Republican Arizona state Sen. Eddie Farnsworth said on Monday
that he would issue subpoenas to forensically audit the Dominion
Voting Systems machines used in Maricopa County during the 2020
election.
What are the details?
According to KJZZ-TV, Farnsworth argued that enough questions
have been raised about the accuracy and security of the machines to
justify the action, especially since Democratic candidate Joe Biden
only narrowly defeated President Donald Trump by roughly 11,000
votes in the state.
The lawmaker’s announcement followed more than six hours of
testimony on Monday in the Arizona Senate Judiciary Committee, of
which Farnsworth is the chairman. During the hearing, Republican
state senators grilled Maricopa County elections director Scott
Jarrett over the reliability of the results.
The move came even as electors across the country, including
those from Arizona, cast their votes for Biden,
making him the president-elect.
“There is evidence of tampering, there is evidence of fraud,”
Farnsworth said in announcing the action,
according to the Arizona Mirror, adding that a forensic audit
could help restore confidence that the election was fair and
legal.
He
argued the audit is a necessary action to address concerns “and
try and see if we can reinsert some confidence in our election
process.”
“We hold an audit and we see what the outcome is,” he said. “And
then we can put this to rest.”
Farnsworth also said he got the impression from county officials
that the very notion of fraud was something they were not
interested in considering.
“I do have a concern that the county is taking the position that
it just can’t happen,” he said. “There is a litany of white-collar
crimes, digital crimes in the history of this country and this
world of some very sophisticated people and the victims didn’t
recognize it until some future time. I think it’s really, really
dangerous for us to say, ‘It can’t happen.'”
Anything else?
A similar forensic audit of Dominion machines was conducted last
week by Trump allies in Antrim County, Michigan — where 6,000
votes had been incorrectly flipped from Trump to Biden before the
error was caught and corrected.
On Monday, a judge ordered that the results of the audit be
released. In the
report, Russell Ramsland of Allied Security Operations Group,
the cyber firm that conducted the audit under supervision by county
officials, claimed the equipment “is intentionally and purposefully
designed with inherent errors to create systemic fraud and
influence election results.”
That conclusion has been
disputed by state and company officials.
