The man who is the liaison between the Arizona Senate and those hired to audit Maricopa County’s 2020 general election results said Monday he would prefer the Legislature stay in session until the audit results are released later this summer.
Ken Bennett told KFYI’s James T. Harris that he understands lawmakers normally Sine Die, or adjourn the session, after approving a new budget but said “there is a reason” for the Legislature to simply recess until the audit findings are ready rather than an adjournment. He did not expand on what that reason may be.
Bennett also told Harris that the audit team is looking to request “even some more things that we think are necessary” from Maricopa County’s election department. The additional items would come on top of hundreds of files, election equipment, and ballot records turned over by the county in April in response to a January subpoena.
If the Legislature chooses to adjourn soon rather than take a long recess, Bennett said there is a provision in a budget bill to create a special committee to hear the audit findings. In addition, the bill would allow lawmakers to call their own special session by a two-third vote in the House and the Senate. Or Gov. Doug Ducey could decide to call a special session.
Bennett announced last Friday that a hand count of the nearly 2.1 million ballots cast in Maricopa County during last November’s election was complete. But the hand count “is just a piece of an overall comprehensive forensic audit,” Bennett told Harris.
The audit team is now comparing its hand count totals to the county’s certified ballot count of 2,089,563. If the counts differ, Bennett said auditors will be ready “to go into those individual blocks that make up those numbers and confirm them and be able to show documentation” of the auditors’ work.
Other planned audit activities have been impacted by the fact Maricopa County has not turned over all the items listed on the January subpoena. “If there was nothing to hide and you wanted to show the work you did was just straight up and good, you would think they would say ‘here, look at everything,’” Bennett told Harris.
In related news, Maricopa County officials announced Monday that it will not reuse hundreds of pieces of election equipment, including tabulator machines, turned over under the subpoena. The stated reason is concerns that the equipment has been coopted.
“Maricopa County will never use compromised equipment that could pose a risk to free and fair elections,” according to the county’s Twitter account. “As a result, the County will not use the tabulation equipment subpoenaed by the Arizona Senate in any future elections.”
The formal announcement of the county’s decision came in a letter from Joseph La Rue of the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office to Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs. La Rue was replying to concerns Hobbs expressed last month about the integrity of the county’s election equipment turned over to Senate audit officials per the January subpoena.
Hobbs previously warned the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors she would consider initiating decertification proceedings if the elections equipment -which is leased from Dominion Voting Systems- was used in the future after being in the unsupervised control of audit personnel not certified by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission.
A statement posted on the county website Monday noted new tabulation equipment was already acquired for local elections conducted by Maricopa County in March and May. The statement does not mention that cost nor how expensive it will be to replace the hundreds of machines now in the custody of audit officials.