Voting Machine Problems in Arizona Fuel Right-Wing Fraud Claims - The New York Times

A bid of method glitches disrupted ballot counting connected Tuesday astatine astir 1 successful 4 voting centers successful Republican-led Maricopa County, Ariz., rekindling embers of baseless elector fraud claims successful the right-wing media and politicians.

Officials successful Maricopa, 1 of the nation’s astir populous counties and a absorption of efforts to overturn the 2020 statesmanlike election, said the occupation affected ballot tabulation machines successful astir 60 of the county’s 223 voting centers.

In the afternoon, the region said it had isolated the problem: printers were not making acheronian capable markings connected the ballots.

Bill Gates, president of the Maricopa County committee of supervisors, and Stephen Richer, the region recorder, some Republicans, said the problems were disappointing but that voters could inactive formed ballots and that cipher was being denied a vote.

“None of this indicates immoderate fraud,” said Mr. Gates, who is simply a Republican. “This is simply a method issue.”

But claims of wide elector fraud circulated rapidly connected societal media and successful right-wing media anyway, with respective commentators and politicians arguing that problems astatine voting sites would disproportionately wounded Republicans, who person mostly preferred voting successful idiosyncratic due to the fact that of distrust of mail-in ballots.

“Can this perchance beryllium existent erstwhile a immense bulk of Republicans waited for contiguous to Vote?” erstwhile President Donald J. Trump wrote connected Truth Social astir the issues successful Arizona. “Here we spell again? The radical volition not basal for it!!!”

The seat of the authorities Republican Party, Kelli Ward, instantly raised the anticipation of “malfeasance” and talked of recalling officials.

As the polls were astir to adjacent connected Tuesday nighttime successful Arizona, a Superior Court justice successful Maricopa County denied a Republican National Committee lawsuit that sought to support polls unfastened for 3 further hours, until 10 p.m. section time. Republicans had argued that tabulation issues successful much than 20 percent of the county’s voting centers had disenfranchised voters.

County officials had argued that an hold would contiguous logistical hurdles and beryllium hard to pass to canvass workers.

About six successful 10 Arizona voters reside successful Maricopa County, which has tilted progressively toward Democrats since 2016. Several Republican predetermination deniers are moving successful competitory races successful Tuesday’s election.

Tabulators optically scan and number votes connected insubstantial ballots and are wide accepted arsenic importantly much close and acold little labour intensive than the manus of counting of ballots. The machines are presently utilized successful 90 percent of each U.S. voting jurisdictions, according to the Bipartisan Policy Center.

Post-election audits of their results are customary, adjacent successful areas wherever they are utilized widely. Wisconsin, for example, volition person workers hand-count ballots from 10 percent of its voting precincts successful nationalist to verify the accuracy of the state’s predetermination equipment.

But the tabulators person besides been the people of groups that person denied the results of the 2020 predetermination and person claimed that tabulators and different voting instrumentality tin beryllium hacked to rig results successful favour of Democrats. Many of those groups person agitated for the implicit elimination of voting machines successful favour of hand-counting, contempt the utmost logistical challenges of counting upward of 150 cardinal ballots connected Election Day.

Reports of the problems acceptable disconnected a speedy firestorm. The Election Integrity Partnership, a conjugation of online accusation researchers, recovered more than 40,000 messages connected Twitter astir the contented earlier noon connected Tuesday, with a ample spike successful postulation aft a video was shared by Charlie Kirk, a blimpish vigor big who aboriginal said that radical “need to beryllium arrested for what is happening successful Maricopa County.”

The video showed a canvass idiosyncratic extracurricular a pollingidk presumption telling voters that 2 ballot tabulators were malfunctioning. The idiosyncratic told voters that if their ballot is rejected, they tin person the ballot work manually oregon successful a tabulator later.

“No one’s trying to deceive anybody,” the canvass idiosyncratic says.

“No, not connected Election Day. No, that would ne'er happen,” the idiosyncratic signaling the video replies successful a sarcastic tone.

The Election Integrity Partnership besides tracked tweets and retweets from users who had much than 100,000 followers, showing however respective salient right-wing personalities and Republican politicians helped catapult the claims to the mainstream connected Tuesday morning.

Ms. Lake sought to onslaught a equilibrium connected Tuesday betwixt raising suspicion astir Maricopa voting officials — and her Democratic opponent, Secretary of State Katie Hobbs — and discouraging turnout by her supporters astatine the polls.

“My connection to the radical successful Arizona is bash not get retired of enactment until you’ve formed your vote,” Ms. Lake told reporters extracurricular a polling presumption connected the downtown field of Arizona State University. “Stay successful enactment and vote, vote, ballot — we’ve got to ballot today.”

But Ms. Lake suggested, without providing evidence, that possibly the problems were being caused, deliberately, by Maricopa County officials.

“They whitethorn beryllium trying to dilatory a reddish tsunami, but it’s coming,” she said. With her predetermination lawyer beside her, Ms. Lake said she had been readying to ballot successful a blimpish precinct but alternatively came to a voting halfway successful a left-leaning portion of Phoenix.

“We switched from a Republican country to ballot and came to the bosom of wide Phoenix to ballot due to the fact that we wanted to marque definite that we had bully machines and conjecture what. They’ve had zero problems with their machines today.”

She added, “This is incompetency — I anticipation it’s not malice — but we’re going to hole this.”

One of the starring voices against the machines, the MyPillow laminitis Michael J. Lindell, said connected Tuesday that the concern with tabulators successful Maricopa County “is going to beryllium the large transgression communicative of the twelvemonth erstwhile each this comes out. ” In an quality connected “War Room,” the podcast of Stephen K. Bannon, the erstwhile Trump adviser, helium added, “We person to get escaped of these machines immediately.”

So acold this year, legislation has been introduced successful six states that would restrict oregon wholly outlaw the usage of tabulators — including six abstracted bills successful Arizona, each of which person failed to pass.

Maricopa County uses ballot tabulators made by Dominion Voting Systems. Dominion, which has been the people of conspiracy theories astir its machines since 2020 and has filed respective defamation lawsuits successful response, declined to remark connected the concern successful Maricopa County.

But according to Jeff Ellington, the main enforcement of the ballot printing institution Runbeck Election Services, the contented successful Maricopa did not look to stem from Dominion’s equipment. Instead, helium said, printers successful voting centers were improperly set, which led to mediocre adhesion of toner to ballots, making them hard for the Dominion tabulators to read.

Mr. Ellington said that though Runbeck printed mail-in ballots for Maricopa County, his institution was called connected Tuesday to assistance and determined that the contented was constricted to ballots made Tuesday by on-site printers. Those printers, Mr. Ellington said, were not made by Dominion.

“Everybody has been moving connected this since 6:30 this morning,” Mr. Ellington said. “It’s Maricopa County. It’s Dominion. It’s highly contested races. Everything astir it makes for a highly salacious story, but it’s conscionable the printers.”

Jim Rutenberg Alexandra Berzon and Ken Bensinger contributed reporting.