at best, Warner said, that examiner found six signatures to be “inconclusive,” meaning she could not testify that they were a match to the signature on file.
But the judge said this witness found no signs of forgery.
Finally, Warner said, there was no evidence that the vote count was erroneous. So he issued an order confirming the Arizona election, which Biden won with a 10,457-vote edge over Trump.
Federal court case remains to be heard
Friday’s ruling, however, is not the last word.
Ward, in anticipation of the case going against her, already had announced she plans to seek review by the Arizona Supreme Court.
And a separate lawsuit is playing out in federal court, which includes some of the same claims made here along with allegations of fraud and conspiracy.
That case, set for a hearing Tuesday, also seeks to void the results of the presidential contest.
It includes allegations that the Dominion Software voting equipment used by Maricopa County is unreliable and was programmed to register more votes for Biden than he actually got.
Legislative leaders call for audit but not to change election results
Along the same lines, Senate President Karen Fann and House Speaker Rusty Bowers on Friday called for an independent audit of the software and equipment used by Maricopa County in the just-completed election.
“There have been questions,” Fann said.
But she told Capitol Media Services it is not their intent to use whatever is found to overturn the results of the Nov. 3 election.
In fact, she said nothing in the Republican legislative leaders’ request for the inquiry alleges there are any “irregularities” in the way the election was conducted.
“At the very least, the confidence in our electoral system has been shaken because of a lot of claims and allegations,” Fann said. “So our No. 1 goal is to restore the confidence of our voters.”
Bowers specifically rejected calls by the Trump legal team that the Legislature come into session to void the election results, which were formally certified on Monday.
“The rule of law forbids us to do that,” he said.
In fact, Bowers pointed out, it was the Republican-controlled Legislature that enacted a law three years ago specifically requiring the state’s electors “to cast their votes for the candidates who received the most votes in the official statewide canvass.”
He said that was done because Hillary Clinton had won the popular vote nationwide in 2016 and some lawmakers feared that electors would refuse to cast the state’s 11 electoral votes for Trump, who won Arizona’s race that year.
“As a conservative Republican, I don’t like the results of the presidential election,” Bowers said in a prepared statement. “But I cannot and will not entertain a suggestion that we violate current law to change the outcome of a certified election.”
Photos of the 2020 General Election voting, election night and ballot processing in Pima County, Maricopa County and throughout Arizona.