It turns out that Maricopa County may have to trash all of its voting machines as a result of the Cyber Ninjas clown show.

There are requirements that voting authorities maintain control of their voting equipment, and this has been a fairly clear violation of these regulations.

Luckily for county authorities, the bill that passed the state house authorizing this bad guerilla theater vote audit puts the state on the hook for all the costs involved:

Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs told Maricopa County officials in a letter on Thursday that her office may not allow the county to reuse hundreds of vote-counting machines that the county gave the state Senate for its general election audit.

The county broke the chain of custody, or the procedures for properly securing and tracking the machines, when it was required to give the machines to the state Senate under subpoenas, Hobbs wrote in a May 20 letter to the county’s Board of Supervisors, Recorder and Elections Department director.

Hobbs said she consulted with officials at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security who said the machines shouldn’t be used again because there is no way to fully determine whether the machines were tampered with while out of the county’s custody.

Hobbs wrote that if the county tries to use the machines again, even if it performs a full analysis in an attempt to determine whether the machines were still safe to use, her office would “consider decertification proceedings.” In Arizona, voting systems must be certified to be used in elections.

Replacing the machines would cost the county millions. But the Senate signed an agreement with the county that said the county is not liable for any damages to the equipment while in the Senate’s custody, so it’s unclear whether the county would be on the hook for the costs.

The county leases its voting machines from Dominion Voting Systems under a three-year, $6.1 million agreement that runs through December 2022.

Dump the old machines, and use hand marked publicly counted paper ballots.

It won’t cost you any money, it’s all on the state, and you will end up with a more secure system.