Bill Gates, right, chairman of the Maricopa Oversight Board, speaks about a malfunctioning voting machine Tuesday at the Maricopa County Tally and Election Center in Phoenix, Arizona.
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Bill Gates, right, chairman of the Maricopa Oversight Board, speaks about a malfunctioning voting machine Tuesday at the Maricopa County Tally and Election Center in Phoenix, Arizona.
John Moore/Getty Images
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About one-fifth of the polling places in Maricopa County, Arizona, were experiencing technical problems with their ballot counting machines in the first few hours of Election Day, but officials said their ballots could be returned, thanks to a redundancy protocol. Assured voters that they would continue to be counted.
Maricopa Chairman Bill Gates, a Republican, said in a video that “about 20% of places have trouble counting.” Post onlineExplaining the problem, he said that after some voters had filled out their ballots, the machine would not accept them.
In the meantime, voters can insert their ballots into a “secure box” just below the tally, Gates said. These ballots will be collected and sent to Maricopa’s “central tallyers,” said county recorder Stephen Richer.
“This is actually what the majority of Arizona counties do on Election Day,” Richer added.
Around mid-afternoon local time, the county “identified a solution to the tallying problem at approximately 60 vote centers. It appears that the issue has been resolved as county technicians changed printer settings. Some printers. does not create sufficiently dark timing marks on the ballot.”
Fuel for baseless right-wing claims
According to the Election Integrity Partnership, a research coalition focused on election misinformation, problems with tallying tools have been criticized by right-leaning influencers as fuel for their claims that the 2022 midterm elections are vulnerable to election fraud. was immediately used.
“After Charlie Kirk’s tweet, attention spiked, fueling others who claimed these mechanical failures were intentional.” the research group said.
The Election Integrity Partnership said, “These stories about malfunctioning machinery are likely to get attention in other states,” adding that influencers and their audiences are looking to amplify such stories.
Machine malfunctions and other voting problems are not uncommon during elections when millions of people vote in a hurry.
Such roadblocks can provoke a range of reactions from politicians and pundits, from urging voters to endure delays to suggesting that the issue is a symptom of an organized conspiracy.
Far-right figures, from Arizona Senate candidate Blake Masters to Republican National Committee member Tyler Bowyer, tweeted about the issue on Tuesday. Former President Donald Trump, who has spent the past two years sowing seeds of doubt and misunderstanding about the U.S. electoral system, has also spoken out, saying problems have been reported in Republican-leaning neighborhoods in Maricopa.
“Oh, again?” Trump said on the Truth Social platform. “People don’t stand for it!!!”
“It’s hard to know if we’re incompetent or if we’re looking at something worse.” written by the master“All we know now is that Democrats want you to go home in despair.”
The issue was also at the forefront of the gubernatorial race. Republican Kari Lake is an election naysayer competing with Democrat Katie Hobbs (now Secretary of State).
