Glitches with voting tabulation machines in Arizona’s largest county have touched off unsubstantiated claims of election fraud, as Republican nominees and party officials indirectly accused the Democratic gubernatorial nominee of deliberately tampering with equipment.
In Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix, election officials flagged problems with tabulators in about 20% of polling locations but made clear that it would not affect voters’ ability to cast a ballot.
There were technical issues in Dominion voting machines also in 2020, and such challenges in elections of this size are common.
In the first election since former President Donald Trump’s “stop the steal” movement began with his defeat to President Joe Biden, as many as 600 machines made by Denver-based Dominion Voting Systems Inc. also weren’t operating throughout Mercer County, New Jersey, which includes the state capitol of Trenton and Princeton University. Issues were also reported in Houston.
While the issue in Arizona is limited, Republicans there seized on the difficulties and indirectly accused the Democratic gubernatorial nominee and current top elections official, Katie Hobbs, of cheating.
“My personal opinion is it’s malfeasance; it’s not just incompetence, it’s malfeasance,” state GOP Chairwoman Kelli Ward told former Trump aide Steve Bannon on an online show.
Hobbs did not immediately return a message seeking comment.
A senior official at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency made clear to reporters that none of the glitches was out of the ordinary and that it was important not to paint them as nefarious. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to address the initially reported issues.
Despite warnings from various researchers about misinformation, attempts to cast doubt on today’s vote have still spread online.
An early analysis by Bloomberg News of social media platforms — Twitter, Facebook, Truth Social and Tumblr — shows that as the day progressed an initial wave of posts drawing attention to the problems have slowly given way to more explicit conspiracy theories by various pro-Trump groups.
Arizona voters having trouble with the tabulator can “insert their ballot in the secure slot on the ballot box where it will be counted at the Tabulation and Election Center,” the county elections office said in a statement.
Those ballots will be centrally tabulated later this evening, officials said, similar to how the country handles early voting — but without the need to further confirm identification, because ballots dropped at polling places Tuesday are already effectively signature-verified, officials said.
“Technical staff are working to resolve an issue with tabulators and investigating the cause,” the statement said.
The state’s Republican nominees for governor, and attorney general are 2020 election deniers, and the GOP nominee to replace Hobbs as top elections official, Mark Finchem, marched outside the US Capitol during the Jan. 6 insurrection.
Bannon, recently sentenced to four months in prison for contempt of Congress for refusing to testify about the Capitol attack, described Arizona as “ground zero” on "War Room," his online video channel. He accused Maricopa County of putting out “inaccurate” information.
Finchem retweeted the clip from Bannon’s show.
Ward also called for the resignation of senior county election officials, arguing they should have nothing to do with the 2024 election, and advised voters to go to a different polling location.
In New Jersey, people were casting ballots manually, and officials warned of delays in counting.
“We have Dominion and other IT professionals coming down to fix the problem,” County Clerk Paula Sollami Covello said in an email. “All votes will be counted tonight by the Mercer County Board of Elections by their scanners. Results may be delayed.”
A Dominion official said the issue appeared to be with Mercer County’s printed ballots.
The company was the subject of baseless claims of widespread election rigging in the 2020 presidential contest. It is involved in ongoing defamation lawsuits against outlets including Fox News, Newsmax and One America News Network, as well as Trump attorneys Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell.
