State Senate Majority Leader Sonny Borrelli (R-Lake Havasu) and State Senator Wendy Rogers (R-Flagstaff) held a press conference on Wednesday revealing that a cybersecurity expert discovered that voting machine software used in Maricopa County’s elections in 2020 and 2022 was compromised. Borrelli said “there is probable cause” of a crime, and Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell has been notified.
Borrelli said, “A few days ago I received documentation and a sworn declaration by a cybersecurity expert that examined the data from the 2020 and 2022 elections, where it has been determined that the data and the equipment had been altered. The Election Assistance Commission never approved this altered software. In Maricopa County’s previous representation that the election software is EAC certified, including to the Arizona Senate, [that was] false [testimony].”
He added that retired cyber experts from the NSA looked at the software and determined there was a breach. Borrelli clarified that he wasn’t accusing Maricopa County officials of being complicit, but pointed out it happened on their watch. He said the information is being turned over to law enforcement as a violation of A.R.S. 16-442, a felony.
Rogers spoke next. She said that while she represents rural counties, Maricopa County contains 65 percent of the state’s voters. “This is a situation where the legislature has an obligation to expose information if we happen upon it, so that the judicial branch and the executive branch are made aware that there’s a contract that’s coming up for renewal on the election machines in April,” she said. “This is something the public should know. And those who re-signed a contract should know.”
Borrelli read from the expert’s report, who he did not identify.
“Since at least 2020, the configuration of the machines with a master decryption key in an election database have been in a table in plain text protected by nothing other than a Windows login, where our credentials are easily bypassed,” he said. “With these keys, a malicious actor can have total control over its electronic voting system. While this breach has the game changing magnitude of the allies deciphering Germany’s Enigma machine and World War Two, it is really far worse. This leaves the encryption keys … left out in the open for anybody with access to YouTube, has the ability to be able to figure out, and access.”
He said they’re getting this word out now “so that something can be done about it before the 2024 election.”
He quoted the expert, “The election software Maricopa County used in the November 2020 and 2022 elections is not the equipment that was certified, and that the county contracted with. That version was approved by the EAC.”
He said the “cryptographic keys on the election database [were] in plain text and unprotected.”
Borrelli said it is also a problem in Pima County and Coconino County since “they all use the same system.”
He denounced Maricopa County officials’ responses. “Maricopa County did obstruct a lot,” he said. They admitted in Congress that data was deleted. Of course, they said it was archived, and they never surrendered that data to our people.”
When reporters asked Borrelli whether he thought the elections were stolen, he responded, “This is not about Biden or Trump; it is not about Lake or Hobbs. To me, this is a national security issue, and I’m part of, period, national security. I spent 22 years in the Marine Corps and serving my country and my state for the last — I’ve been here 12 years. … If I took a blind eye to something that I found, it’s gonna be very suspicious. And I’ll turn that over to law enforcement or do something about it. That’s actually negligence and dereliction of duty, and that’s it.”
He said, “Well, what we do know is that over the last three and a half years that the third-party vendor had full access to deck and workspaces and they even got badged in by a county employee into the server room unsupervised, that’s all been exposed. We just know the data was altered. Data was altered in the U.S.; uncertified configurations turned up information about.”
Last week, Kari Lake and Mark Finchem filed a Petition for Certiorari with the U.S. Supreme Court, appealing the lower courts’ rulings against their 2022 lawsuit to stop the use of electronic voting machine tabulators. Arizona Corporation Commissioner (ACC) Jim O’Connor and a team of election integrity activists began sounding the alarm at that time regarding the machines’ lack of proper certification. O’Connor warned officials that using them broke the law.
A day after O’Connor sent his letter, then-Secretary of State Katie Hobbs filed an ethics complaint with the ACC against him. She said his initial August 30 letter to county officials around the state “repeated erroneous and debunked conspiracies about voting machines and election security.”
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Rachel Alexander is a reporter at The Arizona Sun Times and The Star News Network. Follow Rachel on X / Twitter. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “Sonny Borelli” by MAAP Real Talk Show.
