By Tara Kavaler || The Arizona Republic
Ballots are processed on Nov. 10, 2022, at the Maricopa County Tabulation and Elections Center in Phoenix.
The Attorney General’s Office Election Integrity Unit has requested a formal response from Maricopa County addressing election concerns, such as issues with printers and protocols for voters checking out of a voting center.
The request was conveyed in a letter dated Nov. 19 to Thomas Liddy, civil division chief at the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office, and signed by assistant attorney general Jennifer Wright. The responses are due on or before Nov. 28.
State law gives county officials until Nov. 28 to send official election results to the Secretary of State’s Office.
Wright’s letter asks for answers to inquiries involving three areas, all related to the issue of some ballots being unreadable to the tabulators.
Liddy, through county spokesperson Fields Mosely, declined to comment Sunday. The Attorney General’s Office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The first area of concern involved printer settings for ballots on demand with ink too light to be read by tabulators at “at least 60” locations in the county.
Ballots at Maricopa County vote centers were printed out at polling locations after voters checked in on Election Day. The letter sites accounts by election workers who said there were no issues with the printers during trial runs the day before Election Day.
The Elections Integrity Unit’s seven questions related to ballots on demand included requests for all the polling places that had issues with printers or with tabulators; the snags particular to each polling place; any other mishaps with printers and tabulators, the machines into which ballots are fed for counting; a list of all the settings adjustments made to the printer and the person responsible for each alteration; the printer company and the county guidelines for how the printer settings should be configured; the time that the printer settings were determined to be responsible for the voting problems; and who fixed the problem with the settings and how the problem was rectified.
