PHX Reporter

Using her authority as chairwoman of the Arizona Senate State Government Committee, Sen. Kelly Townsend (R-Mesa) has subpoenaed the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors over election records, sought by the attorney general’s Election Integrity Unit, related to the results of the 2020 election in the county.

Former President Donald Trump and many of his supporters say he became the first Republican presidential candidate to lose Arizona since 1996 due to massive voter fraud.

In a Facebook post, Townsend said that she and some of her colleagues “have become increasingly concerned and quite impatient with the process of discovery regarding the request of the Arizona attorney general for documents that would assist in the 2020 general election investigation.”

“Throughout this process we have been dismayed at the level of obstruction, obfuscation, malfeasance and nonfeasance," she added. "The claim that there is not a ‘shred of evidence’ regarding irregularities in the election is patently false, but hard not to believe by the general public when so much is being hidden from their view. This has a direct impact on voter confidence for those who know that irregularities dominated the election process in Maricopa County during the last Presidential election.”

Townsend’s subpoena marks the third time Senate Republicans have subpoenaed the board for election records. A subpoena issued in August 2021 led to a compromise with the board that included the appointment of a special master, former Republican U.S. Rep. John Shadegg.

In a statement responding to the Townsend subpoena, board chairman Bill Gates said that the county had already produced “thousands of documents, data, and equipment to the Arizona Senate concerning the 2020 election.”

“As of the first week in February, Maricopa County had produced more than 4,400 documents and five detailed PowerPoint slide decks to the Attorney General’s Office,” Gates said. “In addition the Elections Department answered all the questions from attorney general investigators and provided in-depth tours of election facilities.”

The first two subpoenas from the Senate Republicans stemmed from a forensics audit conducted by Florida-based Cyber Ninjas, which completed its audit last fall without examining the documents and equipment sought in the subpoenas.

The Cyber Ninja recount added to President Joe Biden's statewide plurality of more than 10,000 votes.

Townsend’s subpoena stems from a March 9 letter from Assistant Attorney General Jennifer Wright, who heads the attorney general's Election Integrity Unit, to the board in which she cites pilot studies of the signatures on more than 2,000 ballot affidavits in the 2020 election. Wright noted in the letter that the studies were led by Dr. Shiva Ayyadarai, who holds a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. KJZZ reports that Ayyadarai was a subcontractor who studied early ballot signatures and the results have faced criticism. Gates was quoted by KJZZ saying that Ayyadarai's report had a "number of false and misleading claims."

“In the study it is alleged that over 250 of those sample ballot affidavits contain signatures that did not appear to match the voters’ signatures,” Wright said. But she noted the comparison was made using signatures on public-accessible notarized deeds not against signatures used by election officials in voter registration records. She requested copies of those records.

Arizona Senate President Karen Fann (R-Prescott) posted the Wright letter on her Twitter account, and added, “Looks like Maricopa BOS doesn’t want to comply with AG’s request for documents. What are they hiding now?”

The Attorney General's Office announced in September 2021 that it would conduct an investigation into the 2020 county election results, an investigation separate from that of Cyber Ninjas.