Mark Zuckerberg | Arizona Capitol Times

Ducey gets proposed ban on private funds for elections

In this Oct. 23, 2019, file photo, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testifies before a House Financial Services Committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik, File)

Republican legislators voted April 7 to block counties from applying for private grants to make up for shortfalls in what they say they need to properly run elections.

The 16-14 party-line vote by the Senate for HB2569 came as GOP lawmakers said that the more than $6 million in grants that nine counties got from Center for Tech and Civic Life in 2020 was really just a thinly disguised effort by billionaire Mark Zuckerberg to turn out more Democrats. The center gave out about $400 million to about 2,500 jurisdictions nationally, with reports by the organization showing the lion’s share came from Facebook founder Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan.

Sen. Sonny Borrelli, R-Lake Havasu City, complained that the cash that ended up in Arizona went to “key swing” counties, notably the Phoenix and Tucson areas.

“This was targeted in a way to really undermine the integrity of the system under the guise of trying to promote and get out the vote logistics,” Borrelli he said.

But the record shows otherwise. While the two largest counties got the largest allocations, seven others also got financial help, including Graham, La Paz, Yuma, and Pinal counties where registered Republicans outnumber Democrats.

And Sen. Christine Marsh, D-Phoenix, pointed out that this wasn’t unrestricted cash dropped on county election officials but that, in each case, they had to apply and spell out how they would use the money.

That money, said Sen. Martin Quezada, D-Glendale, went for particular needs this year due to the Covid pandemic, like additional drop boxes, cleaning supplies, rent for polling places, temporary staff and personal protective equipment.

“Those are basic necessities when you are administering elections,” he said.

“There is zero evidence whatsoever that this money was used in any partisan manner,” Quezada continued. “It wasn’t just helping Democrat voters, it was helping Republican voters, it was helping independent voters.”

But Sen. Kelly Townsend, R-Mesa, said the money received was above the adopted budgets for county recorders and was not needed to fill in gaps.

“But beyond that, if this grant was coming from China or if this grant was coming from Russia, we might be calling it Russian interference with our elections,” she said.

“So what is the difference between international money coming from a state overseas to an individual interested party, regardless of how it was spent and how desperately it was needed?” Townsend said. “It’s inappropriate.”

That, however, still leaves the question of whether the counties had the money they needed.

Sen. Jamescita Peshlakai, D-Cameron, said she has worked in a county elections office.

“There are struggles of logistics and so many unknowns,” she said, even in the best of circumstances.

In the 2020 election, Peshlakai said, the extra grant dollars went into brochures and public announcements in rural Arizona.

More to the point, she said there were measures to keep people from getting ill from Covid during the election.

“They put out tents, they put out water, hand washing stations, sanitizer,” Peshlakai said. “And in many places they even put up porta-potties because the remote locations they vote in places are where people don’t have facilities, running water.”

Sen. J.D. Mesnard, R-Chandler, said it is “irrelevant” whether counties had enough money to run the 2020 election. He said the issue is the precedent being set.

“This is about the future and whether or not in the future we’re going to allow big businesses to have a new tool in their arsenal for how they influence our elections,” Mesnard said. And he called it “alarming” that those who want more money for elections to say that it doesn’t matter what is the source.

“If we don’t put a stop to this, if this becomes a trend, you’re going to see all kinds of very wealthy people engaging in this covert, behind-the-scenes” activity.

Peshlakai, however, said if lawmakers are concerned about the influence of money, they should do more to curb the influence of cash to sway election results. Some of that, she said, is the result of the 2010 Citizens United case when the U.S. Supreme Court concluded that corporations had the same rights as individuals to donate to affect the outcome of elections.

Mesnard had a different take on it.

“This makes ‘dark money’ look like a bright day,” he said, referring to Arizona laws that allow special interest groups to try to elect candidates of their choice without having to disclose their donors.

And he said the public is on his side.

“When I talk to folks about, ‘Should we let Mark Zuckerberg start funding our elections,’ I have yet to find a single one who thinks that’s a good idea,” Mesnard said.

The party-line vote sends the measure, which already has been approved by the House, to the governor.

Counties that got outside funding for elections:

Apache: $600,000

Coconino: $614,000

Graham: $32,000

La Paz: $17,000

Maricopa: $2.9 million

Navajo: $614,000

Pima: $980,000

Pinal: $806,000

Yuma: $180,000

— Source: Arizona Association of Counties.

An April 8 story incorrectly listed Yavapai County as one of the nine that received money from the Center for Tech and Civic Life. The story should have read Yuma County. A corrected version appears below.

Ducey signs controversial bills

Gov. Doug Ducey explains Thursday how any decision he makes on signing bills to impose new voting restrictions will be based on what he considers "good policy" and not based on opposition from the business leaders -- or the sports community. (Capitol Media Services photo by Howard Fischer) — Gov. Doug Ducey (Capitol Media Services photo by Howard Fischer)

Gov. Doug Ducey signed two controversial bills late Friday — one that exempts businesses from following mask mandates and another that bans private funds for election administration.

The first bill is HB2770 from freshman Rep. Joseph Chaplik, R-Scottsdale, who argued in favor of the legislation on the House floor that masks were unnecessary because they weren’t needed for viruses in the past like the HIV/AIDS crisis. That virus, however, did not spread through respiratory droplets like Covid, but through bodily fluids, typically sexually transmitted.

It passed the Senate April 1 also along party lines. The bill does not become law until the state’s general effective date at the end of August.

Ducey wrote a note to the bill along with his signature saying that he will work with Chaplik on another bill this year to fix what he called “an error in drafting.”

“The state needs to be able to enforce long-standing workplace safety and infection control standards, unrelated to COVID-19,” he wrote, while also seizing every opportunity to take a shot at Democratic mayors Kate Gallego, of Phoenix, and Regina Romero, of Tucson.

“Our largest cities opted not to enforce their mandates, leaving the responsibility up to local businesses,” he said, after reminding everyone that Arizona never had a statewide mandate, but local mandates existed across about 90% of the state.

Most of the bill’s language was moot by the time it reached the governor’s desk due to the fact he had already lifted the executive order allowing local governments to enact their own mask ordinances, but Chaplik’s bill makes the rule permanent.

Mask wearing at the Capitol, let alone in general, has been a heated topic as most Republican lawmakers feel it is a breach of their individual freedoms while most Democrats say it’s common decency and a minor inconvenience to wear a mask to protect others — especially the vulnerable and elderly.

Still Republican lawmakers refused to wear masks on the House floor (or wore them improperly exposing their noses), and the senators who refused could participate via Zoom in their offices. Once the chambers revoked their mask requirements nearly every Republican in both chambers emphatically removed their own masks.

There has also been some confusion over Ducey lifting the mask order, despite Phoenix, Flagstaff, Tempe, Tucson and Pima County opting to keep theirs in place.

At a Trader Joe’s in Central Phoenix, a maskless man claimed Ducey’s order allowed him to walk freely throughout the store without a face covering. He was captured arguing with employees and patrons saying he was allowed to cough on anybody because “it’s a free country.”

Ducey was asked about the incident on KTAR after the video had already circulated for more than a day and said people should listen to businesses.

“When private businesses are asking people to wear a mask, let’s respect the private business and wear a mask. They’re a good idea. Arizonans have been among the leading states in the nation in mask participation and compliance. Let’s keep that up as we move through this,” he said.

Ducey also signed HB2569, a controversial election bill from Rep. Jake Hoffman, R-Queen Creek, and is viewed as an anti-Mark Zuckerberg bill.

But the bill would also block counties from applying for private grants to make up for shortfalls in what they say they need to properly run elections.

Ducey also wrote a note while signing this bill.

“I was proud to partner with you on the AZ Vote Safe Program allocating more than $9 million in discretionary federal relief dollars to state and county agencies in support of the 2020 primary and general election to prioritize the safety of poll workers and voters,” he wrote to Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, a Democrat. “When private monies were offered, our election officials used these dollars with integrity for which they’ve become known. This may not have been the first time election officials relied upon private monies to conduct elections, but it should be the last.”

Hobbs opposed the bill.

“Lies, conspiracy theories, and disinformation pose a real threat to our democracy,” she tweeted after the bill passed the Senate 16-14. “Until the legislature is willing to commit to funding robust public education efforts around our elections, open and transparent partnerships like this will continue to be vital.”

During debate in the Senate, GOP lawmakers said that the more than $6 million in grants that nine counties got from Center for Tech and Civic Life in 2020 was really just a thinly disguised effort by Zuckerberg to turn out more Democrats. The center gave out about $400 million to about 2,500 jurisdictions nationally, with reports by the organization showing the lion’s share came from Facebook founder Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan.

While the bill went through the tense House Government and Elections Committee, Democrats Athena Salman and Kelli Butler said the bill would diminish efforts to combat the spreading of misinformation.

They said that it benefits Hoffman, the bill’s sponsor, who spread misinformation through his “troll farm” Rally Forge that resulted in his permanent suspension from Facebook and Twitter.

Rep. John Kavanagh, the chairman of House Government and Elections Committee, while arguing in favor of the bill said, “One person’s disinformation is another person’s truth.”

It was characterized as a “troll farm” because teenagers would write posts on social media on behalf of Turning Point Action, a conservative group working to elect Republicans.

Ducey also wrote, “If third party groups want to engage in advocacy and encourage people to vote that’s great, but the mechanics of all elections cannot be in question and therefore, all third-party money must be excluded going forward to avoid any possible allegations of wrongdoing.”

Capitol Media Services contributed to this report.

Legal challenges to election head to court

Attorneys for state and county election officials head to federal court Tuesday to quash one of the two remaining bids to overturn the vote for Joe Biden in Arizona.

And time may be running out for a final decision.

In legal papers filed in federal court, Deputy Maricopa County Attorney Tim Liddy said the lawsuit filed by the 11 Republicans who hope to be electors for the president is “woefully deficient.” He said the claim is based on “conspiracy-theory laden, unsigned, redacted declarations making wild accusations” about Dominion Software, which provides election equipment to the county.

And Liddy told U.S. District Court Judge Diane Humetewa that claims of hundreds of thousands of illegal votes appear to have come “out of thin air,” calling the lawsuit a “fishing expedition.”

Roopali Desai, representing Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, was even more direct in saying there’s nothing to the allegations that there was a conspiracy to throw the election to Biden, one that Republican challengers contend involves Dominion and its officers to convert votes for President Trump into votes for Biden.

“Plaintiffs allege that this plan somehow originated in Venezuela more than a decade ago, over the year enlisted ‘rogue actors’ from various ‘countries such as Serbia’ and ‘foreign interference by Iran and China,’ compromised voting machines and software in states across the country in this election, and was ultimately executed with the assistance of thousands of Democratic, Republican, and non-partisan election officials despite the presence of both parties in numerous states across the country, including Arizona,” she told Humetewa. That, said Desai, is “dystopian fiction.”

The challengers hope to get an order from the judge ordering Hobbs and Gov. Doug Ducey to reverse the formal Nov. 30 certification of the election results. That would keep the 11 Democrats who were chosen as Biden electors from casing their votes for him.

But attorney Sidney Powell said if Humetewa is unwilling to do that, she should preclude the inclusion of certain early ballots in the returns, ballots she contends “do not comply with Arizona law.”

That by itself likely would upset the election results.

Biden bested Trump among early ballots by 138,476. But the president outpolled the former vice president in Election Day voting by more than 230,000.

Separately, the Arizona Supreme Court is weighing whether to hear an appeal by state GOP Chair Kelli Ward.

A judge last week tossed out her efforts to void the election returns concluding she had presented no evidence of fraud or misconduct. And he said while there were some mistakes made in creating duplicate ballots for those that were damaged or unreadable, there were not enough of them to change the fact that Biden beat Trump in Arizona by more than 10,000 votes.

The Arizona Supreme Court from left are James Beene, Andrew Gould, Ann Scott-Timmer, Chief Justice Robert Brutinel, Clint Bolick, John Lopez, and Bill Montgomery.

One thing the judges in both cases need to consider is how quickly they need to act.

Federal law says all election challenges are supposed to be resolved by Dec. 8. But Jack Wilenchik, who is representing Ward, told the Supreme Court on Dec. 7 to ignore the deadline as an unconstitutional infringement on the rights of states to decide their own election matters.

More problematic for challengers is that the electors chosen by voters — the ones pledged to Biden — are supposed to cast their ballots this coming Dec. 14.

Each of the pending lawsuits seeks a court order to prevent that from happening, at least until the legal issues are resolved, if not permanently, a move that could allow the Republican-controlled legislature to decide who gets Arizona’s 11 electoral votes. There is no guarantee that any judge will agree to that.

But Wilenchik also contends that the upcoming Monday deadline, too, is no more enforceable.

“The only real deadline is Jan. 6,” he said, the date set out in the U.S. Constitution when Congress counts the electoral votes from each state and declares the winner.

A third lawsuit which also sought to overturn the election returns was voluntarily dismissed on Dec. 7.

That case, filed on behalf of four plaintiffs who identified themselves as members of something called the Arizona Election Integrity Association, included charges that Facebook billionaire Mark Zuckerberg funneled money to election officials in nine Arizona counties through the Center for Tech and Civil Life in a way designed to deliberately skew the vote here for Biden.

Attorney David Spilsbury said Zuckerberg sought to create a “two-tiered treatment of the American voter,” putting funds into “progressive strongholds” to turn out more voters. Other places, Spilsbury said, did not have the same opportunity.

“The strategy worked,” he said.

Spilsbury noted that Biden got more than 300,000 votes in Maricopa County than Hillary Clinton got in 2016. By contrast, he said, President Trump gained only about 150,000 votes.

But Maricopa County Recorder Adrian Fontes, who lost his bid for re-election, said if his county really were as liberal as Spilsbury suggests “I’d still have a job.”

It wasn’t just Maricopa County that got grants. The organization says it also provided funds to Apache, Coconino, Graham, La Paz, Navajo, Pima, Pinal and Yuma counties in Arizona, with more than 2,500 recipients across the country.

Spilsbury’s decision to drop the lawsuit came after Andy Gaona, one of the attorneys for Hobbs, threatened to pursue him and his clients for legal fees if they pursued the matter.

“This is the very definition of a groundless action brought in bad faith, and without legal justification,” Gaona wrote to Spilsbury. Aside from waiting too long, Gaona called the claims “baseless” and “the stuff of conjecture and conspiracy.”

“They belong on Internet message boards, not a court of law,” he wrote.

And Gaona reminded Spilsbury that a judge who dismissed a different case brought by Trump supporters invited Hobbs’ lawyers to seek legal fees in that case.

Four prior lawsuits about the conduct of the election already have been dismissed. Each raised different issues ranging from about oversight of the counting process to the use of Sharpies on ballots at polling places.

Senate panel moves to block private funds for elections

Raising the specter of Mark Zuckerberg influencing who holds office in Arizona, Republican lawmakers moved Monday to block counties from taking money from any private source to help run future elections.

The party-line vote by the Senate Government Committee on HB2569 follows the disclosure that nine Arizona counties got more than $6 million last year from the Center for Tech and Civic Life. Jennifer Marson, executive director for the Arizona Association of Counties, said the grants were to help defray some of the costs of running an election during the Covid pandemic.

Marson pointed out to legislators that the four of the nine counties had Republican majorities, four had more Democrats and voter registration is close to evenly split in Maricopa County. And in each case, she said, the grants, including how the money would be spent, were approved by county supervisors.

But Scott Walter, a former special assistant to President George W. Bush who now heads the Capital Research Center, said that doesn’t prove anything.

Walter, whose organization that says it studies unions, environmental groups and nonprofit and “activist” groups, said Republicans did better in turnout in 2020 than prior years in the six counties which didn’t get CTCL grants.

“But in funded counties, Democratic turnout rocketed upward,” he said. “Funding a county helps Democrats almost twice as much as it helps Republicans.”

More to the point, he said in those nine funded counties, Democrats beat Republicans by close to 122,000 votes, far more than the 10,457-vote edge that Joe Biden had statewide over Donald Trump.

But in the nine counties that got the money, Democrat turnout in 2020 “rocketed” to far higher levels than what they were in prior election cycles.

“And that’s not just the case here,” Walter said, saying that counties in other states where CTCL grants were given “miraculously performed enormously better for Democrats than counties that did not receive funding.”

Aimee Yentes, lobbyist for the Arizona Free Enterprise Club, which tends to support Republican causes, said that’s no accident: CTCL reported that $400 million came from Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan.

“There’s no mystery about his political leanings,” she said. “We’ve seen these biases infiltrate his social media platform and the curation of content, in filtering of conservative messages and outright bans of individuals with opposing political opinions.”

Sen. Martin Quezada, D-Glendale, said the grants in each case were aimed at funding election administration. For example, he said, CTCL said it was financing drop bosses, drive-through voting, renting and cleaning new polling places and equipment for handling mail-in ballots.

“They aren’t saying, ‘You should vote one way or the other,’ ” Quezada said. “They aren’t saying that one group is correct, one group is not.”

Sen. J.D. Mesnard, R-Chandler, said he’s surprised that Democrats are OK with these outside grants.

“If this model of influence sort of works out in one party’s favor in one instance, the other party’s going to be right back at it the next time using the same tools,” he said. “And this will cascade into a brand new way that outside influence, particularly from extremely wealthy people, can very covertly, influence our elections.”

Quezada said the real story is more complex.

He said it starts with the lies that are told about how the election was mishandled, how the election was “stolen” and how they can’t be administered fairly.

“And then we turned around and denied that funding to our local governments,” Quezada said.

But he did say that the supporters of the legislation are right on one point: More money on voter education does influence turnout.

“When more people vote, the people with weak policy arguments lose,” Quezada said.

Sen. Kelly Townsend, R-Mesa, said there are larger issues here.

“Would we be OK if that money came from Russia or any other hostile country, or not hostile?” she asked, such as Canada. “If we wouldn’t be OK with international contributions to our elections, why should we be OK if it’s a millionaire or a billionaire?”

The measure, which already has cleared the House, now goes to the full Senate.

This isn’t the first time Republican interests have argued that Zuckerberg influenced the results of the 2020 election.

A lawsuit filed last December in Maricopa County Superior Court challenged the results of the presidential election saying the money from the Facebook billionaire deliberately skewed the vote here for Biden.

Attorney David Spilsbury, representing four Arizona residents who identified themselves as members of something called the Arizona Election Integrity Association, said Zuckerberg’s money was designed to create a “two-tiered treatment of the American voter,” putting funds into “progressive strongholds” to turn out more voters.

But Spilsbury dropped the lawsuit after the Secretary of State’s office said the lawsuit was without legal merit and threatened to pursue legal fees and sanctions against him.

Should a billionaire run Arizona’s elections?

How many Arizonans like the idea of one billionaire family manipulating the way Arizona county election offices operate? That’s an unpopular idea for people across the political spectrum, especially when the billionaire is Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, whose controversial actions make him distrusted by Left and Right.

Yet that’s what happened last November in Arizona and dozens of other states. Zuckerberg and his wife gave $350 million to a supposedly “nonpartisan” nonprofit, the Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL), which in turn re-granted the money to thousands of local government election offices across America, including nine of Arizona’s 15 counties.

Details aren’t easy to come by, because CTCL has refused to answer questions from The New York Times, the Associated Press, National Public Radio, and others. Despite CTCL declaring grants were meant to offset unforeseen expenses due to Covid, reports show that only a tiny fraction of the monies typically went to things like Personal Protective Equipment. CTCL cared much more about financing liberally placed drop boxes around each county and how many foreign language ads would appear in.

That’s because CTCL’s leaders are experts in every trick in the Left’s handbook of juicing turnout in the locales and demographics that help their preferred political party. CTCL’s founders all came from another group, now defunct – the New Organizing Institute. Unlike CTCL, which is a so-called 501(c)(3) charitable nonprofit that’s legally required to be nonpartisan, the New Organizing Institute was a 501(c)(4) nonprofit, which allowed it more flexibility to meddle in politics. And meddle it did. The Washington Post bluntly called it, “the Democratic Party’s Hogwarts for digital wizardry,” because it spread that party’s state-of-the-art voter turnout techniques.

How similar are CTCL and the New Organizing Institute? They’re so similar that the Capital Research Center posted a quiz with texts from both groups’ websites, to see if readers could tell one from the other. It’s a hard test, because the groups’ missions are essentially the same – turn out voters that will favor their preferred candidates.

Did that happen in November? Yes. The Capital Research Center analyzed state after battleground state to see if there were partisan patterns in CTCL’s funding and the election returns. Again, CTCL’s failure to reveal its funding makes data incomplete, but most states, though apparently not Arizona, saw CTCL’s cash go disproportionately to big cities rich with Democratic votes, like Philadelphia.

The near-universal effect of CTCL’s grants was disproportionately greater turnout for one political party. Here’s how it broke down in Arizona, comparing the votes for president in 2020 versus 2016. All 15 counties increased their votes for both parties, but not at all equally. And both parties saw their votes increase even more in the nine counties CTCL funded than the six counties it did not. Here especially the results were unequal.

For the Republicans, the funded counties’ votes increased by 46% more than the rate at which unfunded counties increased. For Democrats, funded counties’ votes skyrocketed upwards 81% more quickly than they rose in unfunded counties.

That inequality in turnout translated into a lot of votes. Again, both parties had more 2020 votes in those nine CTCL-funded counties. But the additional votes Democrats received there gave them a margin over their opponents of 129,000 votes, or more than ten times the Democrats’ statewide margin of victory.

The Arizona Legislature is considering a bill that would ban private funding of county election offices, and we both testified on it. We understand why counties always like possible extra funds, but CTCL’s 2020 scheme raises the question of whether Arizona’s elections will be fair if they’re controlled by billionaires instead of the people’s elected representatives.

Scott Walter is president of the Capital Research Center.

Aimee Yentes is vice president of the Arizona Free Enterprise Club.

Trump backers give $5.6M for Senate audit

Cyber Ninjas owner Doug Logan, a Florida-based consultancy, talks about overseeing a 2020 election ballot audit ordered by the Republican-led Arizona Senate at the Arizona Veterans Memorial Coliseum, during a news conference April 22, 2021.(AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)

Groups linked to Donald Trump and conspiracy theories about the 2020 election have put more than $5.6 million into the audit run by a man who himself has touted some of the same rhetoric.

But it’s unlikely that Arizonans ever will find out who is really behind all that cash.

Cyber Ninjas CEO Doug Logan disclosed he has taken in more than $5.7 million. That’s on top of the $150,000 contract he has with the Senate to conduct the review of the results of the general election in Maricopa County and see if Joe Biden really outpolled Donald Trump.

And the lion’s share of that, about $3.25 million, came from The America Project, set up by millionaire Patrick Byrne, the former CEO of “overstock.com.” Byrne already has said he believes what happened was “a fraudulent election.”

As to who is behind all that money, there’s no legal way to find out.

The America Project is set up under the Internal Revenue Code as a 501(c)(4) “social welfare organization.” And that precludes it from having to disclose the actual donors.

Rod Thompson, who handles media for Logan and Cyber Ninjas, said there would be no further details released.

America’s Future put in an additional $976,000.

The chairman of the board is Michael Flynn who served as Trump’s national security adviser who was pardoned by Trump after twice pleading guilty to lying to the FBI about his conversations with a Russian diplomat. And its president is Ed Martin who, along with Phyllis Schlafly and Brett Decker, wrote “The Conservative Case for Trump.”

Its website describes the organization as “the nation’s leader in the fight to preserve American values and ideals, protect the nation’s constitutional republic, promote strong American families, revitalize the role of faith in our society, and advance the virtues of free market capitalism.”

There also was $605,000 from Voices and Votes, headed by Christina Bobb who used her position as a host on the Trump-oriented One America News Network to both say she was covering the audit as well as raising money for it.

Other funds include $550,000 from Defending the Republic, a group headed by Trump attorney Sidney Powell, and $280,000 from Election Integrity Fund for the American Republic, a group set up specifically to generate cash for the Arizona audit that is run by Michigan attorney Matt DePerno, who was accused of spreading misinformation in his state about election fraud.

All of these groups also are set up under federal tax law to allow them to shield the identity of the true donors.

Thompson said he cannot say how that $5.7 million – plus the $150,000 in taxpayer dollars – compares with the actual cost, as the audit is not yet over. There apparently is nothing that precludes the dollars from being funneled personally to Logan or to pro-Trump causes.

Senate President Karen Fann said Logan’s list fulfills a promise he made to disclose the source of outside funds which he and others have been soliciting.

But the Prescott Republican said she is not disturbed by the failure of any of the organizations to break down the individual contributors. And she told Capitol Media Services she will not ask for that.

“If I ask them for that, then should I ask for names of those to contribute to anti-abortion organizations?” Fann asked. She said that’s why the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that certain contributions should be protected under the First Amendment.

That relates to a 1958 ruling where Alabama sought to block the NAACP from operating in that state because it would not provide various records, including membership lists. The justices ruled that the demand for the list was unconstitutional.

Fann said that makes sense.

“Caucasians were being threatened by the Ku Klux Klan when they stood up for African Americans with political contributions,” she said.

Fann has defended having virtually the entire cost of the audit, which she has declared to be an official government function, paid by outsiders, including those who she does not know.

But that decision also comes on the heels of lawmakers voting to make it a crime for any outside group to provide money to state or local entities to help run elections or conduct voter registration efforts.

That followed the disclosure that nine Arizona counties got more than $6 million last year from the Center for Tech and Civic Life. Jennifer Marson, executive director of the Arizona Association of Counties, said that helped defray some of the costs of running an election during the Covid pandemic.

Republicans in the legislature, however, noted that the $400 million CTCL gave out came from Facebook billionaire Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan. And Aimee Yentes, a lobbyist for the Arizona Free Enterprise Club, which tends to support GOP causes, said Zuckerberg is a known liberal, accusing him of curating content, filtering conservative messages and banning individuals with opposing political opinions.

Fann said the audit is costing far more than anticipated, blaming at least some of that on what she said has been the lack of cooperation by Maricopa County. That included a series of legal battles over what, if anything, the Senate is entitled to have, battles that so far have largely gone the Senate’s way.

She also said there were unanticipated costs, like having to rent space in the Veterans Memorial Coliseum and obtain 24-hour security. Fann said that would not have been necessary had the county allowed Cyber Ninjas to conduct its review at county election offices.

And a new legal battle may be in the works, with Fann having issued new subpoenas not only to the county but to Dominion Voting Systems, which provides the leased election equipment to the county. Among the things Fann wants for Cyber Ninjas are passwords, security keys and other information necessary to access the programming in the equipment.

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