Arizona’s Maricopa County is the state’s most populated county. Polling places had printer machine problems the second they opened.
A few problems include running out of ballots and machines printing illegible ballots.
Chairman Bill Gates and Vice Chairman Clint Hickman said election officials would investigate the machines and count every ballot:
“All ballots will be counted securely and accurately,” they claimed.
“Over the past 24 hours, we have learned more about the printer issue that caused some ballots to not be read at Vote Centers yesterday. While the issue impacted less than 7% of Election Day voters (about 17,000 ballots), we understand that for people who went through it, this was frustrating, inconvenient, and not how they pictured Election Day,” they said.
“We plan to get to the bottom of it,” the duo added.
The Republican Party and the campaigns for Republican governor candidate Kari Lake and Republican Senate candidate Blake Masters accused county officials of incompetence. All three sued the county “over issues with the voting tabulation machines.”
Maricopa County officials assured everyone they would count everyone’s ballot and no one would be disenfranchised. They also claim no one turned away voters on Tuesday.
The Republicans tried to expand poll hours, but a judge said no way.
That’s odd because other places with machine issues stayed open later.
It’s so weird because Arizona used these machines during the primary. I found plenty of YouTube videos showing officials testing machines almost monthly.
I’m not a conspiracy theorist but the Democrat governor candidate…
So, Katie Hobb’s is Arizona’s Secretary of State, who is overseeing all the voting machine issues taking place in Maricopa County, while running for governor against Kari Lake.
Do I have this, right?
— Kambree (@KamVTV) November 9, 2022
Florida counted 7.5 million ballots in 5 hours yesterday.
As of now, Maricopa County, AZ has counted just over 1 million and Clark County, NV has counted 584,000.
And both of them are still not going to be done for a while.
— Greg Price (@greg_price11) November 9, 2022
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Comments
No one will be disenfranchised. Wink, wink.
I think you may get pushback from some here as nothing really really bad has happened or will ever happen to voting and vote counting in the US. For those that believe the system is working, all I ask is “how didn’t the straw break the camel’s back?”
Most people understand that actual fraud doesn’t have to occur for the election to have been less than on the up and up. No one has to steal someone’s ballot for there to be very serious problems. It is important to make a distinction between outright fraud and efforts to use the opportunities created by the election mechanics to engage in shenanigans.
A series of choices created the problem in Maricopa. Went to vote centers instead of smaller precincts. Which makes in person voting harder as the number of places to cast a vote diminished. That leads to longer lines. That one step almost certainly led to folks on a time crunch giving up and not casting a ballot. No outright fraud needed.
Then election day issues that demonstrate incompetence at best and deliberately designed failure in an attempt to suppress voting via frustration at worst. No fraud needed but whether by deliberate intent or incompetence no serious person can claim that some voters got frustrated and left without casting a ballot.
Then add in the confusion created by this. Voters hear on news that X voter is effed up and go to another; increasing the already long lines. Then voters incorrectly told that they could go somewhere else to deposit their ballot, untrue if they had already checked into a vote center
How many election day voters, which tend to vote r, were impacted by one or more of these things? More than zero for sure. Was this fraud? Not really but this this is the kind of thing that works to suppress the turn in of ballots by actual voters who show up on election day. Guess the d/prog are fine with suppression after all, when it’s the r getting the shaft.
If your State or locality has voting mechanisms you don’t like then you have to raise hell until it gets changed to a more strait forward, transparent system of comments sense procedures that reduce the opportunities to pull these sorts of shenanigans.
However, a peculiar anomaly continues to show up in key elections but not a universal finding… the “drop and roll” where a a sudden pure jump in numbers of votes for … wait for it… the Democrat candidate. We saw similar statistically improbable pure jumps which included 100% votes in large numbers devoid of any expected human error. There are many errors and problems that can crop up without any nefarious reasons. But the present system is ripe for errors and abuse. Them longer the ballots remain untabulated, the higher the risk of fraud… for anyone. To avoid this issue of anomalies is a form of gaslighting.
Why the interest in “swing states”, why the interest in 5 justices on the Supreme Court? The smaller the number of critical hinge points, the easier to effect the outcome. A lot of money and brain power goes into figuring out how to “win” and when losing is not an option… all options are open. As they say in Chicago… “if you don’t win you can’t eat.”
Ron Johnson literally just won one of the closest senate elections of all time, Brian Kemp just won very easily.
The issue CommoChief stated is both fixable and easily fixable.
Your issue is imaginary and not fixable and discourages voters from casting ballots and is tailormade to help Democrats.
It is either cut the comforting myths or end our two party system; not in favor of a coalition system but in favor of a one party state.
Arizona’s issues are not “A bunch of ballots were found in a garage”. The anti-FRAUD provisions needed for accurate mail in voting takes forever – but are needed to prevent fraud. Most people don’t know that over 80% of votes in Arizona are from mail-in ballots (or early vote ballots, which are handled the same way). Even ELECTION DAY votes include huge numbers of ballots mailed out, filled in at home, and then delivered to a voting center on Election Day. And just like any other mail in ballot, it takes forever to verify it before the envelope is opened and the ballot added to the mix.
The voting issues in Maricopa County indicate incompetence by the County – which I am ashamed to say is under total Republican control!
Yes that’s true. There are some jurisdictions where outright fraud would seem the easiest explanation and since the folks in charge of those jurisdictions are not transparent about the election proceedings is entirely fair to draw that inference.
The point is that outright fraud isn’t necessary to impact voters and thus the election result. See AZ. The elections officials chose these particular elections mechanics. That exposed the entire system to potential failure.
Then the cascade effect took over and failure at 25% or so vote center strained the entire system as voters went to other vote centers. Now all the lines were even longer.
Bottom line is outright fraud isn’t necessary to change the course of an election. It can be done by creating a vulnerable system then waiting for the inevitable failure or if in hurry assisting the failure with ‘unintentional mistakes’ and ‘unforseen errors’.
They do seem to go hand in hand, however.
Remember how the continuing fiascos in Orange County ended when they finally fired for cause the election judge who had been running them all?
As I recall the “for cause” was because she had locked herself ins room with a pile of ballots and was frantically filling them out to try and tip the election away from DeSantis.
There are two ways to tip the election:
1. Add more Democrat votes
2. Discard some Republican votes
Both ways take time.
Sometimes yes. Sometimes no. Sometimes far more working the mechanics for advantage and sometimes far more odd ballot totals with questionable explanations.
The point is when the election mechanics are set up to provide an advantage it puts a big thumb on the scale which may not be outright cheating but certainly impacts the outcome.
Until the mechanics of the elections are transparent and efficient and the bad breaks which are seemingly very one sided are eliminated then people have legitimate reasons to be concerned.
News orgs, prominent individuals and the chattering class who refuse to recognize that are being deliberately disingenuous.
That’s why these machine failures in Republican districts were important. You have a bunch of people filling out paper ballots and putting them into a box, a box that everybody knows overwhelmingly contains votes for Republican candidates. Losing that box (where’s the chain of custody?) is an obvious point of attack on the election.
And that seems to be the issue here – switching from polling places to voting centers. The Dems appear to have voted a lot more heavily absentee, while the Republicans were the ones showing up at the voting centers. Could the voting center problems have been predicted, and Dems pushed to voting early to guard against that? By Dem election officials and the Dem SoS Running for governor?
But they will get “adjudicated” by the nice Democrat poll workers.
This may include destruction or loss….
All the “adjudication” is done with members of both parties participating. The counting can be watched online as well. Search for “Maricopa County Elections Department live video feeds”.
Every election I read stories about republican poll watchers in Dem strongholds illegally ejected from the premises. Sometimes grudgedly allowed to be in the room when votes are tabulated but not to be within close viewing distance. Never read followups where folks were charged for such shenanigans.
It’s not a conspiracy THEORY when it actually happens every election.
NO Republican poll watcher has been thrown out of ANY Arizona voting center! That’s the thing: Arizona is NOT Detroit or Philly! We have live video broadcast online. And it IS kooky conspiracy stuff to pretend a heavily Republican County like Maricopa is the equivalent of Detroit.
“A heavily Republican county like Maricopa”?
Check out the colors.
For those of you unfamiliar with AZ geography, it’s the M-shaped one with Phoenix in it.
The NE corner of the state is heavily rez. I’m frankly amazed Navajo County is pink this time around.
Our “Austin” is Tucson. That’s where people immigrate when they want to move to Arizona, but not really “live in” Arizona.
Not even third-world. Fourth-world competence.
You should see how much more effective modern airlines are at processing tickets, it only takes hours longer.
Airlines handle millions of tickes per day, elections officials handle thousands of ballots per year. Not even remotely the same thing.
Have you ever been delayed because of airline computer malfunction? I have and so have many millions of other people.
The thing about hand counting paper ballots is that it’s fast. If you have a big population, you also get a large number of ballot counters, and it all scales. Nothing breaks.
Computers, unreliable for any number of reasons, give you the impression that you don’t need much staff, so when they break, counting takes forever.
Democrats were dead set against voting machines because of their corruptibility.
That is, until they learned how to use it for their personal power grab.
Yeah, it’s fascinating howuch more efficient voting was prior to us getting too technological. Our society has become too clever by half.
It doesn’t help that updating to current tech takes money that counties often just don’t have.
The OS in your computer is a huge part of the price tag.
The software doesn’t have to cost anything. There are open-source solutions where you can not only audit the results, you can audit the underlying code and most of those are available at no cost. Yes, you still need the hardware to run them on, but the software need not cost anything and in reality it is better if it doesn’t.
What’s even better? Paper ballots, an ink pen and complete control over where those ballots travel. On election day, not one single filled-out ballot should ever enter or exit a polling place unless it is carried by the voter inside a security envelope that is properly filled out. Count the number of voters as they check in and compare that to the total number of ballots that are counted, then count them on location and store them securely while telephoning in the results to a central tabulation center that handles ZERO ballots on-site.
Winner.
If anything, this debacle is indicative of the incompetence and political bias of Hobbs.
A political “Hobbsgoblin” if you will….
“Arizona’s Maricopa County Still has to Count Hundreds of Thousands of Ballots”
You spelled manufacture wrong.
Lake claims that many/most of them were mail-in ballots that were dropped off at polling places rather than being mailed and that she expects them to fall heavily in her favor .
The incentives here are awful.
Democrats disproportionately vote early or by mail.
Republicans disproportionately vote in person on election day.
The Democratic candidate is personally in charge of preventing election-day problems…
… but would greatly benefit from anything that makes election-day voting more onerous.
It’s like going into surgery with an anesthesiologist who is the beneficiary of your life insurance policy.
Hence the movie “Coma”… which is where this nation is presently.
Why not create our own turnout machine to change that as we did in Florida and beat them before and on election day?
The broken machines are either incompetence or something worst from a SoS but it is clear we aren’t going to be able to end the voting season length in the new swing states and as California Republicans did we need to adapt.
So we should “adapt” to an inherently insecure system that can’t be trusted. I fail to see where there’s a good solution there.
We adapted in California and retook a lot of congressional seats there by adapting.
The choice isn’t between having the system we want or not; the Democrat incumbents are not going to surrender.
The choice is make the current system no longer an advantage to Democrats or don’t.
To make any election reforms we need to win a state house and governors mansion. We just lost the state house in Michigan.
Remember kiddies: Disenfranchising voters is only okay if it’s Republicans who are being disenfranchised.
Exactly.
In the old days with our archaic pencils and paper ballots we often didn’t know who won an election until the next morning.
Now with all our super advanced technology we can know who won in only several days!
I blame the new rules that allow ballots to trickle in days after the polls close. Add to that “found” ballots that swing the election days later and we have a modern problem. We have been getting better at bringing in ballots by the cargo van at 3am the night polls close and the monitors have left. The election is declared over once the correct candidate pulls ahead. That’s how we do it now. We meaning Democrats.
Biggest roadblock to finishing on Election Day is not counting mail in ballots and early voting ballots as they’re arriving. In Florida those ballots are counted starting 22 days before Election Day. Note well that Miami-Dade, longtime Democrat bastion, flipped Republican this election and DID NOT have any problems on game day.
When Election Day voters are overwhelmingly Republican and problems occur at voting locations ON THAT DAY it isn’t a big leap to conclude the problems are purposeful. Pure voter suppression, and very effective.
By midnight on election night Florida is done. Perhaps these idiots should be going to Florida and taking notes.
Florida Democrats are going to Arizona and taking notes how to run an election the next time they are in charge
Per Kari Lake, there are (were) about 384k mail-in ballots to be counted, and she expected that they would break 60-80% in her favor.
Mail in ballots must go
Voting season must go
The cheat is on
God bless Kari and co and
god bless President Trump
About 40% of the votes were probably legit for Hobbs. Everything else was cheated.
Florida is the gold standard, and deviations from their general results are all suspect.
“Chairman Bill Gates“
I found the problem.
Interesting that the more we use technology, the less reliable our election tabulation systems have gotten. We should have stopped at hand-filled ballots, because with those we not only got accurate results, we got them quickly as well, even when requiring multiple counters to verify no party bias.
Florida counted votes, i.e., ballots cast by real people. That’s why they finished relatively quick. Arizona, on the other hand, is counting ballots. Not votes from real people but ballots. Do the math. (They are).
Like Philadelphia? I’ve heard they had 140% turnout this election, sounds like more than enough to tip the election for Fetterman.
Notice how the issue works. The first time it’s crazy. BUT, the issue gets seeded into general knowledge. Then it’s not crazy, but you are over-reacting.
It’s become normal to talk about voting irregularities, bad notifications, ad hoc practice changes, machine failures, counting taking forever, and the rest.
When something actually gets fixed: first they mock you; then it’s old news; then it’s a problem; then something gets done. (Slightly different from Ghandi’s more political sequence.)
My understanding is that the problems were caused by printers which were not printing dark enough to be properly read.
This implies that they are using a system in which the voter uses a touch screen to make their voting choices, and then the result is printed on a ballot, and then the ballot is read by a scanner.
This is a profoundly stupid voting method. It severely violates KISS.
Even with this level of brokenness, it is impossible to imagine what is taking so long to count the votes.
It’s amusing that the County Supervisors Chairman is named Bill Gates.
This article confirms my understanding of the voting process:
https://www.azmirror.com/blog/how-the-17000-ballots-cast-in-door-3-will-be-counted-after-maricopa-county-printer-problems/
It thoughtfully states: “Prominent Republicans, though, began to warn without basis that this process was somehow unsecure, despite election officials’ promises.”
Nothing to see here. Move along.
I’m betting nobody will lose their job.
There’s a much better description of the “ballot printing problem” here:
https://www.powerlineblog.Com/archives/2022/11/whats-the-matter-with-arizona.php
It’s even worse than I thought.
This is hilarious.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2022/11/09/fact-check-false-claim-arizona-ballot-machine-error-cheating-tabulator-maricopa-county/8306964001/
“Based on our research, we rate FALSE the claim that Arizona ballot machine glitches show “they’re cheating again.” Printers at 60 voting sites in Maricopa County had produced ballots with formatting marks that weren’t dark enough to be read by tabulators, according to county officials. All voters affected were still able to submit ballots to be counted. A senior cybersecurity official said there is no evidence of impropriety linked to the printing problems.”
I rate this fact check as “partially true”. The voters whose printed ballots were too light to be properly scanned were merely unable to visually confirm that their ballot was counted. Their ballots will be counted later at a different location. So rampant cheating could occur then even if there was “no evidence of impropriety linked to the printing problems”.
As I have always said, technology will save us. s
Along with everything else mentioned- I have a problem with “curing ballots” which is happening here and elsewhere. If a voter can’t properly fill out a ballot form, then, the vote shouldn’t count. That’s a very simple easy to follow rule. Name: ✔ Date: ✔ Address: ✔ Signature: ✔, whatever else might be requitred by the state: ✔, Well ballot is good. Missing something? Oh, well. Maybe next time you;ll get it right.
Count every ballot, sure. The damage is alrady done. This is highly destabilizing, and I think they know this. It looks like a color revolution being engineered by the CIA. It probably is.
Republicans should have people there in droves, overseeing this ‘counting’. As noted by others, so many states are able to count millions and millions of votes in less than 48 hours…..but not Arizona. You just know that the left is up to something again, trying to put the fix in for the democrats. Get in there and put a microscope up their arses because they will steal this election otherwise.
The imbecile from Arizona who gave the press conference yesterday when asked WTF was going on said…..paraphrasing….”that’s the way we’ve done it for decades…” i.e. a big fat FU to the American people….