According to the Maricopa County Elections Department, the county has 223 polling places, as well as 16 drop-box locations for early vote ballots, and two 24-hour drop-box locations.
Each of those polling places has at least one voting-tabulation machine. When Maricopa County chairman Bill Gates and county recorder Stephen Richer say that 20 percent of the tabulators are having an issue and not processing the ballots . . . does that mean about 44 polling places have non-functioning tabulators?
Forty-four?
Or is it even more? These machines have barely been used, just in the primaries of earlier this year! The county bought them barely a year ago!
The county had leased vote-counting machines from Dominion Voting Systems Inc. through 2022. It agreed to pay $2.8 million for Dominion to supply new machines for the 2022 midterm elections and smaller local contests. That includes 385 precinct tabulators, which count ballots as they’re turned in at polling places; nine central tabulators, which primarily count early ballots; two servers; and other workstations.
If he meant 20 percent of the 385 precinct tabulators, that’s 77 machines!
Are they still under warranty? What, are they made out of balsa wood?
UPDATE: Oh, never mind, apparently this was all a matter of the machines’ being on the wrong printer settings: “The Board of Supervisors identified the solution for the tabulation issues at our Vote Centers. County technicians have changed the printer settings, which seems to have resolved this issue.”
This is like something out of Office Space.