They've probably done enough damage that the audit could not now restore confidence among voters who believe that fraud was rampant; if the audit 'finds no fraud' after they were forced to stop checking ballot signatures and whole hard drives of data were stolen, the conclusion will justly be that the fraud was simply concealed. That's what you would ordinarily assume about similar facts, that the party interested in derailing the audit by any means necessary had something to hide.
Keep your eyes on it anyway. If they manage to find something interesting in spire of these efforts to derail them, we will want similar audits in Fulton County, Georgia, and elsewhere.
UPDATE: The county is withholding some subpoenaed servers from the election, claiming that turning them over to be audited would somehow 'put law enforcement lives at risk.' It is hard for me to see how that claim could possibly be plausible.
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I don't know how plausible it is, but the statement from Maricopa County was:
"Maricopa County has more than 50 different county departments, and the routers the Senate subpoena commanded the County produce support all of these departments, not just elections operations," Moseley said. "This includes critical law enforcement data that, by law, cannot be disclosed, as well as Maricopa County residents' protected health information and full social security numbers."
"By providing the routers, or even virtual images of routers, sensitive data and the lives of law enforcement personnel could be endangered," he added, stating that the routers "remain in the county's custody for the time being."
I read the article, but it’s a remarkable claim of perfect immunity to a subpoena. All you’d have to do is store some amount of law enforcement data and that server would never have to be turned over for oversight.
Yes, you're right. On the other hand, if the router had e.g. the names of current officers working undercover, releasing that info could endanger them.
Yes, if the subpoena was designed to produce a public release of that information; however, it's fairly clear that the intent is to examine the election, not to broadcast the names of confidential informants or undercover officers.
Even so, I don't see how the county can legally dodge constitutionally-authorized oversight by the Senate. The county isn't like a state government challenging Federal oversight; it's a creature of the state, not a sovereign and independent entity in its own right.
Very good points, and I don't think I care to defend what the county is doing. But, even so, there might be good reasons for doing it if they really think that data might make its way into public knowledge. That was my point. Regardless of whether they have a good reason, it doesn't trump a subpoena.
Also, they could just be hiding something.
It's a wonder that no one thought that information like the law enforcement or citizen data should be on special servers before this issue came up. Tells you a lot about data security by the government all by itself.
"Tells you a lot about data security by the government all by itself."
The new story out of the audit is that the county can't give the audit access to the stuff anyway, because the county never had it in the first place. The whole system -- with all its administrator passwords and electronics -- was in the control of the Dominion corporation, not the elected government.
If that's true, it's quite a finding: there was no election at all under those circumstances, I would argue, because the appropriate officials were not actually overseeing it. You can't outsource democracy to a corporation, nor delegate constitutional powers to one.
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