Once again Maricopa County Recorder Adrian Fontes has been forced to announce that his office will not be ready for voters today. According to Fontes, he had employees working all night in order to get a number of polling places in Maricopa County ready for Election Day, after discovering they were not ready.
Fontes has botched every election he has managed and disenfranchised numerous voters since taking office in 2016.
UPDATE: We are advising voters assigned to the Polling Place at 2031 N. Arizona Ave in Gila Precinct to use the Chandler City Hall Vote Center, at 175 S. Arizona Ave, Chandler due to building access issues. We will keep you posted. #Vote #ElectionDay
— Adrian Fontes (@RecorderFontes) November 6, 2018
Fox 10 News reports, that Fontes said “72 polling places out of 503 are not ready.”
#MaricopaCoRecorder tells me 72 polling places out of 503 are not ready. That’s as of 5:45 tonight. No guarantee they will be ready by opening for #ElectionDay They hope to work through the night to open on time ready to go #fox10phoenix
— John Hook Fox 10 (@JohnHookfox10) November 6, 2018
With voters lining up to vote before the polls opened in Mesa and Scottsdale this morning, it is unknown how many voters will be turned away from the Gila Precinct in Chandler and unable to vote at City Hall.
During the primary, voters across the County were diverted away from nonfunctional polling places to functional polling places. Many of them were unable to go to those polling places and were essentially denied the opportunity to vote.