After relying on retail-level printers to print hundreds of thousands of ballots on the spot, followed by a county-wide breakdown of Election Day, Maricopa County decided that each ballot in 2024 I’m planning on spending millions of dollars to buy a much larger, high performance printer.
To replace the defective $300 OKI printer, elections officer Scott Jarrett chose a new $7,000 Lexmark printer model that the county had previously used in some polling places. Given the size of the county, this is an expensive choice. Including software and consumables brings the total to $8.3 million.
The county regulator set aside $9 million last week to purchase a new Lexmark when it provisionally approved the budget for next fiscal year, which begins July 1. Other than approving the budget, county regulators do not plan to vote directly on decisions or purchases. Rather than approve a new contract, the county chose to renew an existing contract with its current equipment supplier, Lambeck Election Services, according to Elections Authority spokesman Matt Roberts. They are not subject to official procedures.
Maricopa County Oversight Commissioner Bill Gates said county officials are taking a comprehensive look at the 2022 ballot printer issue and are working to prevent a recurrence.
“I am confident that we will make the right decision, and that appropriate time and research will be put into it,” Gates said.
While the county is investing to avoid future problems, election technology experts say that a county this large and sophisticated experienced significant technical problems on Election Day, causing problems with printers and other equipment. said the need for further regulation and oversight of ancillary electoral devices in the United States has increased.
Pam Smith, CEO of Verified Voting, a nonprofit that advocates for the security of election technology, said ballot printers were “peripheral.” “But now there is more realization that this can actually affect voters.”
There are no federal or state laws governing which printers Arizona counties use to print on-demand ballots for voters or how printers are tested.
Smith said that, like other election equipment such as ballot counting machines, requiring certification of ballot printers in Arizona could help prevent future problems. He said it would set the standard for testing. Verified Voting was recommended to be set up by election administrators in a guide published last month. Rigorous pre-election testing focused on finding ballot printing errors Before the 2024 election.
“If the technology is going to intersect with voters at some point and affect their ability to vote effectively, why should it be tested?” Smith said.
Genya Coulter, a senior election analyst at the OSET Institute, a nonprofit in election technology and security, advocates federal guidelines for on-demand ballot printers.
At this time, ballot printers are not mentioned in the U.S. Election Assistance Commission’s voting system guidelines. The guidelines primarily include technologies used for voting, such as vote tally machines and their software, ballot marking devices, and accessible voting machines.but Committee is researching Add other ancillary equipment to the guidelines. These are voluntary guidelines, but some states, including Arizona, require voting systems to be state certified to meet them.
The non-profit Center for Internet Security also notes the lack of standards for testing this secondary category of electoral technology, i.e. technology other than those used for voting, scanning and counting. said Jared Dearing, senior director of the group’s chief elections officer. practice. Starting this fall, the group will offer a program to help election administrators assess the security, accessibility and usability of their voter registration, voter check-in and election night reporting systems. Dearing said the company plans to add on-demand voting printers within the next two years.
“Non-voting systems have traditionally been viewed as next to voting equipment, but they are critically important to the successful administration of elections,” Deering said.
Due to the lack of regulation, the Maricopa County Election Authority did not have guidelines for refurbishing OKI printers in 2020. The county has historically used retail-grade printers, such as those found at Office Depot, to print ballots during early voting. When the county needed more printers, OKI was reused to print ballots on Election Day.
But those printers were not equipped to print high-quality double-sided ballots The thick, long cardstock used in November 2022 resulted in poor print quality, with counters rejecting ballots all day in one-third of polling stations. About 17,000 votes that could not be counted at polling stations were eventually counted by large vote counting machines at county central election centers.
Maricopa County tested the printer before using it and it worked fine during the 2020 election cycle and the 2022 primary. Independent review of what happened Better tests to simulate frequent and intermittent use on Election Day may have found that long, thick ballots failed when presented in November. I found
Last year was just the second federal election cycle in which the gigantic county of 250,000 Election Day direct voters attempted to print and count ballots on the spot.
In 2020, the county switched to an all-Vote Center model, allowing voters to vote at any polling place, not just polling stations within their precinct. This model requires counties to install electronic voter check-in systems and ballot printers at polling places to enable on-demand printing of properly formatted ballots for each specific voter district. Even voters in one neighborhood may have different candidates on the ballot than voters who live next door to the polling place.
Maricopa County is one of the only counties in the nation that votes this way on Election Day, and most other counties in states that do not conduct all-mail elections either pre-print or vote ballots. Recounts at central election centers, or both. According to Votebeat’s analysis of information from Confirmed vote and the National State Legislative Assembly.
This on-site process increases the risk that the technology will work correctly. It’s becoming more popular nationwide as more and more vote centers switch to the vote center model, which is intended to be more convenient for voters, less costly for administrators, and more efficient.
This means that while the use of on-demand voting systems and electronic voter check-in systems, known as electronic ballots, is increasing, most are unregulated.
California requires counties to certify their ballot printers as part of their electoral system, but it’s unclear if other states will certify. Smith said adding printers to the certification requirements would help the county by providing an approved equipment list as a starting point.
Several California counties, in their solicitations for election equipment proposals, have specifically outlined what a printer should be able to handle.a 2019 Orange County RFPFor example, we asked companies to describe how well their printers would hold up when used by more than 2,000 voters per day for 10 days.
“It will require a stress test,” Smith said.
In Arizona, a legally enforceable election procedure manual requires counties that use on-demand ballot printers to include the printed ballots in pre-election logic and accuracy tests conducted by the Office of the Secretary of State. is required. A general test of the printer is required before each election, but the manual doesn’t give details. The rest is up to the prefecture.
Maricopa County isn’t the only county with problems printing ballots. A study this year by the OSET Institute, inspired by the Maricopa County issue, found 80 ballot misprints nationwide between 2020 and 2022, Coulter said. She presented her findings at the election security conference at the beginning of this year.
Adding the printer to the list of devices that require certification in each state, Coulter said, will not only ensure that the printer works, but it’s also safe from potential tampering.
In Maricopa County, each Lexmark printer comes with software and consumables, bringing the total value of each package to $13,000. Jarrett said the county already has 165 Lexmark printers and will need 640 more, which will be two or three for each of the roughly 250 polling stations scheduled for 2024. It is said that it is enough to install.
If the county has not renewed the Lambeck contract, a purchase of this size would typically go through the county’s required public procurement process for purchases over $100,000.
The original Lambeck contract didn’t even participate in the bid in Maricopa County, Roberts said, because the county took the Pinal County contract and then modified it to meet its needs.
Ranbeck CEO Jeff Ellington said he doesn’t think there will be many competitors to Lambeck, given Phoenix’s location and size, even if the county puts up a bid for the printer. .
Ellington said there aren’t many options for ballot printers in general, but in particular ballots that are double-sided and the same length and thickness as Maricopa County ballots in November (20 inches and weighing 100 pounds). The same is true in the case of the pound.
County elections officer Jarrett said the county may need longer 22-inch ballots in 2024 given the expected number of elections.
Few printers can accurately print both sizes of ballots up to 22 inches long, Ellington said. Printing ballots requires precision not required for other documents. Because the ballot image must be perfectly aligned on the paper and the toner must be dark enough for the tally machine to accept, Ellington said.
Laser printers, such as the OKI used by the county, require the printer to heat the page sufficiently for the toner (the powder that adheres to the paper to create the image) to fuse properly and darken the color. I have. In November, the ballot paper was not hot enough and the toner was too light for the counters.
Ranbeck will perform comprehensive tests on the new printers and print thousands of ballots on different types of paper before making them available to customers. Ellington said Lambeck did this for OKI, which was used by Maricopa County, and for the new Lexmark.
Maricopa County has also just completed its own testing with a Lexmark on loan from Lambeck.
Ellington said he believes the county is making the right move to being promoted to Lexmarks, especially given the turnout and long votes expected in 2024.
“Next year should go really smoothly,” he said.
Votebeat is a non-profit news organization covering vote access and election administration across the United States. Sign up for our free newsletter here.
