The suit comes aft wide reports of glitchy ballot scanners wherever immoderate machines were not speechmaking ballots. Local predetermination officials person stressed that the glitchy tabulators did not compromise the integrity of the vote.
Earlier successful the day, predetermination officials said that arsenic galore arsenic 20 percent of the much than 200 polling places successful the region had astatine slightest 1 tabulator that was not functioning properly. The suit asserts that that fig was adjacent higher, saying 36 percent of voting centers had problems, which “burdened voters with excessive delays and agelong lines.”
Bill Gates, the Republican seat of the region committee of supervisors, tweeted earlier successful the day that voters inactive had options to vote, adjacent with the glitchy tabulators, and that they were not being disenfranchised.
Namely, voters could driblet their ballots successful a unafraid container astatine polling places, and those ballots would beryllium tabulated astatine a cardinal counting determination alternatively of astatine the voting site. (Early votes successful Maricopa are counted this way.) Voters could person besides waited for tabulators to go operational, Gates suggested, oregon spell to an unaffected polling center.
Earlier successful the evening, Maricopa County tweeted that the problem appeared to beryllium that printers were not producing acheronian capable marks connected ballots and that they were deploying a fix.
Voters who are successful enactment erstwhile polls close, careless of erstwhile that yet is, volition besides beryllium allowed to vote.
A spokesperson for Maricopa County did not instantly respond to a petition for remark connected the lawsuit, nor did the campaigns of Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) oregon Katie Hobbs, who is facing Lake successful the unfastened governor’s race. (Hobbs is besides the state’s main predetermination authoritative arsenic caput of state. The tabulators are the work of region officials, and she is not a named enactment successful the suit successful her authoritative capacity.)
Across the country, determination person been a fistful of jurisdictions that person already seen their hours extended — a communal occurrence successful each election.
A justice successful Pennsylvania ordered polls beryllium kept unfastened successful Luzerne County for 2 further 2 hours aft predetermination officials ran retired of insubstantial earlier successful the day. There were a fistful of shorter court-ordered extensions successful circumstantial precincts successful Georgia and Virginia, and the authorities committee of elections successful North Carolina has besides extended clip for circumstantial voting locations.
Josh Gerstein contributed to this report
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