Maricopa County Refused to Cooperate with Senate Audit (AZ)

Arizona Senate President Karen Fann documented in her September 24, 2021 letter to Attorney General Mark Brnovich that Maricopa County and its vendors – including Dominion Voting Systems – did not cooperate with the Senate-authorized audit and recount. This constitutes an affirmative act of obstruction against a lawfully authorized legislative oversight function. Because the audit was the only independent quantitative verification of the 2020 vote count available outside official county processes, obstruction of the audit is functionally indistinguishable from obstruction of the recount. Maricopa County’s simultaneous refusal to produce chain-of-custody documentation, the missing ballot images, and the vendor non-cooperation directive collectively eliminated any independent basis for verifying the accuracy of the certified results. Fann’s letter further noted that Maricopa County failed to provide documentation sufficient to reconcile duplicated ballots to corresponding original ballots.