Arizona law, as explained by Sen. Borrelli in a recent video and noted earlier in a previous thread, requires ballots and voting machines to be moved and stored in a secure location after an election.

The obvious reason is the integrity of the election depends on a legitimate audit which depends on uncompromised ballots and machines. The importance of this is reflected in the fact it is a law and a criminal offense not to do it. The materials must be moved quickly to the custody of the Treasurer.

That did not happen. The ballots and machines were not moved quickly and still haven't been moved. They were illegally retained and are illegally retained.

Access to the materials post-election must be by court order for obvious reasons. You can't have anyone and everyone being allowed to see, alter or damage them.

The board of supervisors never got a court order to access the ballots and machines after they illegally retained them. So the access to them before they got companies to access them was illegal access--or unauthorized access--the same as hacking--every day after they should have been in the custody of the Treasurer.

The companies that the supervisors asked to "audit" the machines did not have a court order to access them. Their access was also unauthorized access or illegal access--the same as hacking.

It has been reported that the hackers who illegally accessed the Arizona State hardware and "audited" the machines changed the data on the machines. This hacking was also illegal. There was no court order to edit the data. The law of course prohibits data manipulation or deletion of any kind on the state's election machines before a court-approved forensic audit.

There were three crimes:

1. Illegal retention
2. Illegal access
3. Illegal editing