Arizona’s Maricopa County election officials address voting issues amid Kari Lake and Blake Masters trial

The Maricopa County Elections Department in Arizona addressed an issue on Election Day where dozens of polling places ran out of paper ballots, impacting tens of thousands of votes.

A joint statement from President Bill Gates and Vice President Clint Hickman said Arizona election officials would fully investigate the incident and ensured voter rolls would ultimately be unaffected.

“All ballots will be counted safely and accurately,” they said.

“In the past 24 hours, we have learned more about the printer issue that prevented some ballots from being read at polling centers yesterday. Although the issue affected less than 7% of voters on the day ballot (approximately 17,000 ballots), we understand that for the people who went through it, it was frustrating, inconvenient, and it was not how they imagined Election Day,” they said.

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“We plan to get to the bottom of it,” the duo added.

One of the issues addressed by the presidents was the on-demand ballot printers that had previously been used and functioned properly during the primaries.

“The printer settings for the on-demand ballot printers at polling centers were the same as we used in the August primary. The paper was the same thickness. Before the election Generally, the Elections Department tested and tested hundreds of dead-end ballots,” the statement read.

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He continued, “We are committed to finding out what factors changed that led to problems at 70 polling centers on Tuesday. We are grateful to county technicians who found a solution to the problem by adjusting printer settings. .

“The good news is that the election administration has built-in redundancies – back-up plans for when things don’t go as planned. This allows all valid votes to count even if the technology, on occasion, fails. Voters affected by the printer issue had several ways to cast their ballots yesterday, including dropping their completed ballots in a secure box (Door 3) onsite,” they also said. “These ballots will be verified as legitimate and then compiled at MCTEC. This process is already underway.”

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The state of Arizona uses only paper ballots and does not use electronic scanners to count ballots, which often results in delays, such as in Maricopa County.

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“Once we get through this election, we are committed to finding the root cause of the problem so it doesn’t happen again,” the duo concluded. “And we are confident in the work that remains to be done to count every vote safely and accurately.”

The results of the Arizona gubernatorial race between Republican Kari Lake and Democrat Katie Hobbs are still pending. Additionally, the Senate race between Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly and Republican challenger Blake Masters is still up in the air.

Campaigns for Lake, Masters and the Republican National Committee are suing Maricopa County, Arizona, over issues with vote tabulation machines.