Statement from Chairman Jack Sellers on What was Provided to the Senate

Maricopa County government is not involved in the Cyber Ninja audit, but we have provided the Arizona Senate eight terabytes of data, ballots and election equipment involved in the 2020 General Election as commanded by the subpoenas.

What makes me angry are the allegations of corruption being thrown around – sometimes by elected officials who should know better – denigrating the good names of public servants who devoted the last two years of their lives to running quality elections in 2020.

I am not going to address every allegation that people cook up these days, but I do want to talk about passwords.  The specific password and security tokens Ken Bennett referenced this week provide access to proprietary firmware and source code. Elections administrators do not need to access this information to hold an election, and we do not have it in our custody.

Mr. Bennett purports to need these to obtain results by batch number.  But that information was provided on a thumb drive to the Senate’s attorney in January 2021. Someone with experience in the system could run a query of the information to create summary level batch reports of election results. In addition, the county provided the Senate with the memory cards and the totals tape, which provides a paper log of every vote and action taken on Election Day on every tabulator used at a Vote Center. These would also provide a secondary comparison of results during a hand count.

The County’s two independent audits have already shown there was no foul play in the 2020 General Election. The results of the election were verified several times, in accordance with Arizona Law. The equipment used in the election were tested, retested, and audited by the only two U.S. companies certified to do that work. Just this week, the National Association of Counties (NACo) took time to recognize the Board and Maricopa County Attorney’s Office for overseeing and then defending the free and fair elections in 2020. 

I hope this will help clear up some of the misinformation currently circulating.

The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors takes its election oversight role seriously and will continue to defend the democratic process.