CLAIM: Newly released video shows election officials in Maricopa County, Arizona, illegally conducting tests of “covert” voting devices ahead of last November’s disputed midterm elections. ing.
AP Rating: False. The video is from a live coverage of the county election process last fall, not new footage. Election officials said it showed new memory cards being installed and tested in vote counting machines just days before the November elections.
FACT: Social media users are sharing what they claim is new evidence of voter fraud in the November elections being contested in counties, including the Phoenix area.
The video shows a small group of elections staff operating a ballot counting machine in a large warehouse-like space.
“New *video evidence* showing Maricopa election officials illegally breaking into sealed election machines after inspection and reprogramming memory cards,” one Twitter user wrote in a post. As of Wednesday, it has been liked or shared more than 47,000 times. “They were caught.”
“This is a story of sabotage,” the campaign of Republican Kari Lake, who ran for governor of Arizona unsuccessfully and challenged the election and filed a lawsuit, said Sunday in a widely shared tweet that included a video. wrote.
But election officials and experts say there is nothing new in the video and that it does not show any secret content.
Maricopa County Elections Authority spokesman Matt Roberts said the video clip County-specific livestreams It took place on October 14, 17 and 18 at the vote counting center.
In the video, he said, workers put new memory cards into the machine and conduct a test vote to ensure the system is working properly, a process that takes place before every election. Stated.
“These memory cards were previously certified through legally required logic and accuracy tests,” Roberts explained in an email. “After a test ballot has been run, the tally table will be zeroed to ensure that no votes have been stored on the memory card. The ballot will be ready for polling, where poll workers will verify that no ballots have been recorded on the tally and that all results will be zero.”
the county government according to complaint On Twitter, he noted that the idea that the voting machines had been secretly tested before the election surfaced in Mr. Lake’s legal challenge, and that a judge found it “unpersuasive.”
“If it was a secret why livestreamed? It’s the reverse of the secret,” the office tweeted. “Conclusion: The video shows the installation of a new memory card that happens every election.”
The Lake camp argued that: file a legal application early this month 260 of the 446 vote center counters recorded an error during this supposedly clandestine testing process, portending problems to come on Election Day, when she fell by about 17,000 votes. lost the governor’s office.
“They know they’re in trouble. The county’s own system logs tell the truth,” the campaign wrote in an email to The Associated Press, referring to the debate.
But the county said in its response to the lawsuit that Mr. Lake misinterpreted the machine’s logs and pointed out “misreading the ballot” and “jammed paper” errors, all of which were serious. It was assumed to indicate a malfunction, he claimed.
The county said the error message could be triggered by a variety of circumstances, such as when the ballot is inserted slightly at an angle. “These entries are not indicative of failure; rather, they are a normal part of both the test of the tally and the voting on the tally,” the county wrote in the filing. Partially shared on Twitter.
A few weeks later, a Maricopa County Superior Court judge said: Fired Sui of Laket And confirmed that Democrat Katie Hobbs will be elected governor. writing it “The evidence presented falls far short of what is needed to establish a basis for fraud.”
Meanwhile, Paul Smith-Leonard, a spokesman for the Arizona Secretary of State’s office, which oversees the statewide election, confirmed the county’s description of pre-election preparations was accurate.
“The process described here falls under statutory procedures,” he wrote in an email. “The exact process may vary by county.”
Tammy Patrick, program CEO of the National Association of Electoral Officials and former Maricopa County Elections Office employee, agreed, stressing that there are no secrets in the ballot counting process.
“The live feed begins with initial logic and accuracy testing and continues until the equipment is tested after the election,” Patrick explained in an email. “It’s been livestreamed 24/7 for weeks, and it’s been that way in every election for years.”
John Fortier, an election expert at the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, agreed as well.
“It is clear that whatever is being done here is not being done in secret,” he wrote in an email. “Whatever the election officials were doing, I can’t independently verify, but they knew it was being videotaped.”
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