Republicans who control the Arizona state Senate announced that Maricopa County will allow access to its voting information for the 2020 election after weeks of fighting in court.
“I am pleased to announce that after a hard-fought battle to seek information on behalf of Arizona voters regarding the integrity of the 2020 election, we have reached a favorable agreement with the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors,” Republican Senate President Karen Fann said in a statement on Wednesday. “Not only has the Board agreed to turn over all the relevant information we sought in our subpoenas so that we may perform an audit, but they also acknowledge that the Legislature is a sovereign power of the state and that the county is a political subdivision, and as such, the Legislature has the constitutional and statutory authority to issue subpoenas.”
The announcement was issued one hour after President-elect Joe Biden was sworn in as the 46th president of the United States. The terms of the deal were not immediately clear.
Both the Arizona State Senate Republican Caucus and the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors did not immediately respond to requests for comment from the Washington Examiner.
The subpoena fight, opposed by state Senate Democrats, began as an effort to gather information before Biden’s victory was certified. Eddie Farnsworth, the Republican chairman of the state Senate’s Judiciary Committee, subpoenaed Maricopa County in December, demanding a review of the ballots as well as access to tabulation equipment from Dominion Voting Systems and software after former President Donald Trump fell short of winning the county by about 45,000 votes in the November election.
Allies of the president alleged voting machines across the country switched ballots in favor of Biden. Election authorities and Dominion officials have denied these claims, and the company is now engaged in an escalating legal fight against those who roped Dominion into allegations of widespread voter fraud.
A judge declined in late December to enforce the Republican subpoenas, after which Clint Hickman, a county supervisor, insisted that the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors was working “to protect voter privacy and the integrity of our elections.” A sample audit conducted in Maricopa County in November found no discrepancies.
The GOP kept up the legal fight and even issued new subpoenas after a new legislature was seated, and last week, a judge again refused to force the heavily populated Arizona county to turn over the materials. Instead, Superior Court Judge Timothy Thomason, who made the Jan. 13 verdict, implored “senators and county officials” to “sit down and work this out” among themselves. Thomason gave the two groups a week to reach an agreement before he would ultimately enforce the GOP demands.
In a tweet Wednesday, the Arizona Republican Party thanked the GOP-led Maricopa County Board, describing the apparent agreement as a victory for transparency.
