Arizona Senate, Maricopa Co. mull next steps in standoff over routers subpoenaed in vote audit

Maricopa County - the state's largest county and the subject of the court-approved audit - announced this week that it would refuse to surrender numerous routers included as part of a subpoena from the Republican-controlled state Senate.

Senate Republicans in their subpoena had demanded access to all county-owned routers "Used in connection with the administration of the 2020 election." Maricopa officials responded this week by claiming that the routers used by the county to handle election data also serve dozens of other departments, with some of that data constituting a potential major security risk for both state and federal agencies.

Erika Flores, a spokeswoman for the county's elections department, on Friday offered further clarification on the alleged security issues posed by the routers.

"Providing county level routers is extremely dangerous as it would provide a mapping of how the county network is connected, addresses of critical internal assets, router system configuration, and the ability to see administrative usernames and possibly passwords," she claimed.

"If real time access was given to the routers in production it's possible that some traffic going through them could be visible, which includes law enforcement. These are critical systems behind multiple layers of protection and access is severely limited to them." In February, judge said confidential material was responsive to subpoena Yet the ultimate success or failure of the county's position likely depends upon the interpretation - and potential enforcement - of a February ruling from a state judge affirming the legitimacy of the state Senate's subpoenas.

In his decision that month, Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Timothy Thomason ruled against Maricopa County officials who had sought to block the subpoena on various procedural and statutory grounds.

Addressing claims by county officials that they were not obligated to surrender confidential material requested by the subpoena, Thomason said: "The Subpoenas are, in essence, the equivalent of a Court order, requiring production of certain information. The County cannot avoid a subpoena based on statutes that require that the material being subpoenaed be kept confidential." The issue necessarily turns on whether or not Thomason's decision applies to the purportedly classified material contained in the routers, much of which the county claims has nothing to do with election management.

https://justthenews.com/accountability/surrender-arizona-election-audit-hardware-may-depend-upon-interpretation-judges-feb