Maricopa County officials said Tuesday that around 20 percent of their 223 voting sites experienced issues with tabulation machines, prompting a surge of false voter fraud claims from former President Donald Trump and fellow Republicans.
"We've got about 20 percent of the locations out there where there's an issue with the tabulator where some of the ballots, after people have voted, they try and run them through the tabulator and they're not going through," Bill Gates, the Republican chairman of the Maricopa County board of supervisors, said in a video posted to Twitter.
His team is working to fix the problem as "quickly as possible", but in the meantime, he added, voters could also place their ballots into a secure box that is affixed to the tabulator. Those ballots will be collected Tuesday night and be counted in a secure location.
In Phoenix, the Burton Barr Library voting location reported it was acting as a ballot drop-off-only site due to tabulation center issues. In this instance, poll workers entered the password incorrectly on the tabulators three times and were locked out as a result, according to Maricopa County officials, ABC News reported.
"This is a security feature designed to protect the vote. We've sent a tech to get the tabulators up and running," officials said. "Voters can still check in and vote their ballot. But in the interim, voters have a few options. They can wait for the tech to bring out a new password and memory cards, they can insert their voted ballots into a secure door in the ballot box and bipartisan poll workers will insert their ballots into the tabulator at the end of the night, or they can choose to vote at another location."
In an attempt to stop the spread of conspiracy theories, Gates said that the malfunctioning ballot-counting machines do not indicate any instances of "fraud" and assured voters that it was only a technical issue.
"Everyone is still getting to vote," Gates added. "No one is being disenfranchised. And we have redundancies in place."
But as soon as news of the tabulator problems gained traction on social media, right-wing commentators and politicians started pushing out falsehoods about widespread voter fraud.
Arizona GOP gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, who has echoed false claims of a stolen election in 2020, issued a "voter alert" on her Twitter account.
Lake later told reporters she came to the "heart of liberal Phoenix" to vote to ensure they had no issues with their machines.
"They may be trying to slow a red tsunami, but it's coming," Lake said, even though Phoenix is located in Maricopa County, whose board of supervisors is 80% Republican.
Trump also weighed in on Truth Social, suggesting that problems at voting sites would disproportionately affect Republicans.
"Can this possibly be true when a vast majority of Republicans waited for today to Vote?" Trump wrote, after he and other conspiracy theorists urged supporters to wait until Election Day to vote. "Here we go again? The people will not stand for it!!!"
Other Republican leaders started declaring malfeasance. Arizona Republican Party Chair Kelli Ward blamed Republican Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer, a Republican, and Democratic Secretary of State and gubernatorial nominee Katie Hobbs over the issue.
"Up to 15 locations reported in Maricopa County with "tabulator malfunctions." Is this incompetence or malfeasance from @stephen_richer & @MaricopaVote? Or both?" Ward tweeted.
Prominent election denier and Republican Secretary of State nominee Mark Finchem also blamed Hobbs and suggested a "return to hand counting at the precinct level."
Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk also falsely claimed on Twitter that most polling places in Maricopa required at least a two-hour wait.
"No part of the tweet below is accurate. The vast majority of Vote Centers are seeing wait times under 30 minutes, and whether by tabulator or secure ballot box, all voters are being served," the Maricopa County account responded to his tweet.
Conversations surrounding the tabulation system errors spread rapidly on Twitter, with over 40,000 relevant tweets in just two hours, after rightwing influencers and commentators like Kirk continued to misrepresent the tabulators issue as evidence of fraud, according to the Election Integrity Partnership.
Maricopa County officials later shared they were able to identify the problems with tabulation machines at 60 voting centers and resolved problems with 17 locations. Technicians are working to resolve this issue at the remaining locations.
