Two Republican state legislators Thursday spoke to former Arizona Supreme Court Justice Ruth McGregor. independent investigation She was involved in Maricopa County's ballot issues during the 2022 general election.

McGregor's report, released earlier this year, found that the offshore printer the county was using malfunctioned because the ballots were larger and printed on thicker paper than in past elections. The investigation began after a printer error caused thousands of ballots to be unreadable by vote tabulation machines at polling stations, significantly delaying and ruining Election Day.

Although all affected ballots were ultimately counted in a separate machine at county elections headquarters, the printer failure and resulting election day disruption sparked new conspiracy theories surrounding Maricopa County's handling of elections. It happened.

McGregor, who was hired by the county to lead the investigation, gave the House Oversight, Accountability and Big Tech Select Committee a lengthy explanation of how her team conducted its work and its key findings. The outline was explained. The committee will be chaired by Representative Alexander Kolodin (R-Scottsdale). He is a lawyer known for filing lawsuits alleging election fraud and defending victims. spread baseless conspiracy theories.

Kolodin approved For some of those cases.

Republican Rep. Alexander Kolodin faces sanctions in 2020 'Kraken' lawsuit and other election lawsuits

McGregor said the printer problems she and her team discovered were “not widespread.” Her report said Oki's printing presses were unable to maintain the heat needed to print ballots correctly, resulting in affected ballots being rejected by on-site tabulators.

Because the ballots are long and heavy, problems have arisen in which errors such as “white spots” appear on the timing marks on the ballots. As a result, on-site tabulators rejected the affected ballots. Voters whose ballots could not be read instead deposited them in a secure box and transferred them to a central tabulation unit, where they were counted by another machine. In some cases, ballots were recreated by bipartisan teams and then counted.

“I'm sure this is an issue they weren't anticipating,” McGregor told the committee. Ballot printing issues stem in part from unfounded concerns surrounding the 2020 Maricopa County elections, where some voters mistakenly believed Sharpie markers would bleed ink on thin paper, invalidating their votes. That was the cause.

Kolodin filed a lawsuit against the county for his belief in what is colloquially referred to as “.sharpie gate” This was one of the cases that received sanctions.

To address these concerns, the county moved to thicker paper in 2022. In addition, the regular 19-inch ballot became a 20-inch ballot to allow many races and ballot proposals to fit and still maintain legal text size. There are over 12,000 voting forms in Maricopa County alone.

Kolodin and U.S. Rep. Neil Carter (R-Santan Valley) expressed dissatisfaction with the way Maricopa County elections were run, claiming the process was opaque. McGregor said several times that their questions should be directed to county election officials.

“We agree that we want to ask these questions of Maricopa County,” Kolodin told McGregor, adding that county officials were then invited to attend the meeting, but that “there are ongoing legal actions.” '', he said, adding that he was refused attendance.

“Is there any guarantee that they'll do it right this time?” Kolodin asked McGregor, who said she was hired to investigate and what action the county would take. He reiterated that he did not know whether he would take the exam or not.

“I think they made a good faith effort to avoid this issue in the future,” McGregor said. “I think they tried to resolve the problems that arose. I'm also a voter, so I want the election to be conducted perfectly.”

McGregor said the investigation found that intermittent use of printers was contributing to the problem, and Maricopa County should adopt a more rigorous test that more closely replicates the conditions on Election Day. I suggested that. The county is currently testing printers that print large numbers of ballots at once, but McGregor's tests found that doing so does not accurately replicate the problems faced on Election Day.

Mr McGregor told the committee that he had “no opinion” on what action Parliament might take to resolve the printer issue, but that all affected ballots (those cast on Election Day) He reiterated that an estimated 6% of the submitted ballots were counted. Mr Kolodin claimed that voters who left the polling place because of long lines due to printer problems were disenfranchised, but Mr McGregor insisted this was not the case. It was pointed out that it had happened before. In 2016.

McGregor reiterated that “no one has ever lost a vote because of printer error,” and said the best the committee could do was educate the public and ease fears. “Instead of making voters sad, what should we do to reassure voters that elections are being conducted with the utmost care and that workers are working hard to ensure their votes are counted?” I think we should do something.”

Kolodin seemed to disagree with McGregor's opinion.

“It's pretty difficult to reassure those people,” Kolodin said of voters who have experienced problems.

A former Arizona Supreme Court justice countered that the “misinformation” spread on Election Day was more likely to hurt voter confidence than the problems with the printing presses.Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake spread false information Voters without disabilities were also encouraged to use the service on election day. Machines for voters with disabilities.

“In my opinion, the best way to reassure someone is to actually solve the problem,” Kolodin said, arguing that the county is not moving in the right direction. McGregor interjected that it was “possible” the county was on the right track, and Kolodin said “I don't know” whether that would be the case.

Mr. Carter used his time at the end of the committee to harshly criticize Democratic lawmakers for ignoring problems with the election process.

“What I'm observing is that a significant portion of voters don't have confidence in their election,” Carter argued.

No evidence has been found to support the theory that fraud or widespread fraud occurred in the 2020 or 2022 general elections. Numerous lawsuits have been filed making such claims, but all have been dismissed due to a lack of evidence of wrongdoing.