Maricopa Board Responds After Letter Claiming That Election Files Were Deleted in 2020 Election

Last week State Senate President Karen Fann asked for county officials to come and meet with her to “constructively resolve” issues with the audit, including the reported claim that a “main database” in the Election Management System was deleted, The Arizona Independent Journal reported.

“We have recently discovered that the entire ‘Database’ directory from the D drive of the machine ‘EMSPrimary’ has been deleted,” she said in a letter on Wednesday to Maricopa County Board of Supervisors Chair Jack Sellers. “This removes election-related details that appear to have been covered by the subpoena.”

“This suggests that the main database for all election-related data for the November 2020 General Election has been removed,” she said. “Can you please advise as to why these folders were deleted, and whether there are any backups that may contain the deleted folders?”

Fann then proposed all the key parties sit down at the Arizona State Capitol on May 18 to address the EMS files as well as other issues “without recourse to additional subpoenas or other compulsory processes.” The meeting will be livestreamed so the public can watch, she noted.

Those other issues mentioned by Fann include concerns that many of the boxes which contain nearly 2.1 million ballots cast in the election were allegedly turned over by the county without tamper-evident seals or without the ballots first being sealed in bags. And there are questions about ballot batch counts, Fann noted.

“The audit team has encountered a significant number of instances in which there is a disparity between the actual number of ballots contained in a batch and the total denoted on the pink report slip accompanying the batch,” she said. “In most of these instances, the total on the pink report slip is greater than the number of ballots in the batch, although there are a few instances in which the total is lower.”

But Sellers disputed the findings in a post on Twitter.

Garrett Archer, a reporter for ABC News, spoke to an independent adviser who is monitoring the audit for free.

As Archer points out, the Maricopa County audit account claimed that “a directory full of election databases from the 2020 election cycle days before the election equipment was delivered to the audit.”

“ABC15 reached out to Ryan Macias, the former Assistant Director of Equipment Certification for the Election Assistance Commission,” the ABC report said. “Macias is a representative for Secretary Hobbs on the audit floor, which he says he is doing pro bono.”

“Macias reviewed the image and ascertained, based on the names and the dates, that the seven remaining deleted database files were from a post machine test that is required by statute after each election called a ‘logic and accuracy test,’ as well as the two audits already conducted at the county by ProV&V and SLI,” the report said.

“The letter also lists a database called ‘Results Tally and Reporting’ as not being located on the server, however, the posted image did not list this database,” it said. “Without further context, Macias was unable to make a determination on the claim.”