Arizona election chief: GOP-audited machines must be dropped

PHOENIX (AP) — Voting machines from Arizona’s most populous county should not be used in the future after state Senate Republicans forced officials to give them access for an audit of 2020 election results, the state’s top elections official said Thursday.

Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, said in a letter that Maricopa County lost control of the machines after they were handed over and doesn't know what was done to them.

Senate Republicans issued a subpoena demanding the county turn over vote-tabulation equipment, along with ballots and a variety of other records for an unprecedented partisan audit of the county's 2020 vote count. Former President Donald Trump and his supporters had claimed without evidence that his loss was marred by fraud.

The county hired several firms to conduct the audit, led by Cyber Ninjas, a Florida-based firm that has no election experience before 2020 and is led by a Trump supporter who has promoted election conspiracies.

The audit will not change the outcome of the election, but many Trump supporters hope it will lead to similar reviews in other battleground states and turn up evidence that President Joe Biden's victory was illegitimate. Critics say it's a fruitless attempt to further Trump's narrative about the 2020 election and will diminish faith in the democratic process.

“I have grave concerns regarding the security and integrity of these machines,” Hobbs wrote to the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, which is controlled 4-1 by Republicans.

She urged the county not to use the machines any longer and threatened to initiate a process that could lead to their decertification.

The county spent $6.1 million to lease the machines from Dominion Voting Systems in a three-year contract that expires before the 2022 election....