New Arizona election report finds no county data issues

PHOENIX — No Maricopa County election machines used to tally 2020 votes were connected to the internet, according to a new examination.

The finding further undercuts claims by some Donald Trump supporters that the machines were somehow hacked, affecting results.

But the report, issued Wednesday by former U.S. Rep. John Shadegg, is unlikely to end persistent, unverified claims Joe Biden didn’t actually defeat Trump in Arizona.

Shadegg, a Phoenix Republican, was hired by the state Senate and Maricopa County to examine the machines. He said the three experts he hired for the study “found no evidence that the routers, managed switches, or election devices connected to the public internet.” He also said there are no routers, managed switches or “Splunk logs” in the ballot tabulation center.

He said the experts found that the county’s Office of Enterprise Technology, which provides the computer structure for all county departments, does have routers and switches that connect to the public internet.

“However, the only election related information on the OET is registration information and records,” the report says, adding that it plays no role in the ballot tabulation process. Shadegg also said the office’s equipment is never connected, whether by wire or wirelessly, to the ballot tabulation center or any equipment there, which he said is “air-gapped” from all outside equipment or systems.

No ballot tabulation information is ever received by, sent to, or stored in the OET, he said.

The report comes six months after Senate President Karen Fann, R-Prescott, and county officials agreed to allow outside experts to examine the equipment.

That solution solved the county’s concern about having the equipment end up in the hands of Cyber Ninjas, the firm Fann hired to conduct an audit of the 2020 election. County officials didn’t trust Doug Logan, who heads that firm, as he had said even before the audit began that he believed the election results were fraudulent.

But Fann was unwilling to accept the county’s own assurances the equipment was not compromised. The solution was hiring Shadegg who in turn hired the three experts who were sworn to secrecy before examining the equipment.

Fann said at the time that the deal meant the state would “have access to everything we wanted.”

On Wednesday, however, Fann was not ready to say she is satisfied that everything is resolved and all questions are answered.

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“I haven’t read it yet,” she said, declining to comment until she has had a chance to go through the report. Nor was Fann willing to say that the audit, which gained national attention, is now complete.

But Bill Gates, who chairs the Republican-dominated Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, said he’s seen enough.

“The unanimous conclusions of this expert panel should be a final stake in the heart of the Senate’s so-called ‘audit,’ “ Gates said in a prepared statement. “Whenever impartial, independent, and competent people have examined the county’s election practices, they have found no reason to doubt the integrity of those practices.”

Cyber Ninjas’ own hand count of the 2.1 million Maricopa County ballots confirmed Biden did win, and by an even larger margin than the official tally.

But Rep. Mark Finchem, R-Oro Valley, said Shadegg’s new report proves nothing about the accuracy of the results. “I’ve not seen the report myself,” he told Capitol Media Services. “But if it is as you say, all that shows is there was no external internet connection.”

Finchem is campaigning for secretary of state on the platform that the election was rigged, the results should be decertified, and the state’s 11 electoral votes should be withdrawn from President Joe Biden.

He said it is “sophomoric” to think the report from Shadegg ends the matter.

Sen. Kelly Townsend, R-Apache Junction, who heads the Senate Government Committee, said she, too, has not seen the report. But Townsend said she still has questions about whether the experts actually got to examine the equipment or instead had to rely on answers furnished by county election officials.

Shadegg, however, said he and the experts examined the facilities and equipment themselves.

He acknowledged that the review he was hired to conduct did not go into various other allegations about how ballots were physically handled, activities at polling locations, or any other procedural questions about how the 2020 election was run.

The report comes as court fights continue over efforts to access Cyber Ninjas’ records.

Judges in two separate cases have ruled, and appellate courts have affirmed, that documents in the hands of the company relating to the audit are public records and should be released. But Logan has continued to refuse to comply.