It's been nearly 48 hours since the polls closed in Arizona and yet, voters in the Grand Canyon State still don't have final answers about who won the 2022 midterm elections.
On Wednesday night, Maricopa County election officials gave an update about slow ballot counts and tried to explain why a significant number of tabulation machines in the state's largest county were broken on Election Day.
WHERE: 70 Vote Centers spread out across Maricopa County.
— Maricopa County (@maricopacounty) November 10, 2022
HOW WE ADDRESSED IT: County techs adjusted printer settings at affected locations to fix the problem.
WHY DID THIS HAPPEN?: We are still investigating. The printer settings were the same ones we used in the August Primary & the paper was the same thickness. Prior to the General Election, @maricopavote test-printed and test-tabulated hundreds of ballots without issue. pic.twitter.com/5en4R5Aid2
— Maricopa County (@maricopacounty) November 10, 2022
Here's an update 🧵 on the printer issue with some Vote Center ballots yesterday:
— Maricopa County (@maricopacounty) November 10, 2022
WHAT’S IMPORTANT: All ballots affected will be counted securely and accurately.
County officials, who are being blasted as incompetent, have pledged to prevent the situation from occurring in future elections.
"We are confident in the work still to be done to count every vote securely and accurately," Maricopa County Chairman Bill Gates and Vice Chairman Clint Hickman released in a joint statement. "To impacted voters, we recognize this isn’t how you pictured Election Day and we apologize for that inconvenience. We are committed to counting all legal votes and then finding the root cause of what happened so that it does not happen again."
MESSAGE FROM BOS: To impacted voters, we recognize this isn’t how you pictured Election Day & we apologize for that inconvenience. We are committed to counting all legal votes and then finding the root cause of what happened so that it does not happen again. pic.twitter.com/lxcYN3PvQD
— Maricopa County (@maricopacounty) November 10, 2022
