Voting equipment faults that were widespread in Arizona’s most populous county rapidly stoked new worries about voter fraud in the pivotal swing state.
According to Fox News, over 25% of all voting machines in Maricopa County reported problems with the printing of the ballots; supposedly, the affected machines were not creating dark enough ink for the ballots to be correctly read by the scanning machines, therefore they refused to tally certain ballots. In order to fix or replace the malfunctioning voting equipment, voters were required to wait in line at polling places for hours on end.
60 of the 223 total voting locations in Maricopa, the county that includes Phoenix and so has the highest percentage of affected voting locations, were impacted by the problems.
Meanwhile, Maricopa County election authorities refuted accusations of fraud. Republican Bill Gates, the county supervisor, asserted that “nothing that happened here today would indicate a need to come out here, a need to confront some wrong.” The nice folks in Maricopa County have taken care of a printer problem we had.
Nevertheless, Maricopa’s issues may have a significant impact on the election’s outcomes given that Phoenix has around 2.4 million registered voters; nearly 80 percent of these voters cast their ballots early, while about 230,000 did so in person. Republicans were severely hampered by the glitches, as they only affected those who cast ballots in person on Election Day, whereas Democrats preferred to cast their ballots early.
