Grand Canyon Times

A large swath of Maricopa County voting information allegedly was deleted prior to the start of forensics audit of the election databases, and Senate President Karen Fann (R-Prescott) is pressing the county Board of Supervisors for answers.

“We have recently discovered that the entire ‘Database’ directory from the D drive of the machine 'EMSPrimary' has been deleted,” Fann wrote in a May 12, four-page letter, which also accused the board of failing to comply with other aspects of legislative subpoenas related to the audit. 

“In addition, the main database for the Election Management System (EMS) software, 'Results, Tally and Reporting,' is not located anywhere on the EMSPrimary machine, even though all EMS clients reference that machine as the location of the database," she added. "This suggests that the database for all election related material for the November 2020 general election has been removed.”

Fann reminded the supervisors that legislative subpoenas, issued Jan. 13, were found “valid and enforceable” by Judge Timothy Thomason of the Arizona Superior Court.

The audit of the November returns, headed by Florida-based Cyber Ninjas, began April 23 and is expected to go into at least June. President Joe Biden was the first Democrat to win the county since Harry Truman in 1948.

In the letter, Fann also took aim at county attorneys for allegedly refusing to turn over images of the routers used in general election voting. The county has said that providing them will endanger law enforcement. Fann said such fears are an “alarming indictment of lax data security practices” rather than an indictment of the subpoenas.

She proposes that the auditor review the images of the routers in the presence of representatives from the Maricopa County Sherriff’s Office.  

“Such an arrangement would permit Maricopa County to retain custody and monitor review of router data, while ensuring that the Senate may access the information it requires – and to which it is constitutionally entitled –to successfully complete its audit,” she said.

Fann also provided a five-point list of “anomalies, omissions and inconsistencies” related to the county handling, organization and storage of the ballots – including that the auditors have found a “significant number of instances in which there is a disparity between the actual number of ballots contained in a batch and the total denoted on the pink report slip accompanying the batch.”

Fann invited county officials, who can provide answers to her questions, to a public meeting Tuesday, May 18 at the Capitol.

County officials were unavailable for comment.  

Previous recounts of Maricopa County voting have found no major irregularities, CBS reports.