Claim: Image shows black bags full of ballots being placed at a tallying center in Maricopa County, Arizona, to manipulate vote counts.
AP Rating: Wrong. These black bags are used to carry ballots that have been tallied, but the images do not show they have been used fraudulently. Make sure the vote totals accurately reflect the number of votes cast. These audits, a normal part of Maricopa County’s ballot counting process, have been confirmed by a county spokesperson and former county elections official, and suggest an attempt to inflate one candidate’s votes. not.
Fact: Days Since Democrat Katie Hobbs won the Republican Kari Lake As Arizona’s gubernatorial election draws attention, more and more online scrutiny is focused on populous Maricopa County, home to Phoenix and its sprawling suburbs.
Social media users point to images of polling station employees holding bags, suggesting that authorities are trying to manipulate vote totals. Live-streamed webcam feed From the Maricopa County Tally Center.
“In Maricopa County, black bags are everywhere. Most of these black bags must have contained ballots in favor of Katie Hobbs,” one Twitter user said Monday.
“There is nothing here, just the Democrats stealing the election again with the help of the media and the Republican establishment,” one user wrote on Instagram on Tuesday.
But the image shows nothing wrong. On the contrary, they indicate that counties apply an extra level of scrutiny to some batches of ballots.
According to Tammy Patrick, former federal compliance officer for the Maricopa County Elections Office, the black bags in the image will be used to carry certain ballot groups. He was the only one voted in person at one of the state’s vote centers on Election Day. These ballots, she explained, will be counted by vote center tally machines, sealed in black bags and sent to storage.
Early ballots, if voted in person or absentee, are sent directly to a large tallying center for tallying, so they are not black bagged.
The black bags are typically kept after the election, but images shared online show them being brought to tally centers as part of a process called a reconciliation audit. This audit checks how many voters have signed in to vote at a Vote Center and how many physical ballots are in their bags.
A reconciliation audit is conducted for each election, Patrick said. While most Vote Center audits proceed quickly without the need to retrieve ballots from storage, some locations experienced issues during the 2022 Midterm Elections.
in two centersfor example, an uncounted ballot rejected by a counting machine. print error It was mixed with ballots that had already been counted. Such a situation would “absolutely” justify double-checking these vote center totals using black bag ballots, Patrick said.
Maricopa County Elections Office tweeted a photo A worker brought out a black bag during one such audit last week.
County Elections Office spokesperson Megan Gilbertson agreed with Patrick’s explanation. rice field. Gilbertson clarified that the bags were only opened in view of partisan observers and live-streamed webcams, with documented chain of custody.
the county jokingly explained the process twitter thread On Friday, it described polling place workers as being “involved in the act according to the law.” The thread said the bags were “tamper-evident sealed for security and documented on a series of storage forms” and returned to the county by two poll workers “of different parties.” increase.
Maricopa County officials battled false fraud accusations and conspiracy theories throughout the electionas AP detailed earlierArizona is slow to count It got more votes than some other states, but experts say it’s does not cause alarm.
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Associated Press writer Bob Christie in Phoenix contributed to this report.
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This is part of AP’s efforts to address widely shared misinformation, including working with outside companies and organizations to add facts to misleading content circulating online. . Learn more about Fact Checking in AP.
