Even Arizona’s GOP Election Officials Are Tired of the Bogus ‘Audit’

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Republican election officials in Arizona are sick and tired of the never-ending audit taking place in Maricopa County.

In a scathing letter sent to lawmakers in the Arizona Senate, chairman of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors Jack Sellers labeled the bogus recount an “adventure in never never land.”

The letter was addressed to Arizona’s senators, who authorized the audit back in April, and Sellers told them that it’s time to move on from this charade.

“It is now August of 2021. The election of November 2020 is over,” Sellers wrote. “If you haven't figured out that the election in Maricopa County was free, fair, and accurate yet, I'm not sure you ever will.”

The letter attacked the audit’s multiple missed deadlines and its embrace of conspiracy theories, and ended with a threat that whatever claims the people conducting the recount make, they will need to back it up in court.

“Please finish whatever it is that you are doing and release whatever it is you are going to release,” Sellers wrote, adding: “Be prepared to defend any accusations of misdeeds in court. It's time to move on.”

The letter accompanied the board’s official response to subpoenas sent last week by  Senate President Karen Fann and Judiciary Committee Chairman Warren Petersen, which gave the state’s largest county just one week to respond.

The subpoenas were seeking access to additional material, including envelopes from all mail-in ballots or images of them, certain voter registration records with change histories, and the network routers and traffic logs.

The board noted that it had in fact already supplied several of the items demanded in the latest subpoena but said it would not be handing over the routers, given that they contained extremely sensitive personal information about Maricopa County citizens, and were never used to connect voting machines to the internet.

The demand for the routers has become a major talking point in pro-Trump circles after QAnon boosted a conspiracy theory that claimed election results were changed remotely. MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell then picked up the theory, and most recently, so did former President Donald Trump.

Sellers urged Arizona’s senators to stop promoting such conspiracy theories:

“There was no fraud, there wasn’t an injection of ballots from Asia nor was there a satellite that beamed votes into our election equipment. It’s time for all elected officials to tell the truth and stop encouraging conspiracies.”

Cyber Ninjas, the Florida company with no prior election audit experience hired by the Arizona Senate to conduct the recount, concluded the hand recount of ballots last week. But it says it needs the routers and the other requested materials to finish its report, which Senate audit liaison Ken Bennett told VICE News last week would be concluded by the end of August or early September.

But since the audit began on April 22, the process has been mired in delays and multiple missed deadlines.

“The reason you haven't finished your ‘audit’ is because you hired people who have no experience and little understanding of how professional elections are run,” Sellers wrote. “The Board has real work to do and little time to entertain this adventure in never-never land.”

But not all Republicans Arizona agree with Sellers and the board. Sen. Wendy Rogers, who has been one of the most vocal proponents of the stolen election conspiracy, tweeted her disappointment to the boards rejection of the Senate subpoena by suggesting her fellow Republicans belonged in jail.

“I would like to know if we have enough solitary confinement cells in Arizona available for the entire Maricopa Board of Supervisors,” Rogers tweeted on Monday night.