In January, the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors authorized an independent investigation into the printer problem and hired former Arizona Supreme Court Chief Justice Ruth McGregor to lead the investigation.

Oversight Board Chairman Clint Hickman said in a written statement Monday: “We sought an external investigation as soon as this incident occurred. We thank Judge McGregor and her team for their thorough, professional and independent review. “We don’t grade homework ourselves.Now that we have a better understanding of the factors involved, we will start by replacing some equipment and make changes to best serve our voters.” increase.”

“It’s always difficult to isolate related causes, but in my judgment, equipment failure was the leading cause of Election Day’s failure,” McGregor said in her report released late Monday morning. I am writing.

She said that even if the manufacturer assured the county that the Oki B432 printer could handle the job, some of them would end up “under Election Day conditions to ensure a 20-inch ballot on £100 paper.” could not print to

During the study, the team printed and tallied 9,100 ballots on randomly selected printers and tally machines used in the November 2022 election.

The team also interviewed election officials from Maricopa County and its contractor, Runbeck Elections Systems, consulted with election experts and reviewed thousands of pages of documents.

The team included former Yavapai County elections officer Lynn Constaville and former Orange County, California, voter registrar Neil Kelly.

The 2022 Maricopa County ballot weight and length changes both contribute to printer problems, according to the report.

For the 2022 general election, Maricopa County will increase ballot length from 19 inches to 20 inches for the first time. Doesn’t fit on a 19 inch ballot.

Ahead of the August primary election, the county increased the ballot weight from 80 pounds to 100 pounds. sharpie ink In the last election, there was a leak in the ballot, even though the leak didn’t affect the tally or the results.

The county tested 20-inch ballots using £100 paper ahead of the November 2022 elections and found that the counters could read those ballots. However, the test ballots were printed consecutively. This is not how the process is done on Election Day when ballots are printed on demand for each voter and there is a break between each print.

During these breaks, an investigation concluded that the printer’s fuser had cooled and not reheated sufficiently in time to properly fuse the toner to the paper on some ballots. If the toner does not adhere properly to the paper, it can flake off and cause spots, both of which can affect the ability of the counters to read the ballot.

McGregor noted that two-thirds of voters in the general election had no problems with misprinted ballots, and 94% of ballots on Election Day were flawless. However, due to the concentration of print queues, Maricopa County found that some printers the research team tested caused far more problems than others, but which particular printer caused illegible votes. He said he could not identify who created the paper.

When the county began receiving reports of voters rejecting ballots early on Election Day, it sent technicians to fix the problem. These employees increased the media weight and media types in the printers and fixed some, but not all, vote rejection issues.

“In some cases, changes in settings actually led to an increase in voter fraud,” McGregor wrote in the report.

In the report, McGregor wrote that her team was unable to determine how some ballots were ultimately resized by the “fit to page” printer settings.Lake’s experts testified in her court in December that someone deliberately resized the ballot, but the judge said dismissed the claimstated that such a change would change the size of all ballots, not 1,300.

“In our tests, four printers randomly printed one or a few ‘fit-on-page’ ballots while printing a batch of ballots,” McGregor wrote. I’m here. “None of the techs we spoke to could explain how or why that error occurred.”

The research team has provided several possible solutions to prevent the same problems that occurred in the November 2022 election from happening again.

One is to go back to using £80 paper for ballots. To make sure it counts for the stronger tabulators who were finally able to read the misprinted Election Day ballots.

Another option is to replace the Oki B432 printer, which was the primary source of printer problems, with a Lexmark printer that handles 20-inch ballots on 100-pound paper without issue. The county already uses several Lexmark printers to print ballots.

If the county keeps the Oki B432 printer, McGregor recommended doing more robust stress testing prior to the election, including spacing out the Election Day ballots to print more accurately. .

“Given the considerable variability among printers, such tests would need to be conducted at scale to be confident that faulty printers will be detected,” McGregor writes. .

“This report is exactly what we needed: an unbiased analysis of what happened and a range of recommendations on what to do next,” said Maricopa County Commissioner Vice Chairman. “Even if we replace printers, use different forms, or change how we test equipment before the election, the Board will continue to work toward You can be confident that we will take the necessary steps to ensure that we provide voters with the experience they deserve.”