Judge Affirms Power of AZ Senate To Enforce Subpoena To Audit Dominion Voting Machines
Superior Court Judge Randall Warner affirmed the power of the Arizona Senate to enforce subpoenas it has issued to audit the Dominion voting machines used in Maricopa County and to see the digital images of the ballots cast.
The Maricopa Board of Supervisors filed a complaint on Friday as it seeks to avoid compliance with the subpoenas issued by Senate Judiciary Chairman Eddie Farnsworth last week.
The Arizona Capitol Times reported Warner noted in court on Tuesday that “state law already gives the Legislature the power not only to issue subpoenas but also to find people in contempt for failing to comply. And the remedy in that statute allows for someone who refuses to be arrested and jailed.”
“[Judge Warner] pointed out that state law already gives the Legislature the power not only to issue subpoenas but also to find people in contempt for failing to comply…the remedy in that statute allows for someone who refuses to be arrested and jailed.” https://t.co/1jqQsSrXnv
— Arizona Republican Party (@AZGOP) December 23, 2020
The Arizona Republican Party highlighted Warner was the same judge who allowed a random sampling of 100 ballots in Maricopa County looking for abnormalities that resulted in a 3 percentage point swing in favor of President Donald Trump.
Wow, this is the same judge who gave us our big court WIN and allowed us to inspect 100 ballots where 2 were taken from Trump and given to Biden and 1 was just simply removed from Trump. Thank you, Your Honor! ??⚖️ https://t.co/k7GCHTlXRZ
— Arizona Republican Party (@AZGOP) December 23, 2020
Warner then allowed a sampling of an additional 1,526 duplicated ballots, but that review found only nine to have errors, the Arizona Mirror reported.
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Duplicate ballots are those filled out by election officials when the original cannot be read by the voting machine.
The judge then ruled against the GOP, writing, “The duplication process for the presidential election was 99.45% accurate.”
“And there is no evidence that the inaccuracies were intentional or part of a fraudulent scheme,” Warner added.
Currently, 10,457 votes separate Democrat Joe Biden from President Trump of the approximately 3.3 million votes cast in the race statewide.
In Maricopa County — which is the Grand Canyon State’s most populous, encompassing the Phoenix metropolitan area — Biden defeated Trump by 2.2 percentage points or about 45,100 votes.
In doing so, the former vice president garnered about 337,900 more votes than Democrat Hillary Clinton did in 2016, when Trump won the county by 45,500 votes or 2.9 percentage points.
In other words, there was a 5.1 percentage point swing in favor of Biden.
The current Arizona Senate subpoenas deal with auditing the Dominion Voting Systems machines themselves. In Michigan, Dominion machines wrongly determined that Biden won Antrim County.
When the error was discovered, it resulted in an over 6,000 vote swing in Trump’s favor and him carrying the county by 61.1 percent to 37.4 percent.
The Maricopa Board of Supervisors — which has a 4-1 Republican majority — has indicated it supports a third-party audit of the voting machines, but wants to wait until all election litigation wraps up, saying the machines could be considered evidence, the Arizona Mirror reported.
“These subpoenas are unrealistic in their timeframes, an intrusion into the privacy of our voters, and want us to disregard the statutes that they’ve created,” said Board Chairman Clint Hickman, a Republican.
In a video posted on Wednesday, Arizona Republican Party Chairwoman Kelli Ward accused the board of supervisors of stalling.
“Yesterday the subpoena from the legislature went to court and it appears the board of supervisors is going to stall, delay,” she said.
“They don’t want an expedited exposure of what happened in Maricopa County in this election for some strange reason,” Ward added. “Because all four of the Republicans say, ‘We want integrity. We want an audit. We want to open it up. We want people to feel confident,’ but they do nothing about it.”
In today’s update, Chairwoman @kelliwardaz talks about Judge Warner’s comments on legislative subpoena power and encourages the State Senate to take further action to force the Maricopa Board of Supervisors to turn over the information needed for a full and transparent audit. pic.twitter.com/yTGG52efAk
— Arizona Republican Party (@AZGOP) December 23, 2020
The chairwoman encouraged Arizona Senate President Karen Fann to take steps to legally enforce the subpoena, in light of what Warner stated in court.
“We need to stop the steal and we need to stop the stall,” Ward said.
