A Maricopa County spokesperson said counting will not be completed Friday as expected but will instead be continued after the weekend. The tabulator machines were having problems. One worker said about 25% of ballots were being rejected. An historic 290,000 ballots were dropped off election day. Democrat Katie Hobbs is facing Kari Lake while Blake Masters is battling Mark Kelly for Senate.
Election delays again
Votes have been trickling in and accusations leveled at officials. On Wednesday evening, Maricopa County officials noted a number of locations having problems.
Out of 223 voting locations, 70, or almost one out of every three offices were having printer problems. Chairman Bill Gates and Vice Chairman Clint Hickman put out a statement,
“The printer settings for the Ballot-On-Demand printers at Vote Centers were the same ones we used in the August Primary. The paper was the same thickness. Prior to the General Election, the Elections Department test-printed and test-tabulated hundreds of ballots without issue. We are committed to finding out what factors changed that led to issues at 70 Vote Centers on Tuesday. We are grateful to county techs who found a fix to the problem by adjusting printer settings.”
https://twitter.com/charliekirk11/status/1590748712372178945
More Republicans on election day
Around 17,000 or about 7% of ballots were impacted. Most of the early voters were Democrats. Republicans might be more likely to turn up on election day.
Turning Point Action Chief Operating Officer Tyler Bowyer said the printing on a lot of ballots was so bad the machines couldn’t read them. “If you go in and you check in and your ballot isn’t scanning you need to ask them for another print. I just experienced it myself. I personally just went and requested a ballot.”
I just voted in person in MESA & this is how it printed. The reader rejected it & had we not inspected the ballot before voting we likely would have been told just to leave the ballot behind
The Poll Chief reprinted a new ballot. She said this is an ongoing issue with printers! pic.twitter.com/Gpy2vUcYzL
— Tyler Bowyer 🇺🇸 (@tylerbowyer) November 8, 2022
Election ballots
Bowyer’s ballot was so blotchy the scanner couldn’t read it. Bowyer concluded with,
“I believe that is part of the problem of why people aren’t having their ballots be read, is that you have bad equipment, faulty equipment, you have machines that need to be replaced, printers that need to be replaced, and the poll judge there told me they requested two hours ago for a replacement and they can’t even get people to pick up the phone in Maricopa County.”
There are still over 600,000 ballots in Arizona still to be counted with over 400,000 in Maricopa County alone as of Wednesday night. A lot more ballots were received on election day this year than in 2020. KPNX confirmed, “County officials said they received 86,000 early ballots Friday through Sunday and an additional 50,000 on Monday. A record-setting 290,000 early ballots were dropped off on Election Day, far exceeding the 170,000 early ballots received on Election Day in 2020.” Maricopa County recorder Stephen Richer commented,
“This number is immense, and it’s a conversation that probably Arizona needs to have in terms of public policy because this is a number that keeps on growing. In many ways, it’s wonderful. Arizonans appreciate the ease of the voting process and that you can just take your early ballot and drop it off on Election Day, but it does inhibit us from having a higher percentage of returns available within the first 24-48 hours.”
