by Natalia Mittelstadt
As Republicans warn of long lines on Election Day in Maricopa County, Ariz., local election officials also expect election results to be delayed. Republicans in both Arizona and on the national level are claiming that Maricopa County has not sufficiently prepared for Election Day, which may result in long lines and persuading eligible voters to avoid voting.
The possible Election Day issues are in addition to the announcement by Maricopa County election officials that it will take 10-13 days to completely tabulate all ballots, meaning that some races may not be called on election night.
Harmeet Dhillon, counsel for the Republican National Committee, and Abe Hamadeh, the GOP nominee for Arizona’s 8th Congressional District, sent a letter on Thursday to the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office and the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, warning of the potential delays and voting issues that could occur on Election Day.
“The county’s current plan, which already expects long lines on Election Day, is based on the unlikely expectation that voters will only take up to a maximum of approximately 12 minutes to complete their ballots,” the letter reads. “Our information is that voters will take, and are now taking, substantially longer to complete their ballots—averaging at least 15 minutes with a maximum that is much higher.”
The paper general election ballot for Maricopa County this year is two pages and double-sided, which is the first time since 2006 that the ballot has been longer than a page.
Maricopa County Elections Director Scott Jarrett warned in September that ballot tabulation machines might jam because two sheets of paper will be inserted instead of one. He said that poll workers are receiving extra training to know how to address tabulator problems and quell any voters’ concerns.
Dhillon and Hamadeh wrote that the county has not calculated equipment failure into the time it would take for voters to cast their ballots. “There are several reports from the Maricopa County primary election in July 2024 of the recurrence of printers jamming at the vote centers, reminiscent of the problems encountered in the 2022 general election when the printers jammed at the vote centers,” the letter reads.
The letter also notes that there will be one fewer voting location “near Paradise Valley Community College, which has had one of the highest turnout rates in the County,” than there was in 2022.
“All of these datapoints are of great concern to us and to others who want to ensure that voters who choose to vote on Election Day are not, due to avoidable circumstances, blindsided by long lines that may discourage them from casting their votes,” they wrote.
Dhillon and Hamadeh asked for “an emergency meeting” with the Recorder’s Office and the Board to “discuss practical ways to increase Maricopa’s capacity for processing voters on Election Day.
“Potential remedial efforts include deploying some of the backup voting machines, installing additional voting secrecy booths, activating emergency locations, and a county-wide effort to inform voters of the looming issues and the need to vote early, or how to identify voting centers with shorter lines,” they continued.
Hamadeh shared the letter on X on Thursday, writing, “Today, I partnered with the Republican National Committee to call for an emergency meeting with Maricopa County to immediately review their flawed Election Plan. It fails to account the time voters need to complete the FOUR-PAGE ballot, setting the stage for long lines & chaos on Election Day.
“I won’t tolerate an election system that disenfranchises the will of the people.”
The Maricopa County Recorder’s Office and Maricopa County Board of Supervisors didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment on Thursday.
Delays in results
While there will likely be long lines to vote on Election Day in the county, election results are also expected to be delayed.
Election officials in Maricopa County, Arizona, announced that it will likely take 10-13 days to tabulate all the ballots cast in the presidential election next month. Just more than two million people in Maricopa County are expected to vote in the presidential election in two weeks and over 400,000 people have already voted early.
“It will take 10-13 days after Election Day to complete the tabulation of all ballots. Depending on how close races are, the contests may be called much earlier than that,” Liewer told Just the News on Wednesday.
Maricopa County explained the reasoning for the delay Wednesday in a series of posts on X. “While Maricopa County counts the vast majority of legal ballots by the end of Election Night, it’s often days before media can call certain races. Why is that? In Arizona, there are two main factors: state election laws and narrow margins of victory,” the county posted.
“Arizona law also mandates a 5-day grace period for voters who did not provide sufficient ID when voting in-person, or whose early ballot signatures are questioned. Voters have that entire timeframe to prove their identity so their ballots can be verified and counted,” the county added.
“Arizona didn’t used to be as competitive, politically, as it is now. In close contests, sometimes that final 1 or 2% of ballots to be counted will determine who wins.”
The county also included in one of the posts a picture of a chart from the 2022 elections that showed the average days for all ballots to be tabulated in Maricopa County since 2006 is 13 days.
Kari Lake, the GOP nominee for U.S. Senate in Arizona, reacted to Maricopa County’s announcement, explaining that election results should not be delayed for 10-13 days. Lake posted on X on Thursday, “Why do we have to wait 10 to 13 days for election results when a law was passed to prevent that?”
“In 2022, the Arizona Legislature empowered County Recorders to allow voters to self-tabulate their own early ballots on Election Day, but for some reason the Maricopa County Recorder refuses to provide voters this option. Why?? […] Why doesn’t the Maricopa County recorder want to speed-up tabulation of early ballots? Maricopa County should allow voters to self-tabulate their early ballots on Election Day. It is allowed by law and should be implemented for THIS election” she said.
“Arizona shouldn’t have to wait 10 to 13 days for election results. America shouldn’t have to wait.” She added. Former Arizona Assistant Attorney General Jennifer Wright reposted Lake’s post with a screenshot and link to the law that Lake referenced. “Good question, [Kari Lake]!” Wright posted.
The law shown in the screenshot reads, “A qualified elector who appears at a voting center or at the elector’s designated polling place that allows for the on-site tabulation of early ballots with the elector’s voted early ballot shall present identification…”
Honest Elections Project Executive Director Jason Snead told Just the News earlier this month that delays in election results will likely occur if the race is close. He noted that Arizona is one of the swing states he is most concerned about.
Maricopa County, which is Arizona’s most populous county with 4.5 million citizens, takes “days and weeks to tally votes because so many are mail ballots” that voters wait to drop off at voting locations on Election Day, Snead said. While Arizona allows ballots to be preprocessed before Election Day, it “almost doesn’t matter if so many people are able to bring ballots on Election Day,” he added.
Snead told Just the News last month that mail ballots should be required to “come in the day before Election Day, or run your ballot yourself with ID.”
Once news, now considered “misinformation”
As Republicans raise concerns about the general election in Maricopa County, The Washington Post published an article on Wednesday that analyzed “at least 236 Republican candidates [who] posted or amplified a range of falsehoods or misinformation about election malfeasance.”
“Of the 48 percent of Republican candidates who have promoted false or misleading information about the 2024 election … about two out of three referenced noncitizen voting in connection with 2024 election fraud, about half referenced Trump’s legal troubles, and almost a quarter discussed Harris’s nomination as a coup, undemocratic or disrespectful to the will of primary voters,” according to the media outlet.
The Republicans that ranked first and seventh out of the top 10 for posting the most about 2024 election interference are Lake and Hamadeh, respectively.
However, back in 2018, The Washington Post published an article about “voting irregularities across the country” in the midterm elections.
“Reports of nonfunctioning machines surfaced in numerous states, including New York, California and Arizona,” the Post story reads. “Complaints also emerged about voting machines flipping voters’ choices in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Texas and Illinois.
“Also in Arizona, a judge declined to keep some polling places open in Maricopa County that had opened late. [Kristen] Clarke [then–executive director of the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law before joining the Justice Department] said voters were ‘disenfranchised’ in Arizona as a result.”
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Natalia Mittelstadt is a reporter for Just the News.
Photo “People in Line to Vote” by Eliza Brown. CC BY-NC 2.0.
