USA 2024 Elections Thread

grarpamp grarpamp at gmail.com
Sun Jan 8 18:51:36 PST 2023


Democrats expected to go to prison.


Arizona's Maricopa County To Investigate Election Day Printer Issues

https://www.theepochtimes.com/arizonas-maricopa-county-to-investigate-election-day-printer-issues_4968953.html

Arizona’s largest county is launching an investigation into the issues
that caused chaos on Election Day.

The probe will be “an important step in our efforts to get to the
bottom of the printer issues that affected some Vote Centers on
Election Day last November,” Maricopa County Board of Supervisors
Chairman Bill Gates and Vice Chairman Clint Hickman said in a joint
statement on Jan. 6.

Voters across the county found their ballots could not be processed by
machines in the 2022 midterm elections, a problem that led to long
lines at voting centers and workers having to tabulate the votes at a
later date. At least 70 of the county’s polling sites were affected,
at some 17,000 ballots. Maricopa County was one of the last counties
to produce results in the midterms.

During a trial held for a lawsuit brought by Arizona GOP gubernatorial
candidate Kari Lake, a cyber expert who examined ballots said he found
19-inch images printed on 20-inch paper. Clay Parikh, an information
security officer with Northrup Grumman, said that the printers would
not process the 19-inch images.

Parikh said there were only two ways the situation could have happened.

“One way is by changing the printer adjustments that would make the
printer adjustments and settings override the image file that was
sent, the other is from the application side, the operating system
side,” Parikh said.

County officials said they weren’t aware of the county using 19-inch
images and said that the printers were programmed to print 20-inch
ballots.

They’ve denied accusations that the problems stemmed from intentional actions.

Richard Baris, a pollster, testified that the problems disenfranchised
enough voters to swing the election. Republicans vote at much higher
numbers on Election Day, while Democrats favor early and mail voting.
Democrat Katie Hobbs beat Lake by 17,117 votes, according to the
official election results.

Arizona Superior Court Judge Peter Thompson, who oversaw the trial,
ultimately rejected the case, saying he had not been presented with
convincing evidence of misconduct. The Arizona Supreme Court later
turned down a request to transfer the lawsuit, meaning an appeal will
be heard before the state court of appeals.

The new investigation will be headed by Ruth McGregor, a former chief
justice of the Arizona Supreme Court. McGregor has led probes in the
past, including an investigation into problems with locks on cell
doors in state prisons.

McGregor will hire a team of independent experts “to find out why the
printers that read ballots well in the August Primary had trouble
reading some ballots while using the same settings in the November
General,” Gates and Hickman said. “Our voters deserve nothing less.”

The officials said previously that the printer settings were the same
for the August primary and the November general election, and that the
paper was the same thickness.

An election worker sorts ballots at the Maricopa County Tabulation and
Election Center in Phoenix, Ariz., on Nov. 9, 2022. (John Moore/Getty
Images)
Election Task Force

Gov. Hobbs, meanwhile, announced on Friday an elections task force
that she said would advise officials on improving elections.

The task force will “study and make recommendations to strengthen
election laws, policies, and procedures in the State of Arizona,” an
executive order from Hobbs stated.

The entity will be chaired by the governor or a designee and include
Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, a Democrat, or his designee;
a county recorder nominated by the Arizona Senate president; a county
recorder nominated by the Arizona House of Representatives president;
and two election directors picked by the Election Officials of Arizona
Association.

The task force was directed to submit a report to Hobbs by Nov. 1,
2023, that identifies specific recommendations for legislators to
improve the state’s election laws, including recommendations to ensure
“consistent, secure, and accessible election administration and voter
registration practices across the State.”

Hobbs said that Arizona’s elections “are fair, secure, and free” but
that “more can be done to strengthen and clarify the laws around
Arizona’s democratic process.”

Lake said that the task force would be a “cover-up” unless it probed
the problems in Maricopa County, including the 19-inch images printed
on 20-inch paper.

Fontes said that he looked forward to working with Hobbs to make sure
the task force “is set up for success” and suggested it would help
improve voter confidence.


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