The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors is again refusing to buckle to pressure from Republicans who control the Arizona Senate and turn over elections equipment and ballots from November’s general election.
The Republican-dominated board on Tuesday let a noon deadline for complying with a Senate subpoena pass without acting after hearing from their attorneys. The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Warren Peterson, warned of “serious legal consequences” if the board continues to drag its feet.
This could land them in jail for contempt, if one of the Senate Republicans who issued the subpoenas has his way.
Peterson tweeted that the Senate was drafting a contempt resolution against the board for failing to comply with the subpoena. It would take a majority vote of the Senate for that resolution to pass. Republicans hold 16 of 30 seats,
The Arizona Senate is drafting a resolution of contempt against the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors for failing to comply with the Senate's subpoena.
— Warren Petersen (@votewarren) February 2, 2021
The Board of Supervisors have played all sorts of games to defer and dodge a comprehensive and accurate ballot of their results!
But now they could face jail time, if they did they would be the first casualties of the disputed 2020 elections.
In any case, if the election officials are clear and are telling the truth why delay the audit?
The Senate had given the county supervisors a deadline of noon Tuesday to say when they would comply with the disputed subpoenas, which Maricopa County has challenged in court and says are outside the purview of the Senate’s legal authority. After conferring with legal counsel on Tuesday morning, the supervisors again refused the Senate’s demand for ballot tabulation machines, software, data and more than 2 million paper ballots.