PHOENIX — The chairman of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors is lashing out at the decision by Sen. Kelly Townsend to issue a subpoena ordering them to produce some information by this coming Monday.
In a statement Tuesday, Bill Gates said what the Apache Junction Republican wants is based on “the discredited work of (Shiva) Ayyadurai.”
More to the point, he said the claim by Ayyadurai to have compared signatures on early ballot envelopes suggests someone — he isn’t saying whom — has violated state law, which prohibits posting of this kind of information online.
That information, Gates said, was provided by the county only to the Senate after subpoenas were issued last year. Public release by anyone, he said, is a Class 6 felony, punishable by up to a year in state prison.
Ayyadurai did not respond to messages seeking comment.
As to the subpoena, Gates said supervisors have made no decision on whether they will show up Monday at the Senate Government Committee that Townsend chairs.
“My colleagues and I will meet soon to discuss an appropriate response,” he said.
What Gates said Tuesday, however, left Townsend frustrated and angry.
She said her subpoena is identical to the request for information made of the county by the attorney general’s office, which is still looking into various claims about the 2020 general election, a request that has not yet been fully fulfilled. And Townsend said the question of whether the study was based on improperly obtained information is irrelevant to what she said is the failure of the county to comply.
“Is it the job of the board of supervisors to make a determination if something was done illegally and then obstruct the efforts of the attorney general to conduct an investigation into the matter?” she told Capitol Media Services. Townsend called it “shoddy obstructionism.”
And she said if Ayyadurai or someone broke any laws with the use of the ballot signatures, that is a matter for the attorney general and not an excuse for the county to withhold information.
But Townsend is miffed at more than the supervisors.
She also is critical of Attorney General Mark Brnovich, saying he has had information about the 2020 election now for more than a year but has failed to produce any results. And Townsend said she doesn’t understand why Brnovich hasn’t been more forceful in his demands for information and, more to the point, why she has to force the issue.
“Why do we need a state Senate subpoena nearly two years on to get information from the county board of supervisors when the attorney general himself could issue the same subpoena and get the information straightaway?” she asked. Instead, Brnovich’s office has relied on public records requests.
Hence, the Senate subpoena.
“I want them to come and either give it to us, and we can give it to them,” Townsend said. “Or, if they’re not going to do that, tell us why they legally can obfuscate and obstruct the request of the attorney general.”
There was no immediate response to that from the attorney general’s office.
Much of the dispute surrounds claims by Ayyadurai that he compared signatures on 499 ballot envelopes — he does not say how he obtained them — with other signatures on file at the county recorder’s office.
That latter group of signatures he used, however, is not the ones kept by election officials that have things like a person’s voter registration or request for an earlier ballot. Those are not public.
Instead, he went to other documents, like deeds and mortgages, which may be years older.
“How is comparing signatures from one unrelated public recorded document to an early ballot envelope signature considered a viable way of providing identity for voting purposes?” Gates asked.
And he said Ayyadurai used “faulty data extrapolation” for his claim that more than 200,000 signatures on early ballots did not match.
Gates also disputed claims the county is withholding information.
He said thousands of documents, data and equipment were provided to the Senate for its own investigation. And Gates said as of the first week in February it had produced more than 4,400 documents and five PowerPoint slide decks to the attorney general’s office.
As to the latest demand, Gates said the request arrived as the county was handling the Tempe City Council election. He said the information sought “is being processed, and records will be provided in a reasonable period of time as prescribed by Arizona law.”
Gates also took a more generic slap at what has been a series of allegations, all unproven, that the election results were inaccurate and that Donald Trump really won in Maricopa County despite the certified vote tally.
“The board of supervisors continues to stand by the integrity of our workers and the effective checks and balances in place that allow us to provide free, fair, and accurate elections,” he said.
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