by Charlotte Hazard
At least 20% of the polling stations on Tuesday in Arizona’s Maricopa County reportedly have problems.
The problems are being reported by local TV station Fox10 based on information from county officials.
The county’s Elections Department post a video on Twitter midday in which officials said they are working as quickly as they can to fix the issue. However, the department has not confirmed with Just the New how many polling stations have problems.
In addition, the locations of the polling locations have not been verified, but the county Recorder’s Officer told that technicians were called to fix the machines that aren’t working.
Here is a message from Chairman Bill Gates and Recorder Stephen Richer with an update for @maricopacounty voters on Elections Day. pic.twitter.com/OkQczCklGb
— Maricopa County Elections Department (@MaricopaVote) November 8, 2022
“There’s one thing that we wanted to address to make people aware of today and that has to do with our tabulators,” Chairman of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, Bill Gates said in the video. “We’ve got about 20% of the locations out there where there’s an issue with the tabulator where some of the ballots where after the people have voted, they try to run them through the tabulator and they’re not going through.”
According to Gates, the officials are working to fix this problem as quickly as possible. Gates also said that if a voter’s ballot cannot be read by the tabulator, they can place it in a box attached to the machine and it will be counted later.
“Technical staff are working to resolve an issue with tabulators and investigating the cause,” spokesperson Amy Bolton told Just the News in an email. “Voters have a number of options to choose from if the Vote Center is experiencing a problem with a precinct tabulator. People can still check in and then vote their ballot at the voting booth. Once complete, they can insert their ballot in the secure slot on the ballot box where it will be counted at the Tabulation and Election Center.”
Authorities told Fox10 that these issues should not affect wait times with some of the longest wait times being 30 to 40 minutes.
The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors Chairman put out a tweet where he told voters their options if their polling location was having issues with the tabulator.
“If you’re at a polling place experiencing an issue with a tabulator, you have three options & your vote will be counted in each. 1) stay where you are and wait for tabulator to come online 2) drop your ballot in the secure slot (door 3) on tabulator 3) go to a nearby vote center,” Gates tweeted.
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Charlotte Hazard is a reporter for Just the News.
Photo “Voting Machine” by uacescomm. CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.
