4 Keys to Understanding Why This Arizona County Still Has Election Problems

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On Election Day, Cathi Herrod received calls and emails about problems in Arizona’s Maricopa County about voting machines not accepting ballots, ballot tabulators being broken, and other questions regarding paper ballots.

“Voters are skittish in Maricopa County about election integrity,” Herrod, president of the Center for Arizona Policy, a conservative think tank, told The Daily Signal in a phone interview Thursday. “People wonder why it is that Florida is so quick to count votes and it takes Arizona days.”

This year, the stakes include the outcome of the governor’s race between Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, a Democrat whose office oversees elections, and Republican challenger Kari Lake, a former TV news anchor. Also on the line is the state’s U.S. Senate race between incumbent Democrat Mark Kelly and Republican challenger Blake Masters.

J. Christian Adams, president of the Public Interest Legal Foundation, an elections watchdog group, was in the county Thursday, having traveled there to give a scheduled speech.

“Part of it is just the size,” Adams told The Daily Signal in a phone interview. “Maricopa County is geographically one of the largest voting jurisdictions in the country. It is gigantic. And a push for mail-in voting just makes it more complicated with delays and glitches.”

Here’s a look at the big problems in Maricopa County’s administration of elections.

1. What Are the Tabulation Machine Issues?
Voting machines in more than 25% of Maricopa County’s polling places experienced significant malfunctions on Election Day, Board of Supervisors Chairman Bill Gates said.

Voters were asked to drop their ballot in “Door 3,” a drop box, to be counted later.

“Some voters didn’t trust Door 3, and that’s why they voted on Election Day,” George Khalaf, president of Data Orbital and managing partner at the Resolute Group, a Phoenix political consulting firm, told The Daily Signal in a phone interview.

Maricopa County officials said printing problems prevented voting machines from reading about 17,000 ballots—or 7% of all those cast for the 2022 election.

“We understand that for the people who went through it, this was frustrating, inconvenient, and not how they pictured Election Day. We plan to get to the bottom of it,” Gates and Board Vice Chairman Clint Hickman said in a prepared statement.

2. What Happens With Mail-In Ballots?
About 8 in 10 Arizona voters cast their ballots earlier than Election Day, either in person or through mail-in voting, according to The Associated Press.

This situation can lead to a lengthy process, as voters’ signatures are checked against registration records to ensure they didn’t already vote through other means. Before attempting to put a ballot through a tabulator, election workers are supposed to physically smooth it out.

3. What About Litigation Before Election?
In early October, the Republican National Committee and other GOP-aligned organizations sued Maricopa County after county officials refused to share the partisan makeup of poll workers.

That litigation resulted in the county’s sharing the information, and hiring more Republican election workers.

4. What Were the Problems in 2020?
After the Arizona state Senate authorized a forensic audit of Maricopa’s 2020 ballot counting, county officials acted indigent. Among them were Gates and another Republican official, county Recorder Steve Richer.

The controversial audit, completed in 2021, found problems with the county’s procedures but reaffirmed Biden’s victory there over Trump.

Though affirming Biden’s 2020 win in the county, the 2021 state Senate audit found:

23,344 “mail-in ballots voted from a prior address.”
9,041 “more ballots [were] returned by voters than [were] received.”
5,295 “voters [who] potentially voted in multiple counties.”
2,592 “more duplicates than original ballots.”
2,382 “in-person voters who had moved out of Maricopa County.”
The audit also showed that 5,295 voters “potentially voted in multiple counties.”