A popular Phoenix area conservative talk show host, James T. Harris (KFYI), posted a shocking video of a voter attempting to cast her ballot on Tuesday. Voters across Maricopa County struggled to cast their ballot due to printer issues that caused ballots to become unreadable by tabulators.
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Due to mismanagement by the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors and their Elections Department, approximately 17,000 ballots were unable to be counted on Election Day. They are being processed today instead and are expected to provide another boost for the Republican Party’s statewide candidates.
Normally, Election Day ballots are counted as they are cast, and reported in the hours shortly after the polls close, however these 17,000 ballots were not counted due to the fact that the tabulators at polling sites could not read them. Voters with the problematic ballots were forced to place them in a separate box on the tabulators on the promise that they would eventually be counted.
A similar issue arose during the 2020 General Election and came to be known as “Sharpiegate.”
This avoidable 2022 fiasco impacted 70 of Maricopa County’s 223 voting centers.
It took County IT officials several hours to figure out what the problem was, causing long lines, a rash of negative media and social media attention, and discouraging voters who often walked away without voting, or left in search of a site that had properly functioning equipment.
As previously reported by the Arizona Daily Independent, the culprit was finally identified as a setting utilized on some of the printers at voting centers to print ballots for in-person voting. The improper setting caused what was to be solid black boxes to appear spotty, forcing the ballot to be rejected.
Despite the fact that the Biden administration announced that it would be monitoring elections as part of a campaign to paint conservatives as campaign disruptors, few expect the Department of Justice to investigate the members of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors for violating the civil rights of the woman seen in the video.