It was a easy printing bug that brought about some vote tabulating machines to reject ballots on Election Day in Maricopa County, Arizona, in keeping with a report launched Sunday from the county’s Elections Department.

Disinformation unfold quickly on November 8, when some voting machines within the Southwest state’s most populous county glitched out. However, counter to many Republican conspiracy theories, the technical situation didn’t trigger any issues with last vote counts or election integrity, the Elections Department indicated.

Poll employees and election officers instructed voters whose ballots had been rejected to both place their ballots into “Box 3″ or “Door 3″ for counting at the central facility, or to go to one of the numerous other open voting locations around the county if they preferred. In total, just 16,724 ballots ended up in Box 3, representing about 1% of all ballots issued during the 2022 general election, said the report. And all of those eligible ballots were securely tallied using the state’s longstanding back-up system.

Transferring ballots from polling stations to a central counting facility is a common practice throughout Arizona. The method is even used as the standard in eight counties, noted the report. But that didn’t stop right-wing pundits like Donald Trump Jr. and Turning Point USA’s Charlie Kirk from jumping on the machine issue to spread mistrust in an already contentious election cycle.

“The secure Door 3 option has been a decades-long practice in Maricopa County. Despite this being a legal, secure, and reliable voting option, many high profile and influential individuals instructed voters to not deposit their ballots in Door 3 (Exhibit: #DOOR 3). Consequently, some voters refused to use this viable voting option,” learn the Sunday report. Specifically, 206 voters checked-in at one location after which forged a poll in one other—193 of which had been confirmed to have modified polling stations after a poll machine situation and had their vote counted.

What brought about the glitch?

Though “root cause analysis” continues to be ongoing, the Maricopa County Elections Department famous a pair various things appeared to contribute to the poll learn situation. The most important situation was that some new mannequin and retrofitted printers had been producing ballots that couldn’t be learn by the tabulating machines, even beneath the beforehand authorised settings. Basically: the printers had been producing ballots that had been too gentle.

The authority reported no different issues with the poll readers or the printers. However, some ballots had been rejected by tabulation machines due to how they had been marked. Ballpoint pen or skinny markings as a substitute of filled-in ovals brought about about 1,600 of the poll points.

On Election Day, officers discovered {that a} small adjustment within the printers’ fuser settings resolved the issue. Of the county’s 223 Vote Centers, 43 are confirmed to have skilled the printer situation, and technicians visited 71 completely different websites to repair the printer settings—in lots of circumstances pre-emptively earlier than any difficulties arose.

“Once identified, we began guiding poll workers to make this change over the phone and dispatching technicians to make changes at the sites with reported issues. The changes had to be completed onsite at the Vote Center and could not be made remotely. We also asked technicians to proactively make these changes at other sites that had not yet reported an issue. By mid-afternoon, most sites were no longer experiencing the printer issue,” wrote the Elections Department.

The political context

Maricopa County, and Arizona as an entire, were battlegrounds in the midterms. The state confronted some deeply divisive races, and have become decisive in figuring out the steadiness of the Senate.

Even earlier than the day of the overall election, there have been points on the jurisdiction’s polling websites. A District Court Judge issued a restraining order in opposition to ballot watchers from one right-wing watchdog group who had been displaying as much as early voting areas armed, and intimidating voters. In the times following the election, Maricopa County Board of Supervisor’s Chairman was forced into hiding following security considerations and threats.

Though she misplaced by about 17,000 votes, in keeping with the Associated Press, GOP gubernatorial candidate and outstanding 2020 election denier Kari Lake has still refused to concede.

Sunday’s report follows a weeklong inquiry, spurred by a request from the Arizona Attorney General’s Office. In that request, assistant lawyer common Jennifer Wright questioned the legality of the election given a federal requirement for “uniform” course of, voters altering polling areas after checking in, and that ballots had been moved to the central counting location. However, Thomas Liddy, a Republican and head of Maricopa County’s civil division, addressed and refuted the claims of unlawful “non-uniformity,” and all different alleged violations in a letter accompanying the report. 

“Every lawful voter was still able to cast his or her ballot. No voter was disenfranchised because of the difficulty the County experienced with some of its printers. Every voter was provided a ballot by which he or she could record their votes, and all such ballots cast by lawful voters were tabulated, whether in the vote center or at the Maricopa County Tabulation and Election Center,” Liddy wrote. “The printing issues, leading to precinct-based tabulators being unable to tabulate some of the votes cast, was regrettable. But it did not violate the uniformity statutes, and any suggestion that it did is unfounded,” he added.

The report got here only a day earlier than the deadline for certifying election outcomes. Nearly all jurisdictions throughout the nation have now voted to certify their outcomes for the 2022 midterm elections, however a number of Arizona counties haven’t, and at least one Republican-controlled county will delay their determination additional.