PHOENIX β The question of whether state senators get access to Maricopa Countyβs voting equipment and ballots could turn on the question of whether they dotted their iβs and crossed their tβs.
At a court hearing Thursday, Deputy Maricopa County Attorney Tom Liddy did not dispute that Arizona law gives legislators the power to issue subpoenas.
But he told Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Timothy Thomasson that there are procedures outlined in law for what has to happen. And Liddy said that didnβt happen here.
Even if it did, Liddy hopes to convince the judge that lawmakers are not entitled to at least some of what they are demanding. He cited a provision in state law that says voted ballots have to remain locked up for 24 months, with the only exception being a legal challenge to the election, which this is not.
βThey can only be opened by a court order,β Liddy told the judge, including a legally issued judicial subpoenas.
βThis is not a judicial subpoena,β he continued. βSo this is not a court order.ββ
Attorney Kory Langhofer who represents Senate President Karen Fann said thatβs not true.
He said lawmakers are entitled to the ballots as part of a legitimate inquiry into how the election was conducted. That, he said, is part of their legislative duty of both oversight of elections as well as their obligation to determine if changes are needed in state laws.
βThere is a constitutional provision directing the state legislature to maintain the purity of elections and make sure that voter integrity is protected,β Langhofer said.
Liddy, however, said the county supervisors believe that the real reason for the subpoena is that Fann and other Republican lawmakers are seeking to undermine the results of Joe Biden defeating Donald Trump in Arizona in the Nov. 3 election.
Fann denies that, saying her only interest is answering the questions that many Arizonans have about whether something went wrong. She said the inquiry could just as easily find there were no improprieties and that should reassure most voters about the integrity of the system.
Thomasson said he hopes to have a ruling no later than Friday.
It all could turn on the procedures the Senate followed.
Liddy said the Senate president or whoever chairs as committee has the power to compel a witness to attend a hearing.
Only thing is, there was β and still is β no hearing scheduled.
Beyond that, Liddy said it is clear that lawmakers donβt want testimony, to which they are entitled, but access to equipment and the ballots.
βBut that is not how legislative subpoenas work,β he said.
Even if the procedures were followed, the county contends there are limits to legislative subpoena powers. That includes that it βserves a valid legislative purposeβ and that the witnesses or materials sought βare pertinent to the subject matter of the investigation.β
The subpoena, Liddy said, fails on both accounts.
Langhofer, for this part, contends there are no such limits on the authority of lawmakers to issue subpoenas. To contend otherwise, he said, would be to say that the subpoena power of lawmakers is no greater than any other citizen has under the Public Records Law.
As to the issue of voted ballots being confidential, Langhofer reassured Thomasson that the Senate will consider itself bound by those rules and will not make them public.
Photos: 2020 General Election in Pima County and Arizona
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Judge throws out lawsuit, finds no fraud or misconduct in Arizona election
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PHOENIX β A judge tossed out a bid by the head of the Arizona Republican Party to void the election results that awarded the stateβs 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 Wardβs attorney reviewed 100 of those envelopes.
And at best, Warner said, that examiner found six signatures to be βinconclusive,β 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
Fridayβs 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.
βThere have been questions,β 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 leadersβ request for the inquiry alleges there are any βirregularitiesβ in the way the election was conducted.
βAt the very least, the confidence in our electoral system has been shaken because of a lot of claims and allegations,β Fann said. βSo our No. 1 goal is to restore the confidence of our voters.β
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.
βThe rule of law forbids us to do that,β he said.
In fact, Bowers pointed out, it was the Republican-controlled Legislature that enacted a law three years ago specifically requiring the stateβs electors βto cast their votes for the candidates who received the most votes in the official statewide canvass.β
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 stateβs 11 electoral votes for Trump, who won Arizonaβs race that year.
βAs a conservative Republican, I donβt like the results of the presidential election,β Bowers said in a prepared statement. βBut I cannot and will not entertain a suggestion that we violate current law to change the outcome of a certified election.β