Maricopa County Releases More Information on ‘Printer Issue’ Following Lawsuit
Authorities in Maricopa County have resolved a widespread problem with tabulation equipment at several polling stations across the county on Election Day.
Officials from the county’s election office stated Tuesday that tabulators at roughly 20% of polling stations were malfunctioning. Later in the day, Maricopa County Elections Command Center reported in a statement that “printer settings” were the cause.
In a joint statement Wednesday’s statement by Bill Gates, Chairman of Maricopa County Board of Supervisors and Clint Hickman, Vice Chair, provided more details about the issue. He stated that the ballot on-demand printers were previously used and had worked correctly during the 2022 primary elections in August.
“The printer settings for the Ballot-On-Demand printers at Vote Centers were the same ones we used in the August Primary,” the chair’s statement reads. “The paper was the same thickness. Prior to the General Election, the Elections Department test-printed and test-tabulated hundreds of ballots without issue.”
The issue impacted “less than 7 percent of Election Day voters”—or “about 17,000 ballots”—that were dropped into secure slots at the tabulators, the statement noted.
It also added that officials are committed to fully investigating the incident and digging into “the root cause of what happened” so similar problems can be avoided in the future.
Despite a widespread issue with tabulation equipment in Arizona’s most populous county, voters were still able to vote at locations with defective machines, although the ballots would be placed in a separate box.
“The good news is election administration has built-in redundancies—backup plans when things don’t go as planned. This enables all valid votes to count even if technology, on occasion, fails,” according to the chair’s latest update.
“Voters impacted by the printer issue had several ways to cast their ballot yesterday, including dropping their completed ballot into a secure box (door 3) on-site. MCTEC will verify the legitimacy of those ballots and tabulate them. That process is already underway,” they added.
MESSAGE FROM BOS: To impacted voters, we recognize this isn’t how you pictured Election Day & we apologize for that inconvenience. We are committed to counting all legal ballots and finding the root cause so it doesn’t happen again. pic.twitter.com/lxcYN3PvQD
— Maricopa County (@maricopacounty) November 10, 2022
Local Republicans and candidates have sharply criticised county officials for tabulation issues in pivotal state.
Maricopa County was sued by the Republican gubernatorial Candidat Kari Lake, Republican Senate Candidat Blake Masters, and Republican National Committee (RNC) over widespread problems with tabulation equipment.
An emergency motion (pdf) to extend voting hours filed by the RNC, the National Republican Senatorial Committee, former state lawmaker Jill Norgaard, as well as Masters and Lake, was rejected on Tuesday by a judge in Arizona, who stated that “the court does not have evidence there was a voter who was precluded the right to vote.”
As of early Thursday, the final count of the state’s gubernatorial race between Lake and Democrat Katie Hobbs is still not known. Also, Blake Masters, the Republican challenger to Sen. Mark Kelly is still pending.
