Battleground State County Begins Audit After Botched Ballot Counting Continues
Arizona’s election results are still on hold as thousands of ballots are left to count in Maricopa County and officials are saying it could take until Friday evening or longer to count them all since a hand-counted audit has also begun in Maricopa County.
On Wednesday, the Maricopa County Elections Department tweeted that a hand count audit was officially beginning.
“The hand count audit has begun! Today the @MaricopaCounty Republican, Democratic, and Libertarian party chairs drew the races and ballots that hand count audit boards will review Saturday. This is an important step in ensuring the accuracy of the 2022 General Election results,” the department posted.
The hand count audit has begun! Today the @MaricopaCounty Republican, Democratic, and Libertarian party chairs drew the races and ballots that hand count audit boards will review Saturday. This is an important step in ensuring the accuracy of the 2022 General Election results. pic.twitter.com/0CmzftSSY1
— Maricopa County Elections Department (@MaricopaVote) November 10, 2022
This comes after Maricopa ran into issues with the vote tabulation machines on Tuesday, Fox News reported.
Bill Gates, (not the billionaire) the Supervisor for Maricopa County and the Chairman of the Board of Supervisors, notified the public on Tuesday that about 20 percent of the voting locations had malfunctioning machines.
Here is a message from Chairman Bill Gates and Recorder Stephen Richer with an update for @maricopacounty voters on Elections Day. pic.twitter.com/OkQczCklGb
— Maricopa County Elections Department (@MaricopaVote) November 8, 2022
This complicated Arizona’s most populous county’s voting process and has slowed down the results as well.
While the vote-counting machines were a problem, the state did provide voters with the option of filling out their ballot and dropping it in a secure box, Fox reported.
That resulted in about 7 percent of all the votes in boxes, rather than processed and counted digitally.
As of Wednesday morning, officials were estimating that about 400,000 ballots were still uncounted, Reuters reported.
With the slowdown and the hand-count audit getting underway, Gates predicted that it could take until Friday evening to get roughly 95 percent of Maricopa’s votes counted, Fox reported.
The U.S. is waiting on some crucial races in Arizona.
The Senate race between Democrat Mark Kelly and Republican Blake Masters still hangs in the balance, while the gubernatorial contest between Republican Kari Lake and Democrat Katie Hobbs likewise remains undetermined, 270towin reported.
Currently, Hobbs and Kelly have the lead.
One House race is still undetermined while Democrats won three other seats and Republicans took five.
Fox reported that as the counting continues in Maricopa, officials will issue updates each evening on the continued progression.
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