The Republican National Committee and the Arizona Republican Party are demanding answers from Maricopa County Elections Director Scott Jarrett in the wake of the CrowdStrike-caused IT crash last week.
— Maricopa County Elections (@MaricopaVote) July 19, 2024
In a letter written by Kevin J. Cline, the RNC‘s Election Integrity Project attorney, the parties demanded answers regarding the “July 19, 2024 closing of multiple Maricopa County Vote Centers, which upon information and belief, was due to a malfunction with the electronic pollbook system in Maricopa County.
Maricopa County’s elections have been mired in controversy for years. In 2022, voters across the county were disenfranchised when printers malfunctioned at Vote Centers and other polling places on Election Day.
Through obfuscation, incidents that might have been chalked up as a result of incompetence, became the subject of countless conspiracy theories and lawsuits.
More importantly, say Republicans, the county’s continued failures have resulted in disenfranchised voters and a lack of enthusiasm to vote.
“I’m glad to see the Arizona Republican party taking this issue seriously and asking for answers to these important questions,” said State Senator Janae Shamp.
“As we become increasingly reliant on technology, breakdowns like this one can be timely reminders that we need full transparency on how reliant our systems are on technology, and what the back up plans are in the event of failures at critical junctures,” said State Representative Steve Montenegro.
In his letter to Jarrett, Cline wrote, “Legally registered voters in Maricopa county should know when and where they are able to vote. Additionally, they should have confidence that their vote, and all other legally cast votes, will be counted correctly. This most recent occurrence is extremely worrisome due to the nature of the issues and the implications if this would happen on Election Day. To ensure voters have confidence in the election system, we respectfully request you provide full and adequate answers to the following questions:
1) What has caused the closure of multiple Maricopa County Vote Centers on July 19, 2024? Was the closure of multiple Maricopa County Vote Centers a direct effect of the issues experience that CrowdStrike on July 19, 2024?
2) How many Maricopa County Vote Centers closed on July 19, 2024?
3) How did your electronic pollbooks interface with voter registration databases, and was it such interface that causes the electronic pollbooks to malfunction?
4) What steps have you taken to resolve the closing of Maricopa County Vote Centers? What steps have you taken to resolve the electronic pollbook malfunctions?
5) What steps do you plan to take to prevent this type of malfunction in the future?
6) What vulnerabilities were created by the malfunctions, whether related to electronic pollbooks or any other electric election system on July 19, 2024?
7) What evidence do you have to show that there was no breach of any election system by a third-party?
8) Why was your county affected with malfunctions while other counties had no issues?
9) How are you communicating with registered voters in your county to ensure they know when and where they can vote?
In September 2019, computer geeks were trying to sound the alarm about the timing of the hack that caused the SolarWinds breach. In that breach, Sunspot malware was deployed to inject a “backdoor into the SolarWinds Orion platform without arousing suspicions.” “In December of 2020, the public and organizations across the globe reeled in disbelief after the disclosure of the attack,” according to CrowdStrike’s blog. CrowdStrike supported “SolarWinds in its investigation and root cause analysis of the events that led to the inclusion of unauthorized malicious code into its build cycle.”
However, the general public first became aware of CrowdStrike when it was hired by the Democratic National Committee to “probe the hack of their computer servers during the 2016 election.” Many on the political right believed CrowdStrike’s “investigation into the Russian hack was a ploy to discredit then-President Donald Trump’s victory. Trump referenced that belief in a 2019 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy that eventually helped lead to his first impeachment,” according to qz.com.
