Arizona legislature wants to investigate vote fraud, subpoenas county ballots; county election officials refuse to comply!

If the presidential election was indeed stolen by fraud, who has the authority to investigate alleged fraud, and either confirm or reject those charges?

The Supreme Court clearly has the authority, but refused to investigate.  Interesting.  Telling.

Lower courts similarly punted.  Not a single court has even agreed to hear the case, rejecting on "procedural grounds."

So who's left to investigate?  State legislatures.  Elected representatives who supposedly represent local citizens.  Seems reasonable.

So it happened that when massive "irregularities" were discovered in Maricopa county, Arizona, the chairman of the state's Senate Judiciary Committee subpoenaed county election officials, ordering them to turn over the voting machines and ballots so claims of fraud could be investigated.  If you're investigating vote fraud that seems a reasonable subpoena.

But in an era when the law is totally ignored by government officials without consequence, the county officials refused, and instead sued the senator--the chairman of the judiciary committee--asking the court to rule that they could ignore the subpoena and refuse to turn over any of the materials.

Literally, the attorney for the county said "the subpoenas are not authorized by any law."

For the county officials' view to prevail would mean that no level of government would be able to investigate massive vote fraud to install a fraudulent president.

PHOENIX — Maricopa County supervisors voted Friday to refuse to comply with subpoenas for election materials issued by the chairman of the state Senate Judiciary Committee.

The subpoenas demanded copies of more than 2 million ballots cast by county voters in the Nov. 3 election, and access to the equipment used to tabulate those ballots and the software that ran the equipment.

The 4-1 vote to refuse came amid concerns that at least some of what is being demanded would expose private information on voters.  Officials also said it might not be legal for the county to give that information to outsiders.

Instead, the supervisors directed their attorneys to file suit and have a judge determine whether the subpoenas are legally valid.

The county's filing claims the subpoenas are not authorized by any law.  The county attorney said legislative panels can subpoena people to testify, but not actual materials.

The attorney also said the subpoenas “serve no valid legislative purpose.”  “There is no legislative authority to audit election results,” he said.  He added that the legislature doesn't have the authority to examine ballots or conduct forensic audits of election equipment.

Board Chairman Clint Hickman suggested lawmakers are not really interested in hearing how the election was conducted.

Hickman said there will be such a review, but not until all the outstanding lawsuits challenging the election are resolved.

The subpoena seeks audit trail logs, usernames and passwords of anyone who has access to the system and the names of anyone from Dominion Voting Systems who could get into the system.

The subpoena also commands the county to turn over daily and cumulative voter records which include the name, address and birthdate of each voter, where and when they voted, their party affiliation and any information about when they requested an early ballot, when it was sent, when it was voted and, if applicable, when it was canceled.

All that angered county supervisor Bill Gates.  “I feel strongly about individual private information, of individuals, of voters,” he said. “I’m going to fight to protect that information before we turn it over.”

The chair of the Judicial Committee said none of the information sought would be made public, and that the information was needed to verify the election results.

The county's legal papers say there's no legitimate legislative purpose for the subpoenas, but instead that the subpoenas are simply to help Trump if he fights the election results.”

So the stonewall continues:  County officials claim a state legislature can't investigate numerous claims of organized vote fraud.  And if the state legislature can't investigate, no one can.

Is this a great country or what?  No one is even allowed to investigate substantial claims of vote fraud.