Vote tabulation machines in about 20% of 223 voting centers in Arizona’s Maricopa County were malfunctioning and not accepting some completed ballots as designed, county officials said Tuesday.
Bill Gates, chairman of the county board of supervisors, said about one in five ballots weren’t being accepted by the malfunctioning machines in Arizona's most populous county, which includes Phoenix.
County election officials later said they were resolving the issues in vote centers by changing printer settings and technicians.
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has been in communication with state and local officials in Maricopa County and said there were no signs the problems there were due to malicious activity or deliberate sabotage, a senior agency official told reporters during a briefing.
Voters who encounter the problem are being asked to deposit their completed ballot in a secure drop box on the tabulating machine, Mr Gates said, characterizing the drop box as a redundancy.
“Everyone is still getting to vote; no one is being disenfranchised,” Mr. Gates, a Republican, said. “This is a technical issue and we have a redundancy for it.”
Ballots left in the drop box will be collected after polls close and taken to a central-vote counting center by a bipartisan team, Mr. Gates said. "The issue has been found and resolved at dozens of centers, with more constantly going back online," Mr. Gates said.
“I want every voter to know every eligible vote will be counted, whether it's at the polling place or whether it's transported securely back to headquarters and tabulated tonight," Secretary of State Katie Hobbs told The Wall Street Journal. "That's actually how most counties do their tabulation. And we have backups.”
Ms. Hobbs, the state’s chief elections administrator, is the Democratic candidate for governor.
