On Tuesday, problems with dozens of electronic ballot counters in Arizona’s battleground states were discovered by former Republican President Donald Trump and his followers, who falsely claimed they were evidence of electoral fraud by the Democratic Party.
Just hours after Election Day, Maricopa County reporter Steven Richer told reporters that about 20% of the electronic vote tally machines in the state’s most populous county were out of order, requiring technicians to fix them. said to have been deployed.
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The problem was that the ballots were not properly lined up and read in the machine, Richer said, adding that all votes were counted despite the problem. Richer called the malfunction a “disappointment” and correctly predicted that election deniers like Trump would “exploit” the issue.
Maricopa County officials said the problem affected about 60 machines in a quarter of Maricopa County’s polling places, causing them to change their printer settings by 2:00 p.m., eight hours after polling began. It said 17 cars were fixed by that.
The state’s Republican gubernatorial candidate, Kari Lake, also noticed the problem with the machine and issued a “voter warning” on her Twitter account. Lake agreed with Trump’s false claim that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him by widespread voter fraud.
Later in the day, a Maricopa County judge denied a Republican request to continue voting beyond the regular 7 p.m. closing time. problem.
Trump posted a video on his Truth Social platform urging people in Arizona to “stay online” if voting is delayed.
Lake told reporters she had no trouble voting in what she described as left-leaning areas of the city.
Trump, Lake, and others are calling for Election Day-only voting and the elimination of electronic voting machines, instead promoting the use of paper ballots and hand-counting only. .
Democrat Joe Biden narrowly beats Trump in Arizona in 2020. The state has been at the center of false claims by Trump and his supporters that the presidential election was rigged against him. All of Arizona’s leading Republican candidates this year have ruled out the election, including Lake.
“Arizona reports that voting machines are not working properly in Republican/Conservative-dominated areas,” Trump said in a Truth Social post, adding: People don’t stand for it!!”
Barbara Russell, 70, a volunteer Republican polling observer at a polling place in rural Wickenburg, Maricopa County, told Reuters that both tally machines there were out of order, and the polls had failed. He said he refused the paper.
“This is completely disenfranchised from rural voters,” Russell told Reuters.
Maricopa County Sheriff Paul Penzone said additional deputies have been stationed at polling places. In anticipation of potential protests, barricades were erected around county election offices in downtown Phoenix.
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