[RT] Arizona’s Republican Party has accused Democrats of undermining efforts at election transparency after Maricopa County announced it would challenge ballot and voting machine audits ordered by the state senate.The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors has refused to comply with two subpoenas issued by the state’s Senate Judiciary Committee, instead voting 4-1 to challenge the directives in court.
Eddie Farnsworth, the Republican chairman of the Senate committee, issued the two orders on Tuesday. One subpoena called for a scanned ballot audit, while the other asked for a "full forensic audit of ballot tabulation equipment, the software for that equipment, and the election management system" used in the 2020 presidential contest.
The county was given until Friday, November 19 to hand in the requested information, which included digital images of every mail-in ballot, along with a list of logs and reports from Dominion tabulation machines.
In their legal complaint, the county supervisors allege that the state Senate has no right to demand such data, arguing that the subpoenas violate Arizona laws for ballot secrecy. They also alleged they had insufficient time to comply with the subpoenas.
Filed in Maricopa County Superior Court on Friday, the challenge accuses Farnsworth of a "draconian abuse of power in an attempt to obtain the personal information of voters, voting records, ballots, and tabulation machines."
The county supervisors asked the court to "quash" the subpoenas and declare them unlawful.
The move was met with a series of seething tweets fired off by the Arizona Republican Party. Using the hashtag "#HoldTheLine," the state’s GOP suggested that county officials feared a full audit because they had something to hide.
In another message, the political party claimed their Democratic foes were "desperate to keep everything about the 2020 Election in the DARK! Arizona Republican leaders must rise up and shine the LIGHT!"