The length and thickness of midterm ballots — not fraud or wrongdoing — caused Maricopa County's Election Day printer problems, an inquiry found.
Matt Roberts talks about processing ballots on Nov. 9, 2022, at the county's tabulation and election center.The length and thickness of midterm ballots — not fraud or wrongdoing — caused Maricopa County's Election Day printer problems, according to an independent inquiry into the issue.began in January and was headed by former Arizona Supreme Court Chief Justice Ruth McGregor
The investigation comes after about 30% of the county's vote centers had problems with printers producing ballots too light to be read by on-site tabulators on Election Day. In Maricopa County, printers at polling sites produce ballots on demand so that voters can vote at any location in the county. Lawsuits from Republican secretary of state candidate Mark Finchem and attorney general hopeful Abe Hamadeh were also ultimately dismissed by the courts.
Maricopa County voters saw an average of 80 contests on their November ballots. Mesa's Sheffield precinct had the most, with 87 races. Because there were more contests than usual, county election officials had two options: add a second page to ballots or lengthen the paper. In short, the length and thickness of the ballot make it more difficult for the printers to produce dark marks and text. The convergence of those two factors, along with intermittent use of the printers, meant the machines didn't get hot enough for the ink to properly adhere to the ballot paper. That resulted in light marks that the tabulators couldn't read.
If the county opts to keep the printers, McGregor's report recommends more robust stress testing of the machines, including large-scale interval tests.
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