Arizona State Senate to Release Maricopa County Election Audit Results Friday

The Arizona State Senate announced on Friday that the results of the Maricopa County forensic audit of the 2020 election will be released on Friday, September 24.

The report “will be made public at a hearing scheduled for Friday, September 24, according to a spokeswoman for Arizona Senate Republicans,” CBS reported.

The report will be presented on the Senate floor and will be open to the media. Although Arizona’s election results were already certified, six months ago, the Republican-controlled state Senate in Arizona undertook a full hand recount and review of the ballots and voting machines in Maricopa, the state’s largest county.
By subpoena, the state Senate took possession of 2.1 million ballots and nearly 400 election machines and turned them over to be audited by companies that include one whose CEO promoted debunked election fraud theories after the election.

Earlier on Friday, Arizona State Senate President Karen Fann (R-1) announced that the State Senate had reached a settlement with the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors and will be receving additional documents and equipment previously requested via subpoena. Fann said in a statement released on Friday:

Under threat of losing hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue sharing, today Maricopa County settled with the State Senate, in a victory for election integrity and the Arizona taxpayer. The agreement sets up a Special Master paid for by the County, who will get the answers to the questions the Senate has had concerning the routers and splunk logs used in the 2020 election. Former Congressman John Shadegg will serve as the Special Master, working with computer technology experts. The Senate will finally get the answers to questions asked for in subpoenas issued to the County months ago.

In addition, the County has agreed to drop its notice of claim of $2.8 million to replace election equipment delivered to the Senate as required in the January subpoena. Experts have told us there is nothng that has been compromised or damaged by the audit, and the Secretary of State failed to follow procedures regarding decertifying the machines. There is no reason taxpayers should be on the hook for purchasing unnecessary new election equipment.

“I look forward to getting our final questions answered and wrapping up the review of the election in Maricopa County,” she concluded.

Fann took a victory lap with this tweet later on Friday:

HUGE win for the Az Senate today! Maricopa settlement gives us all the data needed to complete the review of the routers & splunk log to the most comprehensive election audit in history. We got everything we need including the routers and more https://t.co/M0pCKCHXjr

— Karen Fann (@FannKfann) September 18, 2021

As Breitbart News reported on August 26:

Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich (R-AZ) told Maricopa County officials on Thursday they must comply with an election audit subpoena from the Arizona State Senate or they will lose state funding.

“We are notifying the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors that it must fully comply with the Senate’s subpoena as required by the law. Our courts have spoken. The rule of law must be followed,” Brnovich said in a statement released by his office on Thursday.

Brnovich added that if the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors fails to comply with the Senate’s subpoena “within 30 days,” his office “will notify the Arizona Treasurer to withhold state revenue from Maricopa County” until the Board of Supervisors complies with the subpoena.

From its inception, the Arizona State Senate’s forensic election audit of the results in Maricopa County have been the target of highly partisan attacks from Democrats, as Breitbart News reported in May:

Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, launched another attack on the Republican-controlled Arizona State Senate’s audit of Maricopa County’s 2020 election results Monday, and complained election officials in other states are concerned they may soon be subject to similar audits.

The audit, which began on April 23 in the Phoenix Memorial Coliseum, resumed on Monday after a one-week hiatus because the facility was used for high school graduations during that time.

“We have election officials across the country that we’re talking to that are very concerned about this coming to their states, and are looking at Arizona to see how they might be able to stop it if it does,” Hobbs told MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle on Monday.

Hobbs criticized the way ballots were stored during the hiatus in an article published at the Hill on Tuesday

Interest in what the results of the forensic audit of the 2020 Maricopa County election results will reveal is high in Arizona and around the country.

In July, a poll released by Arizona-based OH Insights showed that most Arizona Republicans believe that the audit will show Donald Trump won the presidential race in the state in 2020.

Despite that belief, it was Joe Biden who was certified the winner of the state’s 11 Electoral College votes by Secretary of State Katie Hobbs (D-AZ) by a margin of less than 11,000 votes out of about 3,3 million cast. The election was held on November 3, 2020 and the election results were certified by Secretary of State Hobbs and Gov. Doug Ducy (R-AZ) on November 30, 2020.

Several other 2020 battleground states, including Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, have followed Arizona’s lead and have begun their own version of audits or investigations into the 2020 election results. More limited investigations or audits are either proceeding or being considered in Georgia and Michigan, both 2020 battleground states.

“Had Trump won Arizona’s 11 electoral college votes (where Biden’s margin of victory was less than 11,000 votes), Georgia’s 16 electoral college votes (where Biden’s margin of victory was less than 12,000 votes), and Wisconsin’s 10 electoral college votes (where Biden’s margin of victory was less than 21,000 votes), the Electoral College contest would have been a 269 to 269 tie, which would have thrown the election into the House of Representatives, where each state delegation has one vote,” Breitbart News reported in May.